Refugia: Finding Sanctuary In Times Of Crisis

REFUGIA REFUGIA REFUGIA REFUGIA a term from population biology population biology population biology a field a subfield within biology that looks at the populations of animals and plants and insects the populations of living things and how they change over time,

How they change under different conditions that's what population biology is about I first heard this term,

Refugia in some context where someone was giving a talk and they mentioned it and somehow right away you know how certain words just kind of get in you or they spark your curiosity I got really sparked by this word refugia and started to read about it,

To listen to some podcasts about it,

To try to understand it better and I think maybe when I was just looking back in my mind,

What about that word was really capturing me because I feel like in some ways what we've been doing here as a community at NDF is creating something like that but I didn't know what it was yet I was like what is refugia and also because in our Buddhist practice like I was saying,

One of our key or core practices is refuge and clearly refuge and refugia must be related and they are,

Those two words are related for sure so it turns out what refugia is in population biology relates a lot to what we do in our spiritual practice and it offers us a certain doorway into understanding refuge so in the Buddhist tradition in our practice tradition refuge means just kind of broadly places of safety,

Not necessarily literally places but areas of safety areas of safety that we can lean on or turn to in times of distress,

In times of fear in times of trouble and even in the earliest Buddhist teachings,

The time of the Buddha,

2500 years ago when he talked about these three refuges of Buddha,

Dharma and Sangha in one of his teachings,

One of his sutras he talks about when you are when you go to the forest so his monks his disciples back in India Northern India,

Imagine Northern India,

Wild Northern India back then,

With very little development,

There was no development per se there were few villages,

There were villages but there was no big cities there were cities but not big cities this is,

You know,

2500 years ago in India where this tradition was born and so the temple was the natural world for his disciples they were in the life of homelessness actually going forth into homelessness was one of the things that his disciples did and homelessness really meant in Northern India,

Which has a fairly temperate climate,

Living in groves of trees occasionally living with,

For just a night or two maybe some villagers but then moving on to your groves of trees that's where they were living and so the refuge was the wilderness for them that was where you went to practice meditation and he says in this one sutra,

He says when you are alone in the forest because he knows his disciples are going to be wandering around,

Sitting together or sitting even alone sitting apart,

Doing their practice finding their peace inside,

He said when you are afraid try to remember the Buddha which he meant,

Try to remember I assume back then it would have been remember me I imagine maybe,

Or maybe it was remember,

Like in the wider sense that I was talking about remember your guides,

Remember you have guides,

They can be there for you,

Remember your guides let's say,

And if you can't remember your guides he said,

Remember your path,

Remember the Dharma,

Remember your path so if you're having trouble remember your guides,

Remember your path the path is a refuge when you're out there in the wilderness when you're afraid,

He used the word afraid,

And if you can't remember the path remember your friends remember the community,

Remember that you are helped,

That there are loving others and they are around there,

You can't see them at this moment,

But they are there so he used the word afraid so refuge had to do with finding a place of safety finding relaxation when you are stressed it was something about that in those early teachings so the same is true with refugia so it turns out refugia are areas going into population biology where organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions kind of like the period we are experiencing right now so refugia are places refugium refugium is the singular refugia are plural a refugium is a place refugium is a place where organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions or crisis refugia are places says so what kind of unfavorable conditions does refugia offer sanctuary conditions like glaciation like during an ice age periods like global warming where temperatures are rising so could have to do with temperature and ice condition of water other conditions deforestation that can change dramatically dramatically resources for a population for a species human encroachment the human development encroaching on wild spaces hunting so the killing of species and that too can create a need for refugia places where that species can survive in a period of crisis which could include being killed right not necessarily by humans but it could be right could be by other animals as well but we're in apex predator for sure so then I was curious okay I get that concept right but what literally is an example of such a place what do these places look like what kind of places and who's finding refuge in them so I just wanted to bring three examples today just to give you a sense of what refugia are is so on the Tibetan plateau there's an alpine zone and that is in the high parts of Asia not just the Tibetan plateau but I'm using that as an example but all over the Himalayan region there are these places in the Himalayan region that are between the snow line and the tree line it's called an alpine zone and in that particular little strip of the alpine zone there's a mammal called the snow leopard and it lives in that particular strip in the Himalayan region the snow leopard have you ever seen a snow leopard picture they are these grayish white cats with long bushy tails and they are have black spots and they blend in to the alpine zone because they've got the white of the snow on their fur that's why they're called the snow leopard and then they've got these black spots that help them blend into the rocks because there's all the rocks and the snow so they're right in that alpine zone where there's the rocks the snow and the low juniper and like low vegetation and they just blend in perfectly there so the snow leopard and habitat loss for this leopard is becoming an issue because of the warming and that alpine zone some of those zones are disappearing and also because of human encroachment especially in the Himalayan region so in that case the refugia are these alpine zones and the refugee who takes refuge in those zones is the snow leopard that's the first example and then the second example is I just found in my researching of this I was looking for different examples also from this continent so is the yellow legged the foothill yellow legged frog of the Sierra Nevada and I think maybe I selected that because I'm going to give an example from the west coast and one from the east coast so having grown up in that area myself and spent my summers in the Sierra Nevada I was interested in that particular that particular refugee the foothill yellow legged frog and the refugia that that frog lives in are these streams and rivers that pour down from the Sierra Nevada every spring when the snow melts and these rivers just pour down and they actually keep going some of them keep going all year round some of them peter out at the end of the spring but a lot of them keep going all the time and the reports are that before the gold rush and all of the attempts post gold rush to develop dams in the Sierra Nevada before that time the reports from people first coming in to that region and really starting to settle there is that these frogs these little tiny silver dollar sized yellow legged slippery little cute frogs were everywhere and you couldn't walk next to a stream without stepping on one that's how they described it they were just I mean like or even several they some one naturalist described them as like popcorn in the Sierra Nevada region that they were just everywhere and they you know popping you can imagine and over time you know the gold rush and then the dams and the little guys became almost extinct and just disappeared but they didn't disappear they are still hanging on and where they're hanging on is in this particular refugia and what the refugia is for these frogs are these cracks in the many boulders and rocks in that hold water after the streams have melted hold water sometimes for the entire summer where they can survive in these cracks where nothing will eat them or step on them and so they're considering now the naturalist the population biologist in this area that these are where how they have survived is in these little cracks between the rocks so that that is their refugia and crevices in tiny streams that managed to go all year long and they make these crevices in the rocks and that's where they're surviving so that's an example number two and then example number three number three of refugia is the permanent wetlands of the northeast northeastern United States and Canada and we're living right in the middle of those wetlands right here in this part of New Hampshire there are wetlands on this property there are wetlands in McDaniels Marsh right down the hill it's a wetland at the bottom of this property and the neighboring property that we just acquired there's a wetland and it runs all the way down from pretty much north to south it's running right it's holding water in that region and an example of a refugee,

Refugees that live in that refugia of these wetlands are cattails and pickerel weed species of frogs several species of frogs fish birds and insects that are living in those refuges those refugia and there was one in particular that I looked into a little bit more because I was finding it pulling me in one refugee so if we have the snow leopard in Asia we have the foothill yellow-legged frog California we also have the American bittern of New Hampshire Vermont,

Canada some parts of Canada as well this is a really rare bird and this bird is very shy and it lives in the marshes in the deep marshes in this area one was spotted on McDaniels Marsh this summer I looked up the spotting incidents where they were photographed spotted and photographed and uploaded onto this website for the American bittern and so it's here,

It's right here it may even be on this property the American bittern and they are beautiful,

They are streaky brown and buff in color they're a species of heron and they're a bird of prey that like the herons like the more well-known blue heron that we often see right in the northeast that is less shy even in cities you can see a blue heron and they stand really straight and really really really still and then they strike,

This is true of the American bittern but it's a smaller animal it's a smaller version of a heron beautiful animal so those are some examples.

What is refugia?

Refugia are the places that harbor safety and harbor a survival environment for those species so we might say in our Buddhist tradition we find and we take refuge sort of in the most traditional sense and this guides in our path and in our community I also wanted to talk about other forms of Buddhist refuge and I'm going to loop it back to this idea of refugia in the Buddhist tradition in Tibetan teachings sometimes refuge is understood as ninefold instead of threefold so threefold was the Buddha Dharma Sangha refuge but in some teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we also take refuge in an inner refuge and we did that on the meditation cushion just now refuge in body refuge in breath and refuge in mind but not so much our ordinary monkey mind but refuge in our Buddha mind which is this more immediate and weightful part the self but essentially to step back for a moment refuge in our body breath and mind refuge in in this organism as we too like the yellow legged frog and like the heron like the turn and like the snow leopard we are organisms we are animals,

Too.

So in our in our meditation practice part of what we're doing is connecting to an embodied sense of being a planetary being connected to this earth and that's something that we can actually feel in our body we are grounded like the mammals like the birds birds can fly but they have to come back eventually they have to eat and they have to nest right we're like that too.

That's something we're getting in touch with when we come when we turn that gaze inwards and we're also getting in touch with the fact that this body is breathing this body is breathing we're in this rhythmic connection to the outer world and we're bringing that into the inner world and then we're sending out the inner world back into the outer world there is this reciprocity that's happening every moment with the body so when we're practicing meditation we're really getting in touch with that rhythm with that reciprocity between us and the natural world and then also this third refuge these are the inner refuges the refuge of the mind and sometimes in our tradition we use this word Buddha mind to help us discern the difference between our thoughts we're not taking refuge in the content of our thoughts we do that every day all day long that's sort of our ordinary state we're taking refuge in the content of our ordinary mind refuge in our ideas and our opinions and our beliefs right refuge in our sometimes our feelings refuge in our anger refuge in our dysfunctional patterns refuge in our fears right refuge in our illusions and delusions right so refuge could be dysfunctional refuges that we engage with in our ordinary life but in practice of meditation we're trying to we're discovering that there is more to us than what we think so we're looking for refuge in not so much the thinking as the thinker who the who is conscious who or what is conscious and really getting deep with asking that question right these are the inner refuges and they're not places per se right this is the temple and the inner refuge it's a place but it follows us everywhere right so it's it can be in any place it's a place that we can take any place and then there's this there's an innermost refuge also I'm just going to mention to its innermost refuge just so now we have six refuges right Buddha Dharma Sangha body speech mind and then this innermost refuge also has three three refuges three innermost refuges and those have to do with that Buddha mind they have to do with the deepest sense of who who we are when we look again and again and again at what is here or isn't here.

You know,

Depending on how we understand it.

The selflessness,

The selfless self,

And so in looking at that in this innermost refuge.

We noticed that there are qualities of the knower that are beyond the thinking mind.

And those qualities that come down to us from the lineage of practice,

But eventually come to us from our own practice,

Which is really where it has to go in the end,

Because we can't just accept the wisdom of the lineage on faith.

It's not something we so much do as Buddhists we accept the wisdom of the lineage on practice,

Instead of on faith,

Like let's practice and see is it so.

So the those qualities are spaciousness.

There is this part of us that is naturally open and available and expansive that we don't often see.

And then secondly,

Luminosity,

Which is a word that's maybe initially hard to understand but it has something to do with our own capacity for clarity,

Our own capacity for being awake and alert.

The light of the mind could say the natural intelligence or the brightness of this awareness of this consciousness in the present moment.

It's not that dark in the awareness.

And then the third is fertility.

That our mind never fails to give birth.

It's giving birth every moment.

And that part of this experience that we have that we call thinking,

And that we call feeling is this natural mind,

This Buddha mind,

Giving birth to all things that we're experiencing,

Giving birth to thought,

Giving birth to appearances,

Giving birth to feelings,

That there's this just bubbling up.

It's just,

We can't control it.

It's happening all the time but we're mostly focused on the content of what's happening as opposed to the miracle of the birth.

Isn't that amazing that it's happening,

Right?

The miracle of just this unfolding consciousness,

Right?

It's just amazing.

And so we can,

When we practice we're often in a state of wonder,

Like wow.

So that's,

Those are the three innermost refuges,

Those three qualities,

The spaciousness,

The luminosity,

And the fertility.

It gives us another place to take refuge other than our thoughts.

So these refuges are powerful but I don't know that it's all we need for this time.

Especially when we're in a time when we are becoming refugees.

And what I mean by that,

Maybe we've always been refugees.

We've always been wanderers and nomads as a species,

Right?

We've always been travelers.

And it's interesting that in the Tibetan,

The word for a human being is a traveler.

Like the word is droa,

Which means the goers.

We are called the goers in Tibetan.

That's the word for beings,

Is the goers.

So we're sort of,

We're movers.

We're movers,

Aren't we?

And so,

Yeah,

We're nomads.

But also our world is changing.

And in a changing world just like the frogs,

Just like the heron,

And just like the snow leopard,

There is a need for refugia.

We're going to need to gather in places where we can survive.

Where we can not only survive but maybe thrive and maybe become closer to the planet that is protecting us.

So in this time,

This is not,

We're not living 2,

500 years ago.

We're not living 200 years ago,

300 years ago.

Things have changed so fast for our human species.

It's mind boggling when you think about it.

What was the world like 500 years ago,

400 years ago,

And what is the world like now?

It is mind boggling.

And there is a cost to what's been happening in our mind-boggling world,

And we are now beginning to experience the cost.

So that's something as a spiritual community,

As a Buddhist community,

As a planet of spiritual communities that we really do need to think about.

We have to grapple with.

And I,

Today,

As a teacher,

You know,

As a teacher of this beautiful tradition that I've fallen in love with long ago and continue to fall ever more deeply in love with,

I feel a sense of responsibility.

Refuge is a core practice for us,

Right?

And we are now refugees,

And we are finding our refugia.

We are doing that.

We are finding our refugia.

We are developing our refugia,

And we will need to continue to do so to survive and to thrive as humans.

So we can take a hint from some of these animals that have survived through adapt,

Through adapting,

And through finding their water sources and their sources of community and connection,

Finding what they need.

You know what animals do really well?

They listen to their instincts,

And they listen to their bodies.

It's one of the reasons that I've turned a lot towards the body in my later years as a Buddhist teacher is because the body speaks to me of the animal,

And we need to be listening to the animals.

This animal,

Too.

This animal has a lot to say.

Our prefrontal cortex is chattering away,

But that limbic brain,

It's got some good things to say.

It's not all about stress and panic.

It's also talking to us about our connection to the earth and our connection to the other animals and our deep interconnectedness with the plants and the trees and one another when we listen.

So I would say that lately,

Oh,

I know I've gone way over.

Oh,

My goodness.

Please forgive me.

I like to do a Q&A.

I haven't gone over on our time completely,

But let me try to get to my point here that we need a refuge in Gaia.

We need a 12-fold refuge,

Not a 9-fold refuge,

And our 12-fold refuge,

Our last three refuges to add to our list is refuge in Gaia,

The matrix of life on this planet,

And refuge in Gaia's teachings,

Which are sometimes gentle and sometimes profoundly draws into stillness and into awareness when we're in wild spaces,

The dharma of the wild,

And sometimes those teachings are fierce and wrathful.

Those teachings,

Too,

We need to listen to.

Listen to the teachings that are fierce right now.

They're speaking to us.

And then,

Finally,

Refuge in the community.

And when I say community,

We have to expand that sense of community.

Right?

Back in the Buddha's time,

To say Buddha,

Dharma,

And sangha made a lot of sense,

And it still does.

Refuge in our communities,

In our circles of care,

Whatever those circles may be,

We can't survive as isolated humans.

And in some ways,

We've built a world where we're isolated.

We're isolated in these four-walled structures that have space between them.

Sometimes people withdraw into the middle of those structures and never leave.

It's heartbreaking.

Right?

So,

Finding we have to move ourselves into,

We're the movers,

Right,

Into a matrix of connection with others.

And however that looks,

Right,

A circle of care here,

A circle of care there,

Intersecting circles of care where we feel seen and we feel loved and where we can extend our seeing to others and love others.

It's important for now.

I think the days of being alone could be over at some point,

That we need to find ways to not be alone.

So,

And community meaning expanding our sense of community from the human world to the more than human world.

That the animals are part of our community.

The frogs are part of our community and the birds and the insects are part of our community.

They are our sangha.

They are the sangha.

And beyond that,

The plant world,

That the plants are our community.

Developing relationships with plants as simple as our house plants or as broad as our backyard or as broad as the closest park,

As broad as opening ourselves up to the community that is the matrix of life itself.

That that is our community and we belong there.

We belong to that community.

Naturally.

We know we do.

So expanding our refuges to those refuges.

And I finally want to come to this is a time as spiritual beings on this place.

One thing we have learned to do in our meditation practice or if you're newer to meditation you will learn to do is experience that your awareness is aware of itself.

We are self aware creatures and that's an extraordinary gift that we can know who we are.

We can experience ourselves as thinkers and doers and as bearers.

That's a gift,

Tremendous gift given to us by evolution.

So this is a time when one of the most fundamental questions we ask in Vipassana practice and our practices of meditation is who am I?

So this is a time for us to really ask that question more and more because if we understand ourselves only as a spirit,

Only understand ourselves as a spirit or as an awareness if you will with a capital A or as an Atman what are the words that religions have for spirit,

Right?

Spirit,

Atman,

Awareness.

I'm sure there are others but if we understand ourselves only to be that we still think of things in terms of transcendence.

The spirit is transcending the human realm like when we die we will transcend and this vision of transcendence we have to rethink that because from an ecological standpoint our life is the earth made conscious we are matter made conscious and we can bear in bearing witness to ourselves to really meet these times it's necessary to notice that we are planet we are not stewarding planet we are planet and so our love for the world needs to be there in a way that we understand that it is also loving ourselves to love the world and so those are my thoughts today this next turning that we have to move towards as a community as a Buddhist group or as a to awaken.