A few years ago, in the middle of a weeklong meditation retreat, I joined the queue to speak to the group's most senior teacher. I'd spoken to him before, of course, many times, both during one-on-one practice discussions and in more informal settings, like the potluck lunches the group organized every now and then. But this time I had some questions I wanted to ask, and they weren't about meditation. They were about him.
I was thinking about taking refuge, the ceremony in which you make a more formal commitment to the practice. I wanted to find out more about what I was getting into, so I did a bit of research online into Buddhist communities in the United States generally, and into the one I was sitting with in particular.
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