Dear Ven. Yuttadhammo, Kare, Rett, Nina, Stephen, Mike, Alex and
friends,

I come upon this thread because I have just encountered sarana.m in
my exercises too. :-)

I tend to agree with Rett. Even if we learn about how the early
Chinese understand Buddhist terminology, they may not be totally
right linguistically, although they may have expressed the meaning of
the original texts well.

As Stephen said, the Chinese words for "going to refuge" is "gui yi",
where "gui" = turns towards, and "yi" = relies upon. The Chinese
translators had tactfully translated the phrase "going to refuge"
without translating "refuge"! Nowadays, when someone says "gui yi" it
literally means /becoming a Buddhist/ (a ceremony).

However, the ultimate meaning of refuge in Chinese is called "zi xing
gui yi", which can be expressed by this English translation in the
Mahaparinibbana Sutta:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/digha/dn16.html#island

The ultimate goal of "going to refuge" is to put a person on the
right path (the middle path), starting with the right
view/understanding. Just my 5-cent worth.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett wrote:
the techniques of comparing Pali and Chinese are beyond me