ABSTRACT
To be a Buddhist is to go for refuge to the three gems, namely, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The central of these refuges is the Dharma, which is usually understood as the highest reality or highest goal (paramārtha), which is nirvana, the eradication of the root causes of troubled experience (duḥkha). By extension, the Dharma refuge may be understood as the wisdom that makes attaining nirvana possible, and by a further extension it may refer to the teachings that promote wisdom. What exactly those teachings are depends on the school of Buddhism one follows, for not all schools accept the same corpus of teachings as authoritative. The corpus of teachings that one follows also determines one’s conception of what sort of being the Buddha is to whom one goes for refuge. Different schools depict the Buddha in different ways and report his teachings differently.
