History
The three gems are called this because of their treasured value to Buddhists, as well as their indestructible and unchanging nature.
The Three Gems when used in the process of taking refuge, become the Three Refuges. In this form, the metaphors occur very frequently in the ancient Buddhist Texts, and here the Sangha is used more broadly to refer to either the Sangha of Bhikkhus, or the Sangha of Bhikkhunis.
I go to Master Gautama for refuge and to the Dhamma, and to the Sangha of Bhikkhus. —Read more about this topic: Three Jewels
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)