Is it possible to Take Refuge in the Three Jewels, but still learn spiritual wisdom from teachers in other religions? I am quite fond and connect deeply to the Buddha's teachings. I have been a soft lay buddhist for almost a year now. I am sure that it is one of the best ways to develop as a being, as well as help others, although some deep stuff about shunyatta still confuses and eludes me. However, I am also sure that "other religions" (in quotation marks since it is debatable whether buddhism is a religion) also have a lot of wisdom to teach, help and love to give.

This exerpt from The Triple Refuge, by Sayagi U Chit Tin made me worry:

"Taking refuge will be broken for ordinary people when they die, but this breaking is blameless and does not bring bad results. On the other hand, breaking the taking of the Triple Refuge during one's life is very serious. This is broken whenever a person goes for refuge to a teacher outside the Buddha's Dispensation or when a person is disrespectful to the Triple Gem."

It seems to me that after taking refuge, if you go to other religions and religious teachers for their teachings on how to develop further down the path, it would be a bad thing (the author does not seem to say why this is a problem nor what happens if you do it).

So, is it possible to take refuge, follow the buddhist path to nibbana and still to other religions for help with the path? What about religions that directly contradict buddhist teachings or precepts?
When it is said that one's refuge "is broken whenever a person goes for refuge to a teacher outside the Buddha's Dispensation[...]" the meaning is that one should not go for ultimate refuge in anything but the three Jewels. It is Lama Je Tsongkhapa's interpretation.

When one is sick, (1) fearing the suffering of illness and (2) trusting that the doctor can protect him from it, he goes to the doctor to seek protection. This is called taking refuge. But this is not ultimate refuge.

A Buddhist can uphold this type of refuge. Other common instances are: relying on a deity or a spirit in the hope of being prosperous... or having children... or having good crops, etc. These are worldly concerns.

Now, the Buddha is the one true doctor that can protect you from the suffering of cyclic existence, as well as from the suffering caused by self-cherishing (that impedes you from being able to benefit other sentient beings). There are these two "definite goodness": (1) individual liberation, and (2) complete buddhahood. 

One cannot go for refuge to anything but the three Jewels to obtain either of these two definite goodnesses, thereby becoming a holly being, a saint, a foe destroyer an arhat. The actual foes (afflictive obscurations and knowledge obscurations) cannot be destroyed but by actualizing the three Jewels in one's continuum.

There is no issue for you to attend Muslims or Christian, etc. teachings and drawing conventional wisdom from them at all. The most important is that it helps you destroy the foes, the enemies of ignorance and self-cherishing. A Theravada might say: as long as it helps you destroy the foe of craving, but you get the gist.

This morning still, I sent a passage from Rudolph Otto (a Lutheran theologian) to a brother of mine, also a Buddhist monk. The quote went:


  For one of the chiefest and most general features of mysticism is just
  this self-depreciation (so plainly parallel to the case of Abraham),
  the estimation of the self, of the personal "I," as something not
  perfectly or essentially real, or even as mere nullity, a
  self-depreciation which comes to demand its own fulfillment in
  practice in rejecting the delusion of selfhood, and so makes for the
  annihilation of the self. And on the other hand mysticism leads to a
  valuation of the transcendent object of its reference as that which
  through plenitude of being stands supreme and absolute, so that the
  finite self contrasted with it becomes conscious even in its nullity
  that "I am naught, Thou art all."


And that can definitely speak to Buddhist yogis.