Buddhist teachers have long emphasized that taking the Three Refuges, in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, describes an act of trust and orientation rather than a transaction in which a external power intervenes to rescue the one taking refuge, a distinction commentators draw specifically against theistic prayer, where a petitioner typically asks a deity to act.
The Buddha is taken as refuge in the sense of a teacher who has shown a viable path, the Dharma as refuge in the sense of the teaching and the truth it points to, and the Sangha as refuge in the sense of the community that preserves, practices and transmits that teaching across generations, three distinct but interlocking supports rather than three separate deities or powers being invoked. This formula appears with only minor variation across essentially the entire range of Buddhist traditions, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana alike, despite the very substantial theological and philosophical differences that otherwise separate these branches, which has made the Three Refuges one of the few points of near-universal agreement across the full breadth of Buddhist practice worldwide. Some Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions extend the formula with additional refuges, such as taking refuge in one's teacher or guru specifically, or in the Three Jewels together with a fourth element, without displacing this basic threefold structure as the foundation beneath any such addition.