What is the ultimate meaning of taking refuge in the Three Jewels?

In the sūtras of Śākyamuni Buddha's jātaka stories, several sūtras record the footsteps and trajectory of Śākyamuni Buddha's cultivation life after life, describing his origins and family circumstances in each lifetime, as well as his fellow practitioners on the path of cultivation and his many disciples. What impressed me most deeply is that several sūtras describe how Śākyamuni Buddha and Amitābha Buddha and many other Buddhas were close relatives and blood brothers across many lifetimes, or cultivated the Way in the same Buddha-land, helping, supporting, and protecting one another. There are also accounts that in many lifetimes Śākyamuni Buddha was together with the ten great disciples of this present life, in a master-disciple relationship, with names that were similar or identical. It also describes the karmic affinities between Śākyamuni Buddha's wife of this life and Śākyamuni Buddha's past lives, and the karmic affinities between Śākyamuni Buddha's mother and Śākyamuni Buddha's past and future lives.

What do these storylines illustrate? They illustrate the affinities among the Buddhas, the affinities between the Buddha and his disciples, and the affinities between the Buddha and his family relatives. When people form wholesome affinities with one another, a cohesive force arises that draws these people together. And when there is an extremely powerful affinity and an immensely strong group to rely upon—being together with this strong group life after life—birth and death then have a refuge, and the mind has a master.

The Three Jewels are the life-saving straw. Only by gripping this life-saving straw tightly can sentient beings save their own lives. Apart from the Three Jewels, sentient beings have nothing to rely on; nothing can be depended upon. On the road of birth and death, they cry to heaven and heaven does not answer, cry to earth and earth does not respond, solitary and alone bearing their own karmic power. Form affinities with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and be together with the Buddhas life after life, never apart from the Buddha.

In the Lotus Sutra (Saddharma-puṇḍarīka Sūtra), the Buddha gave predictions to the disciples that they would become Buddhas. These disciples cultivated together and formed affinities with one another; the great paths they walked were roughly the same, their levels of cultivation were roughly the same, and when they attained Buddhahood, they did so one after another in sequence. Such is the importance of affinity. Those with wisdom must seize the affinity with the Three Jewels, seize the affinity with the superior group, and use this affinity to establish their refuge life after life, letting it carry them ever higher, step by step.

The group is extremely important; the group is the affinity. Affinity is extremely important. Without affinity, there is nothing to speak of—if there is no connection, what is there to talk about? Take, for example, the nearly two hundred thousand people who have died in the current lung-disease epidemic: they had no affinity with the Three Jewels, dying in loneliness, then being reborn in solitude, with nothing to rely on, nothing to depend on, drifting aimlessly, miserable and wretched, all alone, wandering through the six realms without any prospect of release. Is this not tragic and grim? Therefore, taking refuge in the Three Jewels is extremely important. The Three Jewels are not only the refuge of sentient beings' lives, but also the vessel that carries sentient beings to liberation. Only under the great tree of the Three Jewels can one enjoy the shade, and the mind attain the tranquility of nirvāṇa.