The tisarana, the Three Refuges, is the formula, I go to the Buddha for refuge, I go to the Dhamma for refuge, I go to the Sangha for refuge, recited three times, by which a person is understood to become a Buddhist and by which lay and monastic followers regularly reaffirm their commitment. It is the closest thing Buddhism has to a creed, but it is a statement of direction rather than of belief: one takes refuge in the awakened teacher, in his teaching, and in the community that preserves and practises it.
The tradition distinguishes the three carefully. The Buddha is the refuge as the one who found and pointed out the way; the Dhamma is the refuge properly speaking, the truth and the path that actually delivers; the Sangha, understood in the strict sense as the community of those who have realised the path, is the refuge as living evidence that the goal is reachable. Recited in Pali across the Theravada world and in Sanskrit forms elsewhere, and taken three times because a single utterance was held insufficient to mark so decisive an act, the Three Refuges open ceremonies of every kind and function as the basic act of Buddhist self-identification.