Driven by fear, many go for refuge to mountains, forests, parks, trees, and shrines.

Bahuṃ ve saraṇaṃ yanti — many go for refuge: saraṇa is refuge, asylum, protection. Frightened human beings seek refuge in multiple places and objects — a dispersion that betrays the nature of fear.

Pabbatāni vanāni ca ārāmarukkhacetyāni — mountains, forests, parks, trees, and shrines: an enumeration of refuges including the natural (mountains, forests, trees) and the constructed (parks, sacred shrines, cetiya).

Manussā bhayatajjitā — human beings driven by fear: bhaya-tajjita is threatened by fear, pursued by terror. The fundamental fear — of death, suffering, the unknown — drives the search for refuge in the wrong places.

This verse opens the sequence 188-192, one of the most famous in Buddhism, about true and false refuges. Geographic and material refuges offer no real protection against existential suffering. The teaching culminates in taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha.