But this is not a safe refuge, this is not the supreme refuge; taking refuge here, one is not freed from all suffering.

Netaṃ kho saraṇaṃ khemaṃ — this is not a safe refuge: khema is safe, protected, free from danger. The refuges enumerated in the previous verse offer no real safety. The mountain can crumble, the forest can burn, the shrine can be destroyed.

Netaṃ saraṇamuttamaṃ — this is not the supreme refuge: uttama is supreme. No material or geographical refuge deserves the supreme qualifier because all are subject to impermanence.

Sabbadukkhā pamuccati — one is not freed from all suffering: the unfulfilled promise of mundane refuges is total. They offer no liberation from fundamental existential suffering: old age, disease, death, separation from what is loved.

The contrast with the following verses (190-192) is deliberate. First the illusion of ordinary refuges is dismantled, then the true refuges are presented: Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. The pedagogy is effective: first emptiness, then fullness.