The Importance of Friends

Posted: March 4, 2008 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Buddhism, Religion, Theravada | Leave a comment »

Kind of rewriting a post from the previous blog. Recently I found this wonderful sutra from the Pali Canon that details the importance of being around a good Buddhist community, and why the “lone-wolf” approach doesn’t work well. The sutra is the Upaddha Sutta (SN 45.2), emphasis added:

Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”

“Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, and comrades, he can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path.

It’s not enough to be around just any Buddhist community, some are cults or have just fallen into money-making or factional fighting, but rather you need to be around people who are sincere Buddhists and provide inspiration to you to keep going. Without good friends to challenge and keep you going, you’ll either become complacent (as lone-wolf meditation types tend to do), or if around a poor community, you’ll pick up bad habits and views, or just get stressed out more so.

Of course, if you live somewhere where this is no community, you’ve got a problem. Many Westerners still live in areas where Buddhist temples are really hard to come by. That’s not your fault, it’s just circumstance. That’s where you have to be creative and either make concerted trips to good temple somewhere, or meet people online. My experience though so far is that online communities just aren’t as good as the real thing. The conversations I have at the ol’ Temple are something that don’t come up often on the Web. Then again, I’ve met a lot of great people on the Web, so there’s something positive there too.

Don’t consider this a hard-fast rule, but rather as valuable advice from the Buddha.

Namuamidabu

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