I would like to offer following reflections on the theme of admirable friendship, and more broadly on the notion of friendship in general. Recent events in my life led me to contemplate this topic very thoroughly for a few past weeks. Please excuse a slightly rambly post
I will open up with a question: How many of you consider yourself having a real-life friendship that would qualify as “admirable” from the Buddhist point of view? By that I mean having a person in your life with whom you can discuss dharmic topics and anything else that is important to you on a regular basis, ideally face to face. A person that is on the same or very similar path as you and who has a similar understanding of Buddhism.
There are a few famous passages in the Pali canon where this factor is brought up and given a lot of significance:
Upaddha Sutta (SN 45.2)
'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, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the Noble Eightfold Path.'
Itivuttaka 1.17
'With regard to external factors, I don't envision any other single factor like admirable friendship as doing so much for a monk in training, who has not attained the heart's goal but remains intent on the unsurpassed safety from bondage. A monk who is a friend with admirable people abandons what is unskillful and develops what is skillful.'
Those are pretty strong statements, but they deserve some unpacking, I believe, as taking them at face value could cause more harm than good. Accepting them literally, it could be inferred that the nature of spiritual progress is binary – either you have a spiritual friend, and thus possess 100% of the path, or you don´t and are excluded from the path altogether (0%). As this is obviously not the case, I would argue that admirable friendship should be understood more broadly as listening to “the voice of another”, which, especially in today´s age, does not necessarily have to mean being in the physical presence of a spiritually developed person (that would be the best-case scenario, but far from available to everybody). The implied emphasis is, I think, on hearing the correct teachings and getting the correct advice.Dighajanu sutta (AN 8.54)
'And what is meant by admirable friendship? There is the case where a lay person, in whatever town or village he may dwell, spends time with householders or householders' sons, young or old, who are advanced in virtue. He talks with them, engages them in discussions. He emulates consummate conviction in those who are consummate in conviction, consummate virtue in those who are consummate in virtue, consummate generosity in those who are consummate in generosity, and consummate discernment in those who are consummate in discernment. This is called admirable friendship.'
But enough theory, I would like to get to the practical aspects. Having a spiritual friend as per the suttas is a beautiful ideal and I can´t wait to read your replies to see if anyone actually achieved it. The stories we read about friendships between the Buddha and his disciples are all very inspiring, but as is very often the case, the reality can be drastically different. As someone who practices completely outside of any formal structures and social ties (in the Buddhist world), I do contemplate this quite a lot. I can confidently say that there is 0% of anything even remotely resembling physical kalyana-mitta in my life, and still I don´t see this as a major handicap. In fact, I have gotten to a point in my life where I am very close to having almost no friends at all and still am very OK with it. Yes, I feel it would be even better having someone who would share my passion for Dhamma and who would fancy discussing deep topics, the various subtleties of the teachings and workings of our minds etc., but all I can do right now is to acknowledge that such people are simply not available (physically) and that´s perfectly fine. The Dhamma can be flowing regardless of whether you are in an inspiring monastic environment full of beautiful and virtuous people, or in small town where no one even knows what Buddhism is, having absolutely no one to talk to about your greatest interest in person.
This brings me to the complementary aspect: “avoiding the fools”. I won´t quote any texts to keep this shorter, but in my experience, this is probably even more important than having physical contact with virtuous individuals. Being in a physical presence of obnoxious, stupid or otherwise harmful people is really oppressive and everyone should do their best to limit their exposure to such individuals. That said, there seems to be a broad “twilight zone” that includes people who are not outright toxic or harmful in any major way, but who still can take some toll on your consciousness. Unfortunately, these people will very often be your relatives which makes this territory really hard to navigate. And even in cases where these people are not your family, difficult situations may still occur. I notice this a lot after I´ve moved back to my hometown. From time to time, there are what I call “zombie encounters” - an acquaintance from ages long gone pops up out of nowhere and wants to re-establish contact. I find that very annoying not because I would entertain any aversive feelings towards the person, but simply because they might remember me from a long time ago when I had totally different motivations, interests etc… They usually haven´t changed a bit, but I have changed a lot and know there is zero common ground for communication. I do everything I can to minimise chances of such encounters, but when they do happen, I am struggling not to make it awkward for either side. You have to be very smart to find enough manouvering space within the constraints of the 4th precept. I would never lie to the person, even if it made life much easier for me, or even consciously mislead them. But at the same time, the 4th precept doesn´t compell you to blurt out the truth everytime - you can avoid being too specific about your life without lying, but you have to be creative and mindful. Frequently, the best solution is to simply deny to answer.
Moving on to more general observations: Before I moved back to my hometown, I lived in my country´s capital where I had some very interesting “friendships” (I put that word in quotation marks for reasons I will soon explain). Today I reflected on them. I was surprised to find out that even if many of them were very genuine and intense, they were also rather short-lived. I´ve heard of people having one or more close friends throughout their whole lives, which is hard to imagine for me. I was reflecting on conditions that led to arising and ceasing of these friendships. A few months or years ago, I would sometimes feel slightly melancholic that certain friendships have ended too soon. One of the conditions, I believe, was that I simply became uninteresting to the other party (or the other way round). This is very hard on the ego, but when I adopted a more impersonal point of view, I learned to see these dynamics as nothing but changing conditions (internal and external) and passing sankharas. At some point, “my” sankharas stopped being interesting or attractive to the other party, or vice versa, and that now seems to me completely natural. I very much question the chivalric/romantic notion of friendship which is sometimes presented as the ideal in the Euro-American culture. When I looked very deep into it, I saw that when a “friendship” is formed, it´s just mind taking up a favourable object (the other person) and holding on to it. Nothing wrong with that – there are people who are very smart, entertaining, knowledgeable, intelligent, or even virtuous, and mind simply wants to take hold of these desirable objects. Also there is always a strong pragmatic/instrumental motivation in seeking friendship with someone, and again – I don´t see anything wrong with that either. Samsara is very cruel and we are vulnerable creatures that need to cooperate to survive. We kinda use each other, and when we feel the other party has nothing more to offer, our interest just fades away by itself.
The problem is when one party feels the friendship is over and the other doesn´t. Unfortunately, that´s sort of my situation right now where some (luckily not too many) people still find interest in me, but I don´t find interest in them. Or even better: They find interest in their mental image of me. I often reflect on the words of the Buddha that it is not cruel to simply displease someone. You never wish anything bad on anyone, but at the same time you can quite consciously distance yourself from people who just want to see you for their own entertainment or use you as an audience for what they have to say. Recently I became more aware of how I (mis)fit in the very limited number of social structures I am part of. The number of situations that feel awkward is increasing and I´m not really sure how to deal with some of them The best reaction could be simple sraddha - having faith in the process and causes and conditions sorting themselves in due time.
I´m rambling, I´ll stop here and wait for your input I have many more things to say to this topic so I´ll keep it for later if the discussion gets going nicely.