Good Friendship

…As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”[footnote: As AN 8.54 points out, this means not only associating with good people, but also learning from them and emulating their good qualities.]

“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.[from SN 45.2 translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn45/sn45.002.than.html

These powerful words are well known among Buddhist practitioners because the message is short, to the point, and obviously useful. But because it’s not one of the precepts or a separate item on the 8-fold path, it can easily be overlooked. It doesn’t even show up on most of the lists of qualities we are advised to develop. Instead, having good people around us, choosing to spend our time with others on the Buddha’s path, is a great, perhaps the greatest, support for our own progress on the path.

If we have, for periods of our life, spent time with people who encourage and support our worst impulses, we will know the truth of this statement. Who we choose to spend time with will help or harm us, regularly, persistently, and with predictable outcomes.

For this reason, people who are trying to free themselves from addictions or from nefarious activities must do the difficult work of severing some relationships and establishing new ones. If we haven’t had direct experience of the uplifting effects of spiritually supportive friendships, it may be hard to recognize what makes people helpful or harmful to us. This is a critical skill we can develop if we are practicing mindfulness. It may start with identifying a teacher or mentor and asking for help.

Choosing whom we associate with is only half of the beneficial equation here; becoming a better companion to others is the other half. We can’t expect people to accept us if we don’t hold up our end; if we don’t behave in ways that are at least sometimes admirable. If we make the effort to take care of our own responsibilities for work and spiritual development, this will be helpful to others. The respect and care with which we treat ourselves and our companions is a direct reflection of our own wholesome intentions.

It’s easy to take our friends for granted, but if we do, we risk allowing the friendships to wither. If we appreciate and take as a model the good behavior of others, we will grow in wisdom and in helpfulness to others. By being a supportive and caring friend, our own compassion and internal peace increase and a virtuous cycle is set in motion.  Mindfully monitoring our relationships and our behavior within those relationships is the essential soil in which freedom from suffering can grow.

Mindful Sensing

As we peruse the perfections or paramīs, we are looking for entry points to mindfulness practices that may suit us right now. The third precept is “I undertake the training rule to refrain from misconduct with sexuality (or sensuality)”, and although this usually proceeds with a conversation about how to avoid harmful actions and words having to do with sexual energies, today we’ll think about some of the other ways that our senses can lead us astray if we’re not mindful.

All the time, we are choosing where to place our attention. We are driven by the desire for pleasurable sensations and experiences. If we look at the subset of pleasant mental sensations, this is the category in which we spend the most time.

• What music do we listen to by default?
• What do we read on a daily basis?
• What visual inputs are we drawn back to again and again?
• Do we regularly devote some time to silence and stillness?
• What work do we do (paid or unpaid) and what is our state of mind while working?
• When we reminisce or project into the future, what’s the content and emotional quality of our memory/daydream?

All these activities can be done with or without mindfulness, habitually or because we’ve consciously chosen them. If we are attending to the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the inputs we choose, we will be continuously re-evaluating our selections. As one wise teacher said, “Let go of those activities that no longer serve”.

There’s no magic to this process, it’s very mundane, but without mindfulness we are just drifting from one sense pleasure to another, or in some cases, to a particular pain, as if picking at a scab. We could become addicted to gratifying one or more of our senses. Some of us are seduced by reading and will drift in that direction unless focused on a task. Others cannot put our phones aside and give attention to our surroundings unless there is an emergency. Some folks feel compelled to work all the time, neglecting other people and opportunities. A compulsive meditator is rare, but it does happen.

We must each take our own inventory, honestly acknowledging what our drivers are and questioning whether they are wise. Are we moving in the direction we want to move in?

Determination (Adhiṭṭhāna)

There are various different lists of paramīs which emerged from different historical schools of Buddhism. In at least one 10-item list, a quality called determination appears.

Adhiṭṭhāna or resolution works as a force-multiplier for the rest of our efforts towards spiritual development. We choose a quality we’d like to increase or diminish in ourselves and make a plan to support movement in that direction. Proceed with caution, however, because we could make and stick to a wholesome plan or an unwholesome plan. A burglar can be determined to steal a particular thing; a student of the Buddha might resolve to be truthful in all interactions. Determination without (at least some) wisdom is incomplete — stubbornness is not the same as adhiṭṭhāna. We have to make sure that what we set our hearts on is well-chosen and wholesome, and fortunately, the Buddha gave some guidance here:

[from MN 140, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu] These are the four determinations: the determination for discernment, the determination for truth, the determination for relinquishment, the determination for calm. ‘

In the above sutta the Buddha specifically recommends four objects to set our determination on:

1. cultivating wisdom (discernment),
2. truthfulness,
3. relinquishment (letting go), and
4. strengthening calm.

At the very least this means noticing when these qualities are present in ourselves and when they are absent. If they are present, we can try to figure out what conditions caused them to arise so we can cultivate those conditions in the future. For example, we might notice that certain people or situations bring out these wholesome qualities in us.

Conversely, we can notice when ignorance, carelessness with the truth, clinging, and agitation are present. What conditions cause these qualities to arise in us? What activities or thinking can reduce them? What can we do to avoid the causal conditions in the future? Is there a determination we can make about how to handle ourselves or to change our point of view when we feel we are headed in the wrong direction?

Resolutions we might make as laypeople:

• Daily sitting practice, of any duration, to cultivate calm
• Letting go of chronic irritation at an unchangeable fact of our life
• Applying mindfulness continuously to our use of words
• Studying the Buddha’s teachings in whatever form works best for us (use care with sources)

The best resolution to make is one that you choose yourself. We can all move in the direction of liberation from suffering, but it is not a passive trip; we must apply what wisdom and energy we have available today.

Nekkhamma (renunciation)

One quality that’s on later lists of perfections (paramīs) is nekkhamma, usually translated as renunciation. In the context of the Buddha’s teachings, it mainly has to do with renouncing something that’s appealing for something that has longer term benefits. It’s a letting go, the opposite movement of the heart from grasping or clinging.

From the Pali-English Dictionary: to go out, to go forth; in fig. meaning: to leave behind lust, evil & the world, to get rid of “kāma” (craving), to show right exertion & strength

From the Merriam Webster 3rd edition: refuse to further follow, obey, or recognize; cast off

Why is this an important practice principle for us today? Because if we are serious about training our minds in pursuit of clarity, we must understand what motivates us.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote a classic article on the subject of renunciation, titled “Trading Candy for Gold: Renunciation As a Skill” (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/candy.html). From that article:

What sort of sacrifices are intelligent? The Buddhist answer to this question resonates with another … principle: an intelligent sacrifice is any in which you gain a greater happiness by letting go of a lesser one, in the same way you’d give up a bag of candy if offered a pound of gold in exchange. In other words, an intelligent sacrifice is like a profitable trade.  …

There’s something in all of us that would rather not give things up. We’d prefer to keep the candy and get the gold. But maturity teaches us that we can’t have everything, that to indulge in one pleasure often involves denying ourselves another, perhaps better, one. Thus we need to establish clear priorities for investing our limited time and energies where they’ll give the most lasting returns.

… A third reason for sacrificing external pleasures is that in pursuing some pleasures — such as our addictions to eye-candy, ear-candy, nose-, tongue-, and body-candy — we foster qualities of greed, anger, and delusion that actively block the qualities needed for inner peace. Even if we had all the time and energy in the world, the pursuit of these pleasures would lead us further and further away from the goal.

This last point seems like the key one. Every time we choose the easy, pleasant option rather than the one that involves some effort, we are strengthening our inclination to take the laziest path. Training the mind and heart is hard, but it does offer a better return on our investment. When we come to the end of our lives, which would be more precious – a contented and loving heart or an accumulation of things we no longer want or need? Bear in mind that our lives could end on any day; we don’t know how long we have.

Practicing renunciation can be as simple as sticking with a daily exercise routine or choosing to practice meditation daily. We can spend time with those who call forth our best intentions rather than those who temporarily feed our egos. What will we choose?

Why be good?

There are many ways of “being good” and many lessons in the Buddha’s teachings that encourage us to cultivate wholesome actions of body, speech, and mind.

In a classic sutta, the Buddha lays out a very simple reason to behave towards others with the specific intention to do no harm.

With Queen Mallikā SN3.8 (translated by Sujato Bhikkhu)

At Sāvatthī.
Now at that time King Pasenadi of Kosala was upstairs in the royal longhouse together with Queen Mallikā. Then the king said to the queen, “Mallikā, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“No, great king, there isn’t. But is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“For me also, Mallikā, there’s no-one.”

Then King Pasenadi of Kosala came downstairs from the stilt longhouse, went to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what had happened.

Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha recited this verse:

“Having explored every quarter with the mind,
one finds no-one dearer than oneself.
Likewise for others, each holds themselves dear;
so one who loves themselves would harm no other.”

This king and queen were very wise. The king essentially asked his wife whether she loved him more than herself, to which she honestly answered, “no”. The king then realized that he also didn’t love anyone more than himself – how could he? Don’t we all have self-preservation at the very root of our physical and psychological being? Could anyone truthfully answer that they loved someone else more deeply than they loved themself? Having discovered this (perhaps unsettling) truth, King Pasenadi went to the Buddha to think it through with him. And the Buddha confirmed that all of us hold ourselves more dear than anyone else, which is not to say we don’t love others deeply.

The point is that if we understand our own instinct for self-preservation, then with only a little effort we can remember that everyone else feels the same way! We can imagine that intentionally harming someone else is the next thing to harming ourselves.

The Dalai Lama makes this point regularly: everyone wants to be happy. Marshall Rosenberg says essentially the same thing: whatever words we use, we are all trying to satisfy our perceived needs. We may be frightfully unskillful as we go about it, but however misguided we are sometimes, we are all trying our best to be happy (or happier).

What’s our purpose?

We’ve been considering the Buddha’s teachings on how to live ethically and harmoniously in community. Each of us must decide for ourselves how to make use of those teachings. If we think generally about the precepts (non-harming, generosity, ethical sensual behavior, truthfulness, and sobriety) and the perfections (giving, virtue, patience, energy, concentration, and wisdom) do any of them seem to be well established in our lives? If yes, we can build on the strength of character already present in us and use it to sustain further growth in wholesome directions. It’s important to be aware of where our strengths lie and not undervalue them; these characteristics are more precious than any material possession.

If we think broadly about community and our place in it, the question comes, how do we affect others? Kamma dictates that whether we intend it or not, our actions influence all around us and all who hear of us. We can’t know the full extent of our influence, but we can be conscious of the fact that we are always exercising it.

George Bernard Shaw: “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

The above quote from George Bernard Shaw is not out of place among the Buddha’s teachings. This very life that we now embody, this is our chance, our opportunity to make a difference for ourselves and others. It incorporates the concept of spiritual urgency (saṃvega) that the Buddha often cited.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Saṃvega was what the young Prince Siddhartha [the Buddha to be] felt on his first exposure to aging, illness, and death. It’s a hard word to translate because it covers such a complex range — at least three clusters of feelings at once: the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle. …  (from https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/affirming.html)

For many of us, saṃvega presents as a general confusion or distress because we’re not sure what we should be doing, what our purpose in life is. A complete answer may not be readily accessible, but we can have confidence that if we commit to developing the qualities the Buddha emphasized in his teachings, we will at least be going in a right direction.

Virtuous community

The idea for today’s post comes from an article, “Buddhism and the Virtues” by James Whitehill, published in a textbook, Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, edited by Damien Keown. The central point is that it is difficult or impossible to develop the Buddha’s eight-fold path in isolation. We need some form of community to provide support, encouragement, correction, and some healthy peer pressure to persist.

The primary focus on persons, character, and virtuous practices in Buddhist ethics cannot be sustained without community, places where we know each other well enough to call each other into the intimacies of an ethics of intention and practice, as in a family. This means that Buddhist communities must ever be small, small enough that people intimately know each other and the other sentient beings sharing their life and death.

Whitehall goes on to say that communities can be too small or too large. If the community is too small, it may be difficult to maintain focus on the “virtue” part of virtuous community. If the community is too large, as it may be in a big city, an intimate and continuous knowledge of each other with our intentions and inclinations becomes impossible. The “perfect” community meets regularly over many years, weathering difficulties internal and external, and sharing the joy of growth in inner strength which is not visible in the short term.

There are virtuous communities that are not explicitly Buddhist, but are based on some common wholesome theme, religious or social. There are also communities with more nefarious or mixed aims, so it’s important to choose our companions wisely.

Our purpose in participating in an intentionally virtuous community is two-fold. We offer our best behavior of body, speech, and mind to the group, and rely on human (and perhaps animal) feedback to identify where our efforts need to be redirected. At the same time, we observe and appreciate the virtuous behavior of others and are uplifted by it. This attention to others helps us to adjust the priorities of our own intentional behavior; we imitate the good and overlook the unhelpful.

Trust is the foundation of any well-functioning community, and trust is built through truthfulness, kindness, common goals that are visibly being pursued, and commitment to each other and the stated purposes of the community.  Every family and community culture is unique, and they fluctuate with time, but there are hallmarks of wholesome behavior we can look for and encourage wherever we find ourselves. This mutual respect and care is at the root of growing virtue.

Wisdom (the 6th perfection)

One school of early Buddhism listed six perfections: giving, virtue, patience, energy, jhāna (concentration), and wisdom. We’ve talked about the first five and today we’ll consider the last of these, paññā or wisdom.

Wisdom can be cultivated on its own, but more often it’s a result of refining our other wholesome qualities. The more generosity we practice, the clearer it becomes that this is a satisfying and beneficial way to live. The more we are inclined to acting virtuously rather than selfishly, the more obvious it becomes that this is preferable to any alternative, and the more we’re likely to continue in that direction. Likewise with patience and the application of mindful energy and practicing to develop inner calm. Our wisdom deepens all along this path, and our mindfulness and confidence will likely increase as a byproduct. This is the culmination of the path; all things come into focus more clearly – what we are doing, what the results of our actions will be, the value of mindfulness and discriminating wisdom.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/GoodHeart/Section0005.html
… in actual practice, we’ll also find that, as we develop the other perfections, our discernment (wisdom) develops further as well. In other words, the perfections develop reciprocally. They help one another along. Discernment gives guidance to the other perfections, at the same time that the act of developing the other perfections helps to make our discernment more penetrating and precise. (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Perhaps it would help to identify examples of what wisdom looks and feels like. Nelson Mandela embodied both dignity and wisdom; the Dalai Lama always speaks and acts in a way designed to bring about understanding and healing. The historical Buddha is an example of the potential we all carry for full awakening. We can take them and others as our models.

Sometimes wisdom is defined as an experientially-based (not intellectual) understanding of dukkha, its origin, its release, and the path to release (also known as the Buddha’s four truths); or it’s defined as an experientially-based knowledge of the process of dependent arising. But these are just words until we live in a way that reflects our understanding. Our actions of body, speech, and mind have consequences, good and bad, for ourselves and others. When we know this for sure, we can claim to be (at least a little bit) wise.

Steadying the mind

The perfection or pāramī of concentration is also one of the factors of the Buddha’s 8-fold path. It’s an element of practice that many find challenging or frustrating, but it is essential to making solid progress towards liberation.

Of course, we can concentrate when we’re focused on something we care about, whether it’s making a meal, or a playing a card game, or completing a project. Can we care about refining our minds as much as we care about anything else? Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that in order to develop a solid mental base through concentration, we have to first commit to the Buddha’s path.

Read the full transcript of the talk this excerpt is taken from here: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations9/Section0032.html

All too often it happens that when you sit down to concentrate on the breath, you stay with the breath for a little bit and then you’re off someplace else. You come back, you stay with it a little bit longer, but then you’re off again. This happens so many times that you begin to get discouraged. You think, “Maybe this concentration is no good,” so you throw it away. Instead, you should think that it’s like having a baby. You feed it. But then it cries. Then you have to change and wash the diapers. Then you have to feed it again. And it cries. But you don’t throw the baby away. You just realize that it needs extra work, continuous work. It’s the same with your concentration. …

Again, it’s like raising a child. In the beginning, you have to do everything for it: feed it, clothe it, clean it, comfort it. But after a while, the child begins to feed itself, clean itself, look after itself. You still have to watch over it. After all, it is your child and it’s still not an adult. But it’s not as difficult as in the first stage when it was a baby. So even though concentration may be difficult in the beginning, don’t think it’s going to always be that way. It’ll mature. But for it to mature, you have to give it what it needs. Give it your full attention. Be alert. Be mindful. Stick with it. Keep coming back, coming back. Keep encouraging yourself. And that’s how your feeble concentration becomes strong.

By training the mind to collect itself regularly, a number of benefits can accrue. First, experiencing a calm(er) mind is pleasant in itself. Every degree of tranquility that we access represents a commensurate degree of relief from agitation; when anxiety is completely absent, what comes in its place is a form of bliss. The other important purpose of cultivating concentration is that it supports the development of mindfulness as nothing else can. With a good balance of mindfulness and concentration, the inevitable result is growing wisdom; a clarity that can make our whole lives more liveable and fruitful.

What kind of strength do we need most?

The first three pāramī  or perfections (generosity, morality, and patience) are concerned with our actions of body, speech, and mind; the next three (energy, concentration, and wisdom) are focused inward. By developing the latter three of these pāramī, we strengthen all the interpersonal qualities we want to embody. It’s a reciprocal relationship; the more attentive we are to the wholesomeness (or not) of our words and actions, the more inclined we are to the cultivation of inner peace and wisdom. And the more we nurture our inner resources, the more naturally we will behave in harmonious ways.

The pāramī of viriya, (vigor, energy, strength) is what’s required of us to develop the path in ourselves. However, we’re not talking about bodily strength, but mental strength, which we may be unaccustomed to attending to.

From https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html#ch5

Energy (viriya), the mental factor behind right effort, can appear in either wholesome or unwholesome forms. The same factor fuels desire, aggression, violence, and ambition on the one hand, and generosity, self-discipline, kindness, concentration, and understanding on the other. The exertion involved in right effort is a wholesome form of energy,  …

Time and again the Buddha has stressed the need for effort, for diligence, exertion, and unflagging perseverance. The reason why effort is so crucial is that each person has to work out his or her own deliverance. The Buddha does what he can by pointing out the path to liberation; the rest involves putting the path into practice, a task that demands energy. This energy is to be applied to the cultivation of the mind, which forms the focus of the entire path.  …

The nature of the mental process effects a division of right effort into four “great endeavors”:

1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome [mind] states;
2. to abandon unwholesome [mind] states that have already arisen;
3. to arouse wholesome [mind] states that have not yet arisen;
4. to maintain and perfect wholesome [mind] states already arisen.

The four great endeavors remind me of a story:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” (https://www.urbanbalance.com/the-story-of-two-wolves/)

By feeding our “good wolf”, we are starving our “evil wolf”. We move along the path towards awakening by being vigilant about our intentions, the stories we tell ourselves, and the diligence with which we train our minds. This is the type of energy and effort the Buddha recommends.