Friendship: The Whole Of The Spiritual Life

Topics related to this sutta quote, '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…' Plus the characteristics of a good friend (AN 7:35) a of them few being: gives what is hard to give; does what is hard to do; reveals secrets; keeps secrets

Transcript

Wholeness and welcome,

Friends,

Students,

Listeners,

Josh Dippold integrating presence.

This brief event entitled friendship,

The whole of the spiritual life.

And the description,

Venerable 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,

Said the Buddha.

Admirable friendship,

Admirable companionship,

Admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.

And that's from SN 45.

And when I first heard that,

I was like,

Wait,

What?

All this spiritual knowledge,

All these practices,

These attainments,

These teachings,

This wisdom,

This vast love and friendship,

That's it?

That's the entirety of it,

What's that all about?

And so we'll get into that.

And one thing though up front here before I forget,

It also ties into relationship with friendship,

Right?

And we're in relation to everything.

So this was actually prompted,

This talk,

By a kind of back and forth with Insight Timer staff,

I guess,

About friending on the platform.

And no,

I was like,

Without going into too many details,

Can teachers,

Friend people know they have to have followers?

Well,

How do you build your follower base?

And if there's a special profile for a teacher versus just a regular profile,

And can teachers have the regular profile?

It seems like some of them do,

Some of them don't.

And buying into all this things of,

Oh,

We gotta have followers and friends to grow a following.

And if you can't invite so many people,

Which there was a limitation for a while,

And now it seems to be back off in general,

And then in live events with teachers,

And yada,

Yada,

Yada,

On and on.

And I'm just like,

Wait,

Stop,

What's going on here?

And this was actually a great prompting for friendship and how important it is,

And then remembering this passage.

I've mentioned this before,

That some of the best advice I've ever been given was find a teacher or teachers that you can really resonate and learn from.

And I gave a talk on that,

How to find a meditation teacher,

Also just spiritual teachers in general,

And also find friends on the path,

Find spiritual companions.

So can teachers and parents be friends too?

And I don't wanna say too much on that to color people's opinions.

I would say they can be,

But I don't think it's the most common.

So even the Buddha,

The Buddha was asked by family members of those who ordained,

And you can look these up too,

And how he responded.

I'm drawing kind of blanks on how he responded to this,

But they had concerns about people leaving the lay life and going off and donning robes in a bowl.

It's kind of a extreme example compared to today in the West when we don't have to go through such extremes to do that,

But they question him about that a lot.

And he himself even abandoned his wife,

Who was soon expecting a child.

So some of these things,

It's kind of almost a metaphor today in some instances,

I would say,

Of people just being interested in stuff and going on here and on this platform of Insight Timer,

Wisdom App too,

Although not to the degree I guess it once was.

It's gaining more popularity,

Thankfully.

That first passage I read,

I'm really not fond of these terms spiritual,

Which was in my title,

Are holy,

The holy life,

And they call the Buddha Lord,

Right?

I mean,

That just seems,

That's reserved for like comedy and sci-fi and things when you refer to someone as Lord,

Or very pious if you're in a Christian tradition.

So that's,

I don't know,

It's an interesting term.

I don't really know what to make of it or if it should be changed or what.

It just kind of sticks out like a sore thumb sometimes,

I guess.

So what does this meant though by holy life?

I would say anything beyond the base program.

The base program is like,

Okay,

House,

Kids,

Car,

Work,

Sleep,

Eat,

Repeat kind of thing,

Okay?

You can go for entertainment.

You've got sports and TV.

You've got outlets like bars and alcohol,

Shopping,

Sometimes travel,

Certain social activities if you're lucky,

And then,

You know,

Repeat,

Rinse,

Wash,

Repeat,

Sometimes not rinse or wash.

There's no value judgment in that.

It's just that some people are looking to go beyond those prescribed programs in life,

Not wanting to settle for,

Oh,

Well,

That's it.

Why are friends so important in this holy life or this going beyond the base program?

Well,

I would say support,

Just like in a regular friendship,

Encouragement and empowerment too.

And for me,

It's to help me with my own conduct and respect.

Sometimes those have been a challenge in the past.

Now,

Regular friendships can be kind of transactional.

I would say like,

I do this for you,

And then I expect you to do this back for me.

I spend so much time with you doing this,

So then you're gonna spend so much time with me when I want you to do that.

It's okay,

But can we go beyond that?

Is that all there is to it?

I would say obviously no,

Especially on a spiritual path.

So what is a good friend at any stage?

Sometimes that might be very called for at a certain stage of our journey to relate to friends that way.

Well,

The Buddha put it like this.

This is from A.

N.

735,

The characteristics of a good friend,

And this is just my list of it,

Not reading verbatim.

A good friend gives what is hard to give,

Does what is hard to do,

Endures what is hard to endure,

Reveals secrets to you,

Keeps your secrets,

Does not abandon you in misfortunes,

When you are down and out,

Does not look down on you.

Very wise words,

I feel.

So for me,

The few friends that I have now on the spiritual journey,

I can feel I can call up after five years of not talking to them at all,

And it would be almost like no time had passed,

And there would be an enthusiasm for both what we're into and studying and practicing and relating and just spiritual life in general,

Right?

Okay,

I don't know if anybody else has experienced this,

But when I first started,

I guess,

Waking up,

It's kind of a cliche term now,

It seemed like a lot of old friends were falling away,

And sometimes it was disheartening,

But at the same time,

It gave space for new friends to come along on the path,

To meet new and beautiful people.

Even in traditional friendships or before getting into this stuff,

Another common thread was mutual interest in certain topics,

Compatibility too.

And so with this old friends dying away,

Gaining new friends,

It's not as big a deal even just a few years ago before this Insight Timer platform,

Because now you can connect with all kinds of people who are interested in the same type of things and get support from teachers,

Groups,

Practices,

Even logging progress and whatnot.

But this is an online platform,

So it's different than in real life,

In the flesh,

Face to face with someone,

Practicing,

Talking,

Studying,

Relating activities even,

It's witnessing things beyond the screen too,

But it's a good place to start.

I don't feel it is something to reserve just for online activity.

Although if that's your only option or only interest at this point,

That's good too.

Also gave a talk on don't associate with fools.

This will progressively,

I guess,

Become more apparent.

The downside of a lack of benefits of being with fools,

Associating with fools,

And this is a challenge,

Kind of got engrossed by just silly behavior.

And I talked about this in that talk,

Don't associate with fools,

No need to rehash it now.

Once we're kind of in this holy life,

We're going beyond the base program,

We can still obviously have interactions in daily life.

I know it was challenging for me for a while because I was falling into this trap of,

Oh,

These people aren't conscious,

Why don't they see anything,

Why don't they know anything,

The level of consciousness is so low,

So horrible,

Being in a low vibe,

Why don't they just wake up,

Are they so stupid?

And then I realized,

Wait,

Innocence in low consciousness is not really the same thing.

I could connect with their innocence instead of thinking,

Oh,

This three-year-old should be able to be doing calculus.

You're stupid because you can't do calculus when you're three years old,

Or third grade or whatever you wanna say.

That helped a lot.

And of course we can still have acquaintances and polite interactions.

There's this other method called the double awareness.

You still can relate to people in everyday life in the base program,

Just the way pretty much you always have in a way,

But being informed by a higher level of awareness and being able to go into deeper,

Wiser spiritual teachings that might not always apply to everyday life.

Sometimes they do,

And both can inform each other and whatnot.

So with that,

I'll bring this to a close unless anyone has any questions or would like to share anything.

May you all be blessed with wise spiritual companions and may friendship lead,

Guide,

And sustain your way.

Reviews

Spiritual friendships to us all. Thank you

Wonderful talk! I related to what you shared here. And yes.. unconditional love 💕 is always there in good relationships. Then there are acquaintances in which we might share certain interests .
I think meditation helps me to be a better friend. Great voice ,looking forward to hearing more! I love the photo of the two girls holding hands. Thank you!🙏✨💜