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NAMO
TASSA
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'THE
BUDDHIST HOUR'
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Hillside
Radio 87.6 FM & 88.0 FM |
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Broadcast for Sunday 1 April 2001
Today's
program is called:
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines friendship as: “The state or relation of being a friend, association as friends, a relationship of friendliness or intimacy, friendly feeling or disposition, friendliness, a friendly act.” Friendliness is one of the ‘Five Styles’ practised by our Members. These ‘Five Styles’ are: friendliness, practicality, professionalism, scholarship and cultural adaptability. In a letter to our Centre Members, from the Venerable Tan Achaan Boonyarith, a Thai Monk of the Forest Order, he noted that the Highest Friendship is developed only when people have completed or near completed reciprocal "understanding" between each other. That no secret is left behind, that by totally seeing through the nature of things or the reality of the state or situation, can true friendship be realised. In Pali we call this type of friendship, kalyana-mitta. This highest friendship can only happen in Dhamma, as opposed to friendship based on kamma, causes and effects from past times. The Venerable Achaan noted that the highest friendship is accompanied by true happiness. The truth never changes - what appears to be changing is the interpretation which ignorant people attribute to their worldly situations. He went on to note, this body-mind that feels alive, has a sense of life, sitting, walking, feeling, which all seem good, but with powerful and normal insight, sometimes they appear as not good at all, like a heavy charge (bhava), like a burden, even like hell. So thousands or more persons in a day end their lives by suicide with a pistol or by other means - a wrong decision for sure, but most of the time one could do nothing for them. It is too late because they wasted their life. In Pali, this suffering is termed dukkha. Unfortunately, there does not exist much true friendship in the world. It is highly valued by human beings, and even amongst animals or ghost spirits. To have no sense of friendship among persons is already very bad, but sadder still is when one cannot have it with “oneself”. This ‘body-mind life’ is in reality just five groups (in Pali : panca khanda). The five groups that make up this body-mind, are: PALI : RUPAM - which is form or the body PALI : VEDANA - is feeling or the sensation in the body PALI : SANNA - is our sense of existence, our perception or memory PALI : SANKHARA - are all kinds of thoughts moral and immoral PALI : VINNANAM - is our consciousness, such as thinking or knowing with intention These five groups all have the same marks of existence or characteristics. There are three marks of existence, namely: PALI : ANICCA - which means impermanent PALI : DUKKHA - which means sorrow, suffering and unsatisfactoriness PALI : ANATTA - which means no-self, no I, my, me All Buddhas discover the true nature of all beings, not just human beings. Those who were taught by the Buddha came to real friendship, which is simply that: we are just a body-mind, five groups, without any ignorance no wrong is done, this is the path to true happiness, to true and wise friendships
All physically related things, can be used to give use to moral states. From these come the knowledge of true and wise friendship by creating the conditions conducive to that realisation. This is adosa in Pali - meaning no hate. If the moral conditions are good enough, the understanding of the reality of the true nature of things, can be realised in a split second with guidance from a Teacher or Dhamma Text. In today’s program we will explain the methodology that we use to guide our Members in learning and putting into practice four or five good qualities that create the causes for friendship. Most human beings are not born friendly. Young babies display anger. Friendship is developed with rigourous training. If human beings were born friendly, our civilisation would not have a history of warfare. Living in delusion of their own ill-will, most people respond to the myth of having a ‘permanent friend’. There are many cases in history where the false friend directed nations to war with other nations. For all but a few, this myth does not come to reality. However, there are training systems taught by Shakyamuni Buddha which can make this mythical friendship an actuality in this world. The training creates a state of mental health that goes beyond ‘simple loyalty’ and has nothing to do with ‘blind loyalty’ or ‘blind attachment’ or some sort of fixation that is without any real reflection or understanding on what is happening in the mind. In 1925, C. Jinarajadasa described the normal sequence of events followed by a person with a clouded mind-set, in such matters: "Our loving would go from glory to glory, if only the tides of cosmic desire did not enwrap us all around. When we begin to love, that craving ceases on the first stir in our heart, and with the touch of that craving a pollution enters into our love. A self begins quickly to weave itself into the loving, and "I love" becomes an unending refrain. That element of self swiftly grows, fed by the craving. Soon its characteristics dominate love. Then the ‘self’ holds all for ‘itself’ and fiercely resents any attempt by another to share it. When the thought arises that the beloved may love another, jealousy flames up from within. It is a quality of the craving that it ever seeks to entangle us more and more in the lower reaches of our being. When we would strike the higher chord, it prompts the lower. Slowly the hues of paradise give way to the colours of the earth. Just as a lovely translucent colour, which a painter evokes on his canvas becomes dim the moment he lays even the thinnest film of the wrong pigment, so the glories of heaven, which make the aura of divine love, are slowly dimmed, as the little loveliness' of the body usurp love's immaterial spiritual beauty." There may be comfort in a notion that there is someone who you can trust and call on to help you when in need. However, is this notion ever likely to be actualised in your human life? There is a saying known by followers of Buddha that ‘friends become enemies and enemies become friends’. One of the major errors Buddha warned his followers against was the danger of eternalistic thought. To take refuge in a friend is an error of mind. You must learn to be a friend to yourself. Your friend may die tomorrow and you may not know his or her place of rebirth and in any case he or she most probably will have forgotten everything they knew about you by that time. What happiness can be found in that? If you are inclined to a sense of irony you might say you can always rely on your enemies to continue the attempt to thwart you in your work, pleasure and sleep. They will not fail to annoy you if you let them. However, it is not useful to push this example. If you are inclined to be of a hateful temperament the thought of your enemies will cause you to heat up and that will only bring sickness and shorten your life. What happiness can be found in that? Rather than being led by the continual flow of kammic inclinations that brings friends together out of past causes, it is possible to create good causes that builds true and wise friendships. It is a matter of knowing the right priorities and the correct order to practice them. Friendships based on emotional maturity are not flawed whereas friendships that operate from a base of kammic outcomes, which are essentially conditioned by views and opinions (pali : sanna), expectations (pali : sankharas) and feelings (pali : vedhana) are flawed. The normal interpretation to which persons refer to as ‘friendship’ is one based upon ‘having something’, such as the ownership of the other person where reciprocity is a condition of the friendship. It is not possible to understand friendship without first experiencing it, each for himself or herself. Our experiences so far have been flawed because of the many causes coming back to us now which were created in past lifetimes. The need to build friendships is supposedly nascent in all persons, but it is better to treat that as fiction until we have developed stable, friendly disposition towards ourselves. Generally we do not want to be alone, but in fact we were born in pain, alone. Neither our mother nor our best friend could be born for us and we are not spontaneously born beings, we are womb born. No one can escape death and we die alone. No one can delegate our death to a ‘best friend’. Your friends probably won’t be able to guide you when you die even if they were at your deathbed. Friendliness (in pali : adosa) is a wholesome state of mind (pali : kusula cetasika) and the way to attain this wholesome state is taught at our Centre. With regular training, it takes about four to ten years. Dosa means hate, in pali the "a" is a negation term, so what we are talking about is adosa, which means ‘without-hate’. This is one aspect of friendship and we seek to cultivate it. The view you have of friendship is the wrong one and this wrong view has been shaped by whatever culture you have been living in. The reality of human life as described by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai in ‘The Teaching of Buddha’ is a world where people are prone to selfishness and unsympathetic actions, they do not know how to love and respect one another, they argue and quarrel over trifling affairs only to create their own harm and suffering, so life becomes but a dreary round of unhappiness. He wrote that “regardless of whether a person is rich or poor, they worry about money, they suffer from poverty and they suffer from wealth. Because their lives are controlled by greed, they are never contented and never satisfied.” (3) In Pali true friends are called kalyana-mitta friends. These friends live in a state of true happiness as they operate on a different type of relationship dyad which is called caga in Pali. In this context caga may be translated as emotional maturity. If two people develop caga in this life, they will meet again in perfect harmony, in this life and in future lifetimes. So, how can caga networks be formed at our Centre? Some of the conditions needed to develop caga are:
People link karmically, the learning differences between people is utilised by our organisation to drive the Centre's culture of change as a learning organisation. We expect Members to study and learn. We form networks through our Members' practice of generosity (Pali : dana), the exchange of material things which they may find useful. This exchange of materiality ranges from painting exhibitions to chanting sheets, it extends to building materials, furniture, computers and has included donations to fire victims with basics such as bedding, household goods and clothes. Dana may also include giving out written Dhamma, or receiving spoken teachings or using our many websites to distribute learning. We emphasise the power of our Internet networks because of their inherent capacity to initiate worldwide change in individuals, each for himself or herself. Our only proviso to building these Internet networks is that they are based on the development of wholesome cetasikas, wholesome states of the mind. Although we are global in reach we do not have the material resources to deliver everything that is requested from many other Buddha Dhamma Centres in poorer countries. We do, however, give moral support by publishing their requests on Internet for aid internationally. They feel happy that they are not alone, knowing that they have a good friend and champion. There is friendship in the Dhamma amongst our team Members because our Teacher has been their kalyana-mitta friend over several decades. When our Teacher instructs his students, he is teaching them for the benefit of themselves and others. He sees potential in some of his students, that they are not able to see for themselves. From a Buddha Dhamma point of view, a Dhamma Teacher is a true and wise friend. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary the skill of a compassionate Teacher is “one who wishes well; a sympathiser, a patron, a supporter”. (5) This is quite an accurate description of the role of a Dhamma Teacher. Our practice holds together many people of different cultural mind sets and our Teacher’s role in building and maintaining worldwide Dhamma networks is so widespread he was awarded the 1999 Visuddhananda Peace Award. In the kali yuga, the Dhamma ending age, most networks are all about business not friendships. Relationships within business networks are driven by a selfish view based upon 'what’s in it for me'. So, how can we build the quality of true friendships into our existing business relationships? We teach the following business skills and in this order:
However, to want to start, it is a necessary condition that a person has done good things in the past, without this it is unlikely he or she will rapidly develop to a level that is irreversible in virtue. This is why we talk about lifetimes of learning. The Five Styles mentioned earlier are the basis for one model of behaviour that can be obtained using 2nd and 3rd order knowledges. Other faster-learning models require access to 4th order knowledges. Informal networks are primal and the strongest form of communication available. In non-literate societies it may be the only form of communication. It would be beneficial if each person identified and evaluated the informal networks to which they belong and left those networks that clouded or disturbed their minds. The Buddha once advised his Monks, "one should keep close company with a spiritual friend (kaliyana-mitta) less one falls into the habit of doing evil. By keeping close contact with a spiritual friend one is finally convinced of one's considerable growth in learning, dana, insight- knowledge and wisdom. “But if he keeps company with a bad friend (papamitta), he will loose trust, be wanting in moral training, learning, insight knowledge and wisdom. For this reason, you should keep close company with a spiritual friend and not a bad friend.” By function, our Centre might be described as an organisation that generates and delivers information to others in a friendly manner. By spending friendly time with others, a well-trained Member can be a positive example of our best culture. Whilst most of the details of best culture are transferred during more formal processes, what is conveyed during these informal networks is most valuable, as the person can get a sense of what a ‘best practice, friendly culture’ looks like. One who has developed the correct friendship in Buddha Dhamma is an example to those who are yet to develop themselves at all or to such an extent. A person may initially commit to practice at our Centre either wholly or partially because he or she likes our Members. They may say, “if I practice well then I might attain a wholesome trait that I have noticed in another Member”. In the main, when they observe friends at our Centre, they see the considerable benefits of ardent practice in pursuing Buddha Dhamma friendships. We need to recognise that those who are friendly to us, those who harm us, and those who are of no concern, are not fixed in their relationship to us. We should be aware that our friends of today may become our future antagonists and, conversely, our enemies may also become our friends at some future time. Appearances can be deceptive. Friends and enemies are equal in that they are both the means to practice. The recognition of a friend’s kindness reinforces the wish to repay that kindness. The hurtful actions of an enemy are the karmic result of past actions and this reinforces the wish that we cease the actions that are the cause of harm to oneself and others. Hate or dosa alienates a person, preventing them from entering into constructive relationships, either in business or personally. In a Dhamma talk by the Venerable Ajahn Manivong, he taught that the Buddha said we must meet in harmony, look after each other and live together. He said that if we think we are alone and we don't need any one, we are deluded, it is not true. Think of all the people who look after the electricity sites, the water and gas plants, the sewerage systems, supermarkets, public transport systems, those who provide clothes, grow the food, milk the cows and so on. We need thousands of persons just to provide us with the utilities and comforts in our day to day life. True friendship is not an easy quality to develop as it is one of the more complex aspects of our culture. It is however, probably the most enriching part of a human life. But the lack of friendship leads to war, killing and destruction. We wish that our Members and listeners practice friendliness, or adosa, in their formal and informal networks to cease killing animals and to be practical in helping one another. When adosa is developed as a stable quality, may we learn to practice metta, loving kindness, towards one another and if we intend to stay in the world to help others, may we practice caga towards one another. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness through cultivating true and wise friends. May you and your friends be well and happy and live in peace and prosperity.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Pam Adkins, Julian Bamford, Tim Browning, Frank Carter, Vince Cavuoto, Leanne Eames, Evelin Halls, Lyne Lehmann, Lisa Nelson and Pennie White. Disclaimer:
As we, the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., do not control the actions of our service providers from time to time, make no warranty as to the continuous operation of our website(s). Also, we make no assertion as to the veracity of any of the information included in any of the links with our websites, or an other source accessed through our website(s).
Accordingly, we accept no liability to any user or subsequent third party, either expressed or implied, whether or not caused by error or omission on either our part, or a member, employee or other person associated with the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
Document Statistics Totals: 1. Letter from Tan Achaan Boonyarith to our Centre. 2. Jinarajadasa. C. Release a Sequel to the Wonder Child. Theosophical Publishing House - Madras, India, 1925. P32-35 3. Chen. C. M. A Systematized Collection of Chenian Booklets. Vol. Two Nos. 63-100. Page.1350 4. Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai. 'The Teaching of Buddha'. The Corporate Body of the Buddha Foundation.Taipai Taiwan 1989. P95-96 5. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 6. Sumedho, Ajahn. The Spirit of Commitment. Amaravati Publications. UK 1992
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