Friendship Is the Whole of the Path

East Javanese relief depicting the Buddha with his foremost disciple and friend, Ānanda

Last year, when my friend Kavya and I were reading In the Buddha’s Words, an anthology of the Buddha’s oldest teachings (called suttas), organized and explicated by the Brooklyn-born monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, one of the suttas that struck us the most was the Upaddha Sutta, often translated as “Half of the Holy Life.” In the sutta, one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples, the Venerable Ānanda, approaches the Buddha and says:

“Venerable sir, this is half of the holy life, that is, good friendship.”

The Buddha responds:

“Not so, Ānanda! Not so, Ānanda! Friendship is the entire holy life, Ānanda.”

(In the Buddha's Words, VII.3, heavily paraphrased by me)

We loved how sassy and snarky this sutta felt. Ānanda arrives excited about his realization that friendship is half of the spiritual life, and the Buddha immediately shuts him down, in our own paraphrased words, “No, you stupid bitch, it’s the whole of the spiritual life!” Even though this reading is almost certainly an anachronistic projection on our part (we are not experts on Pāli language or the cultural norms at the time of the Buddha), why not have fun with it where you can?

Sass aside, the sentiment expressed by this sutta just felt so beautiful: friendship is the whole of the spiritual path! I get a warm feeling when I think of my friends, my "chosen family" as RuPaul and queer culture calls them. So I thought I'd reflect on the ways that friendship does influence and uplift the Buddhist project of becoming more mindful and compassionate. I believe the same could be applied for just about any undertaking - including life itself 😊

1. Friends provide external support. This is one of the reasons the Buddha gives in the sutta after he shuts down Ānanda: friendship is important because friends can help you practice. I have certainly experienced this with my friends Kavya and Varsha (the DTM squad, as we call ourselves, which stands for "Down to Meditate", which is what we text each other when we want to set up a session 😝). Undertaking a practice together with friends offers external accountability, motivation, and also just makes things more fun! Having close friends to talk to and process difficult things is also invaluable - we meditated quite a lot during the beginning of the pandemic, and all found it extremely soothing and grounding to work through things together and to help each other find ways to use Buddhist teachings and meditation to cope with what was going on.
   

2. Two brains are better than one! This is another one of the reasons given by the Buddha: friends can set examples for you, and help you learn faster than you would on your own. When you discuss things with friends, you can come to understand them deeper than you would on your own. Perhaps, as is the case with my friend Kavya, your friend has been meditating longer than you and has a store of wisdom to pour out on you. Perhaps, as is often the case with my friend Varsha, your friend is going through something very similar to you, but thinking about it in a slightly different way, and by comparing notes and bouncing ideas off each other, you start to understand it in ways you hadn't before.
   

3. Friends can help you feel less alone. A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. It can be so comforting to remember that you aren't the only one going through a difficult experience. This wisdom is captured in the second step of Kristin Neff and Chris Germer's 3-step approach to cultivating self compassion, which involves remembering common humanity: that other people have also experienced what you're going through, and are probably even experiencing it right now. Early Buddhist stories are also replete with examples of this, often stories of mothers who have lost children finding some solace in connecting to other mothers who have been through the same experience (see the incredibly moving poem titled Ubbiri - The Earth at the bottom of this page).
   

4. Teachers can be thought of as friends. As the Buddha says in the sutta, another way in which friendship is the whole of the spiritual path is that the Buddha, as a friend, has offered his teachings to the world, so that all beings may be free from suffering. What are teachers but, like friends, people who out of kindness and care for us, offer up their knowledge to help us grow and learn; people on whom we rely to do things we wouldn't be able to do on our own?
   

5. Anyone can be a friend. Perhaps the deepest teaching of Buddhism is the complete interconnection, interpenetration, or as Thich Nhat Hahn says, "interbeing", of all things. Unlike most Western moral codes that glorify "enlightened self-interest" above taking care of others, Buddhism offers a decentralized view of morality: care for everything, because everything is intricately intertwined with you. We are all intimately connected, including in ways that we can't see (I mean that, in part, poetically and intangibly, but also in part scientifically and literally - we know through quantum mechanics that we actually are likely connected - to each other and the world around us - on a plane that we cannot perceive with our eyes, in ways that as yet we don't fully understand). What this decentralized view of morality looks like in action can most easily be grasped through loving-kindness meditation. In this practice, you call to mind people who fit into various categories and send them well-wishes. The categories start close to you - yourself, a benefactor, a close friend - and slowly move farther and farther away - a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings everywhere. The teaching is often to get a sense of the natural tenderness you feel toward your friend and then see if you can channel that same feeling to others, even people you don't know or dislike. The beautiful goal of this practice is to train your heart to love all beings equally, to decentralize your feeling of connection to things close to you and help you slowly grasp how interconnected you are with everything, living and not, that exists. In short, this practice helps you truly see everything that exists - even animals, even trees, and like Kristen Wiig's Björk, even clouds* - as your friend.

Kristen Wiig as Björk in the SNL skit "Bein' Quirky"

As someone who has never been in a romantic relationship, I have long felt that my friendships were perhaps the most important and profound relationships in my life outside of my family, but have rarely found support for that in popular culture or found the language and framework I needed to fully express this sentiment. For this reason, I especially love that Buddhism acknowledges the importance of friendship.

And, finally, to round out my discussion of friendship, I couldn't help but point out that it is out of friendship that I write this blog, hoping to send positive, inspiring energy into the world to help others make sense of their experiences, to help you as my reader learn and grow. But of course, friendship is a 2-way street: your implicit existence also provides the inspiration and motivation for me to write, and through writing I also learn and grow more than I would if I didn't push myself to process my experiences through words.

So here's to continuing our friendship! It is the path we walk and through it may we move forward lovingly through the world!

* I think the Buddha would smile and agree with this, but add: even if you don't like clouds, also make them your friends!