In 2018 I was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order, a spiritual community of people who have pledged themselves to following the Buddhist path to enlightenment. This was the culmination of ten years of effort and exploration, joyously completed. Something that had seemed impossible for me had finally happened. This is the story of how I was able to move from the statement ‘I don’t have friends’ to being able to say, ‘I have many friends.’ It’s the story of how Buddhism helped me to develop rich, close, emotional connections with people who are not family members. 

For most of my life I have understood that I think differently from other people, without knowing why. I saw some things very clearly while other things were a complete mystery to me. I can recognize patterns and see how these patterns connect. If you act in a certain way then certain results will usually follow. But I find it very hard to read non-verbal communication. Mostly I just don’t see it, but when I do, I often misinterpret what I’m seeing. If you say something to me, I hear your words but I don’t pick up on the context behind the words.

As a child I was often ill and I was also very shy. As a result, I regularly missed school or was by myself at school. I got on perfectly well with people, but did not develop close friendships. 

The same patterns were there when I left school. I worked well with people, I was intelligent and articulate, well organized and could explain things clearly, but I made no close friends. There were work relationships that I enjoyed, but they never developed into anything outside work. People asked me about problem-solving or process issues but never about emotional problems or other personal difficulties. We sometimes went out as a work group but never simply for a coffee. I did not miss having any close friendships but sometimes I wondered what it would be like. Other people seemed to enjoy them! 

Then, when I was 50 years old, I found Buddhism. I wasn’t looking for Buddhism at that point, I simply wanted to learn how to meditate. There were three Buddhist groups within my local area and I wrote to them all asking if they had chairs to sit on to meditate, because I find getting up from the ground challenging. Only one group replied, so I decided to go with them and went into the local Triratna Buddhist center for the first time. 

I’d never been anywhere like this center. I was welcomed at the door. The place was full of people chatting in small groups, with lots of laughter. People invited me into the groups and said hello. We all went together into the shrine room and then after the meditation came out and chatted more—with a large array of teas and biscuits! I knew that there was something different and wonderful about the place and I wanted to be part of it. I wondered if, here, I could find people who would continue to talk to me. So, I started attending the center regularly. The only real difficulty I had at this point was that people wanted to hug me and I didn’t want to be hugged by people I didn’t know well. It was very uncomfortable. 

One of the distinctive focuses of Triratna Buddhism is the crucial importance of sangha, the spiritual community of people who follow the Buddha’s teachings. Sangharakshita built the movement with this exchange between the Buddha and Ananda at its core: 

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. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.’ (SN 45.2 ‘The whole of the holy life’ – Access to Insight, 2013) 

Triratna Buddhists work hard to develop spiritual friendships between people and try to bring this into every encounter. So, the warm welcome I received on first entering the center was part of the ethos of Triratna. 

For a while I simply enjoyed the unusual feeling of being with people who accepted me and who were always happy to talk. It was enough just to feel part of something that wasn’t to do with my work. As I chatted, I started to be more interested in Buddhism and, after some reflection, asked to join a study group. This study group opened so many doors for me. The same people met together, with minor changes, for about six years. I was suddenly part of a small group with the shared interest of learning more about Buddhism. Study training in Triratna is well organized and comprehensive—and I loved it. But, even more importantly for me than the study aspect, it also exemplified aspirations about how to be with the same people over a long period of time and how to make connections with them.

To begin with it was hard. This was partly because I found the pressure of people difficult. The sensory input of several people having an animated discussion was challenging. I found myself tensing up and trying to block some of it out. However, as we learned how to listen to each other, there were fewer times when several people were talking at once. I learned by watching other people how long it was good to talk for. I also learned how to leave space for other people in the discussion. I discovered how to live with the feeling that I’d missed the time when it was appropriate to say something (so sometimes I would not be able to say what I wanted). 

One of the other group members was really empathetic, a “heart” person, while I’m more analytical and a “mind” person. We discovered, to our mutual delight, that we could start a conversation coming from completely different places but eventually meet in the middle. This is such a rich experience, we both learned different ways of seeing and the world felt brighter because of this. I was beginning to build the foundations for closer relationships with other people. 

After studying for a year, I decided that I was a Buddhist and that I wanted to make a deeper commitment to Buddhism, so I asked to become a mitra. The word mitra is usually translated as “friend.” I discussed this with Order members, and they agreed this would be a good step. I then took part in a ritual, where I was introduced to the whole sangha and made the three traditional offerings of a flower, a candle, and incense, so that my deeper commitment could be witnessed. 

I’ve never found rituals easy. There are usually too many people in the room and the mantra chanting is overstimulating. Normally I don’t want to be in the room doing this but, in this case, it felt really important to be seen. I wanted to take part in this ceremony with other people. I did find the sounds and the pressure of people challenging but I knew why I was there, and I wanted to be there, so it was bearable. 

Once I’d made this deeper commitment, I also realized that I would like to be ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order, so I entered the ordination training. To become an Order member, you have to build links with other people; it’s an integral part of being in the Triratna movement. That sounded like a lovely idea, but I’d never had a friend and I had absolutely no idea how to go about developing friendships. Eventually someone asked me if I would like to go for a coffee with them, and that was a huge relief. I made a note in my mind: you ask people to go for a coffee. 

But the fact that I was going to meet someone for a coffee brought up a whole new area of difficulty. What do people do when they “go for a coffee”? I assumed that the idea was to talk, but talk about what? I was terrified. At that point I had no “small talk.” I could not imagine how I was going to get through this meeting that felt so important. But I went, and it was very clunky. I could talk about non-specifics and we could discuss Buddhism, but I could not find any way of getting closer to the other person. I met other people after the first “coffee experience” and it was clunky with everyone. The conversations just didn’t flow. 

At this point, many people would have given up on the idea of building a relationship with me. I was incredibly fortunate that the people here did not give up. Instead, we kept meeting and people began to give me feedback about how talking with me felt for them. 

At the start of this process the feedback was helpful. People said, “You talk too much and don’t let me get a word in.” So I made a mental note to talk for less time and then pause, and this seemed to help. They said, “You are too intense.” So I tried to be gentler in the way I spoke and to give less detail. I tried to approach topics less directly and put effort into softening my speech. 

But as time went on and we still weren’t really connecting the feedback became more painful and confusing. I was given information such as “You are not listening to me,” which was confusing because I was listening, as hard as I could. I was told, “You are not interested in me.” This was very painful. I was more interested in people than I ever had been in my entire life, and yet this wasn’t coming across. I was told, “You don’t have empathy.” This was both painful and confusing because I know that I have lots of empathy and I was trying to express it. Why couldn’t the people I was talking to see that? 

This phase lasted for several years, with both me and most of the people around me getting more frustrated. Why couldn’t I do what was being asked? Nothing seemed to work. At the same time, I was finding that with two people things seemed to be different. I now know that both these people had met autistic people before. They assumed that I was autistic but that I didn’t know it. They didn’t expect the sort of responses that most non-autistic people were looking for. Our friendships developed more quickly because of this and they remain two of my closest friends to this day. 

Four years ago, when I was 60, my sister contacted me to say that she had just been diagnosed as autistic. I went looking for information to help her and found the best description of me that I’d ever seen. My first response was, “But that can’t be true!” When I thought of autism I thought of severely autistic people, and I knew that their experience was not mine. And yet, there was so much in the description of autism that did fit. I researched further and discovered the concept of the autistic spectrum and suddenly everything made more sense. It was possible for someone to be autistic but not be severely autistic. I did the self-tests and discovered that my scores were way above the threshold values for autism. So, I asked to be tested formally. I was diagnosed with what is now called “level 1” autism (in the UK) and might previously have been called Asperger syndrome. 

That diagnosis was liberating. Suddenly I understood why I was having problems with communication. I told the people around me immediately and from just about everyone I got the response, “Oh, that’s what it is!” Swiftly followed by, “Then you are doing so well!” I sent them information about how autism affects communication and the ability to build relationships. I explained that I could not respond in the ways that they were expecting. 

Immediately things opened up. We realized that I could not read their non-verbal communication accurately and so could not find the appropriate responses. We also realized that they often could not read my body language accurately as well. For example, when they thought that I was showing worry or anger, I was concentrating. Almost at once we began to develop genuinely deep friendships which have stood the test of time. I’ve also developed strategies for showing that I’m listening. One of the most useful is the phrase “What I’m hearing is…”. I often use this phrase to check that I have understood what is being said. Often, I haven’t, but that’s fine—we can clear up any misunderstanding immediately. As a result, people have started to say that I am a good listener, and that is precious to me. 

Now I can truthfully say that I have many friends and some of these relationships are close, intimate friendships. We can talk about anything. It’s just wonderful! It’s taken so much time and effort from me and other people. This has happened because other people were prepared to put the time and effort in—because of their Buddhist beliefs and the ethos of the Triratna Order. I am now an Order member and sometimes I still can’t believe that this is possible. I have so much gratitude towards Buddhism and the Triratna approach to Buddhist teachings. They have changed my life for the better. 

♦

Adapted from Autism and Buddhist Practice: How Buddhism Can Help Autistic Adults Cultivate Wellbeing (Jessica Kingsley Pub, December 2022), edited by Chris Jarrell.

The post How Recognizing Her Autism Helped One Practitioner Form Lasting Friendships  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I walked a long and winding road before I found dharma friends. I’d always thought meditation was basically a solo affair. In my twenties, I got a mantra from a Transcendental Meditation class and meditated twice a day alone in my apartment. After a few years, I stopped, and then many years later I learned T’ai Chi Chih, a Qigong-infused moving meditation. Except when practicing with my teacher a couple times a month, and when I eventually became a teacher myself, I always did this practice of nineteen repetitive movements alone in my apartment. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the meaning of “dharma friends,” which in Sanskrit is kalyanamitra: “a spiritual friend” or “a virtuous friend.”

My first dharma friend might have been the bus driver on my sixty-mile, four-day-a-week commute into Manhattan and back. Usually, I was the only person on the bus for the first twenty miles or so. I became friendly with the bus driver, and one day he joked with me about the meditation practice I’d started on the bus. I wore large noise-canceling headphones, and put a big shawl around my shoulders, then put on sunglasses. This had the advantage of signaling to any other rider that it would be nice if they didn’t sit next to me, or if they did, they might also enjoy being quiet. The bus driver and I began to have conversations at the beginning of the trip, and after fifteen minutes or so, I knew I had twenty minutes left to meditate in peace, on this very bumpy ride. Sometimes we’d talk a bit longer, and then he would interrupt to admonish me and, smiling, remind me it was time to meditate. 

When I moved to the next town, still on the same bus line, and into a twenty-six-story apartment building that was affordable housing for seniors, I began to teach Tai Chi Chih, and, with another tenant, started a weekly meditation group that drew a handful of residents a week. There was no formal practice. We played ambient music in the background. There wasn’t much to say afterward, and people were busy moving onto other things. But these neighbors became dharma friends, too.

Then, I met Sister Sylvia, who came to both my class and meditation group and was in her late eighties. She was a part of a small group of Dominican nuns whose Order transferred them to our building for retirement. The two of us decided to read and study Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Living Buddha, Living Christ. She would bring a small Buddha figurine to accompany us while we took turns reading a paragraph or two out loud, which we would then discuss. She was certainly a spiritual dharma friend. Of course, when one lives in senior housing, people come and go. Jerry, one of my T’ai Chi Chih students in the building who was then 97, had to move to a nursing home a few miles away. So I started going there every Sunday to bring him the practice. After a while, two female residents, Marie and Jackie, joined us. Marie and Jackie were both blind. Jerry was fast losing his hearing. Still, we had great conversations at high volume, for a half hour or more after the practice. We often talked about longevity and mortality, and the past, hardly ever about sickness, or the future. They were dharma friends: virtuous, indeed. 

Then the pandemic hit, all the nursing homes were restricted, and I could no longer teach there or visit.

Within a month, I had to close my Manhattan office, where I worked as a clinical social worker, and I started working remotely. I still haven’t returned to Manhattan. I missed the city, and particularly a thirty-minute lunchtime Mass I had started attending at the Episcopal church near my office, where, in addition to workers on break, homeless people, residents of the rather posh neighborhood, and even tourists now and then used to attend. We all took communion together, which I found to be a daily reminder of our interdependency. I usually arrived early so that I could sit quietly in the small garden beside the church, and sit meditatively with my thoughts. Eyes wide open.

A friend, who was sensitive to my loss of the Mass, told me about the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and that since the pandemic, they now had meditation sessions on Zoom. Their midday sit became a wonderful parallel to my lunchtime Mass, and I’ve been practicing there ever since. About thirty to forty people from all over the world—Germany, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines, Turkey, to name a few—come to the midday sit. 

Gradually, I no longer looked at the mid-afternoon sit as a replacement for Mass, but felt, wholeheartedly, that I’d found myself on another part of that winding road, which has now led me to so many friends. 

Over time, it seems, it has become a sangha. In the beginning, I didn’t expect that I would make friends. I assumed, as usual, that meditating would be singular. I even suspected that with Zoom, it would be even more detached. Yet as people begin collecting in my living room via those little square videos, I’ve discovered that there is more connection available than I ever thought possible on a computer screen.

After thirty minutes of sitting, there are optional breakout rooms. A prompt from a Buddhist text is given and three to four people in each room get seven minutes to talk among themselves. It’s also made clear that one can talk about anything else, or even simply stay silent. Each day the breakout rooms fill up with a different group of people. As the weeks went on I began to enjoy the anticipatory silence, as I waited for someone to be the first to jump in. By the way, it’s never me. 

Without requiring it, everyone is encouraged to keep their videos on. I love seeing people’s rooms in their apartments and houses, and even occasionally a backyard. Sometimes a cat’s tail will appear, undulating across the screen, or a dog barks “hello.” Each day there is a different configuration of dharma friends appearing on the screen, and then into the breakout room. 

Nowadays, I’m often reminded of the Three Jewels—the Buddha, dharma and sangha—and think of how all three seem to be present when my dharma friends come to sit zazen, talk for seven minutes on my screen, and most of all, bring friendship to what many of us are now affectionately calling our “Zoomdo.”

I continue to be amazed at how, wandering about for decades, I began, nonetheless, to find friends who, one way or the other, keep me on this winding path. Friends walking with me, sometimes silently, even invisibly, other times right there on my computer screen, each afternoon, offering words of encouragement, and validation of all the anxieties and questions that arise. It makes me want to strive to be a good dharma friend, too.

The post My Dharma Friends appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Among the many narratives in the Karmashataka Sutra, a collection of teaching stories, there is a tale of the Buddha appearing as a friend to a young boy who is desperately in need of friendship. The text describes the child, born to wealthy householders, as “ugly in eighteen different ways” and as having suffered intense discrimination on account of his unattractive appearance.

When his parents saw him they were wracked with suffering. “Though a son has finally been born to us,” they thought, “what good is he, with such singular flaws? He’d be better off dead— when night falls, we’ll toss him out and feed him to the dogs.”

The boy’s mother selfishly feared the potential repercussions of their actions—not the painful death of their innocent newborn but the karmic results for her husband and herself. She proposed that instead they raise the baby somewhere outside the city. “Then when he’s grown,” she suggested, “we’ll throw him out of the house to seek his pitiful livelihood.” And this is what they did. They called him Virupa, which means “ugly,” and as soon as he reached adolescence, they banished him.

Virupa had no means of providing for himself. He was forced to spend his days begging for food. Lugging a walking stick and pot behind him, he grew emaciated from neglect. Strangers mistook him for a ghost, and, imagining he would attack them, they beat him, pelted him with dirt, and chased him away. Despairing for his own safety, Virupa hid deep in the forest. He snuck out only at night, subsisting on food that had fallen to the ground from trees in nearby gardens.

The Buddha, in his infinite wisdom, recognized that the key to alleviating Virupa’s suffering lay not only in his receiving food and water but also in his being known. Up until that moment, Virupa had only experienced stigmatization, abuse, misunderstanding, and shame.

Knowing the depth of Virupa’s poverty, the Buddha brought food and drink. But despite the Buddha’s gentle intentions, Virupa was startled by his approach. He had endured too much abuse to believe that the Buddha was anything but another person coming to hurt him. Flooded with helplessness, he started to run. The story tells us that a literal miracle was needed to change Virupa’s perception. To reassure Virupa, the Buddha had emanated into a form even more off-putting than Virupa’s. In this way, the Buddha could slip undetected past his psychological defenses and invite a breakthrough:

The Blessed One performed a miracle that prevented young Virupa from fleeing and caused him to wish to see the Blessed One.“I would like to know who that is,” Virupa thought, and he came walking back. As soon as young Virupa saw the emanation’s extraordinarily ugly features he began to wonder, “Who could this be?” So he went to where the Buddha’s emanation stood. The Buddha’s emanation saw young Virupa and made as if to run away.

Virupa had never seen anything like this. He had not met another person who shared the fear that had lived inside him for so long.

In the teachings on karma, the Buddha is careful never to shame a person for their circumstances. The purpose is not to dwell upon the past but to point the way forward. Virupa saw himself in the Buddha, who had assumed a form similar to his own. No longer isolated, he was able to receive what Buddha said and apply it to his own life without shame.

“Because of my unattractive features my parents threw me out of the house. As I went wherever I could for alms, I was chased away. . . In terror of being beaten by people, I went into the thick of the forest, and there I have stayed—that is, until you came along.” [author’s emphasis]

There are interactions that have unique and special power because they occur between friends. Admissions of shame, confessions of jealousy, and disclosures of trauma, when received with tenderness by a loving friend, can become the basis for change. They flower into empathy, compassion, and insight, respectively. A close friend reminds us that we are more than our mistakes, conflicts, and the things that have been done to us. We are also our freedom, our wisdom, and the full range of our lived experience.

We can be Virupa and receive the things we need from friends. But we can also be the Buddha and use the miracle of friendship to point the way to healing. We can engage our friends in trust, reflect with them about the challenges they’re facing, and nurture them with love and compassion. When two people reach out in mutual vulnerability, love’s power shines in the simplest gestures.

“Let’s be friends and make our way together,” Virupa said. “Let’s do that,” the Buddha said, and he sat down and divided his food with Virupa.

How can we be a good dharma friend to others?

Be open and vulnerable. When you share, you signal to others that you’re open to receiving. Authentic connection is a two-way street.

Know when to wait and listen. Especially when we’re excited about the buddhadharma, the urge can arise to fill a friend’s head with quotes from last week’s teaching. Take a beat; give them space to speak.

Understand that connection can be elusive. Genuine connection can be like a rainbow—to go charging at it, or even to grasp at it, can make it dissolve. Cheerful patience is essential.

Have fun together. There can be a tendency to want to always be “doing the work,” but enjoyment and appreciation of one another are key. Part of being a good attachment figure is being fun.

Let yourselves be friends. It’s OK not to have immediate answers. Let go of the urge to edify or instruct, and know that friendship itself is medicine.

The post Making Our Way Together appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Saddled with backpacks, duffle bags, and pillows, the teens shuffle up to the table one by one to register for their weeklong meditation retreat. Their eyes flicker with hope and fear as they alternately scan their peers and stare at the floor, shifting their weight from side to side. It is hard to watch their discomfort, but even harder not to. There’s something beautiful about the sincerity of their wish to connect with each other and something heartbreaking about their transparent efforts to conceal that wish.

At some point in the next few hours of icebreakers and name games and sharing of favorite bands and books, I see the scales begin to tip. The desire to know one another and be known suddenly outweighs the desire to hide or disappear, and the moment that happens gestures of generosity arise. Eyes become steady with interest; questions are asked and answered with kind curiosity; tight, nervous smiles relax and grow broad; hands are extended to help or to high five. Someone makes the first move to connect, and the other reciprocates. By the time tacos are on the table for dinner, groups of friends are forming, with even the cool kids beginning to show signs of warmth.

I will be one of their dharma teachers this week for Inward Bound. They don’t know it, but they are already mine.

Making friends is a process fraught with vulnerability, somehow especially so in Buddhist communities. Maybe it’s because so many of us come to dharma centers a little bit broken open and raw from whatever life circumstance finally drove us their, admitting—yes, dammit—suffering exists and we want to be free. We arrive at the door with our little hearts in our hands, longing for care and companionship, only we’ve picked up the notion somewhere along the way that we must conceal this longing at all costs or risk rejection or humiliation.

I can’t tell you how many years I hung out in dharma communities desperately wanting to connect with kindred spirits and all the while pretending I couldn’t care less. I would usually show up just barely on time to classes and bolt out the door as soon as they finished so that I wouldn’t have to actually talk to anyone.

It was several years since I had begun practicing meditation and attending courses regularly when I came across the Buddha’s teaching on admirable friendship, which he identifies as “the whole of holy life.” I had managed to write off the possibility of relating with other members of my sangha as optional, an extra credit kind of activity. But these teachings were clear: relational practice inspires and supports our collective steps along the eightfold path to liberation. I knew that I needed that kind of support in order to continue to grow spiritually. When I dropped below my fears of becoming vulnerable to others, I also became aware that I not only needed these relationships, I also wanted them.

My solitary dharma path had become lonely enough that I was willing to take a risk. And so I started putting some energy into what I’ve come to think of as the spiritual friendship practice of making the first move, which is really just a variation on the practice of generosity.

“Making the first move” most commonly refers to an action meant to initiate a romantic connection. Motivated by attraction, and perhaps also fueled by the cultural belief that romantic relationships can provide all the love that we possibly need, we become willing to take the risk of asking for a date or moving in for a kiss.

When it comes to making new friends, however, platonic attraction and shared interests often don’t seem enough to move us to commit the gestures of kindness that might initiate a friendly bond, at least not among grown-ups.

I’m not sure why it’s more socially acceptable to admit a longing for a romantic partner who shares our spiritual practice than the wish for a best friend who does, or why we believe that the former will ultimately be more satisfying than the latter. But I do know this: it is through the day-to-day, moment-to-moment interactions in my spiritual friendships that I have learned to give and receive unconditional love in a way I could only dream of experiencing in a romantic or sexual relationship. These relationships are supportive—and they are annoying. We check in, we call out, we mess up, we make it right, and we come into vivid contact with the truths of suffering, change, and interconnectedness in our lived experiences of each other.

As a gesture that manifests our fundamental non-separateness, making the first move in friendship is a practice of generosity. When we ask someone in the sangha how they’re feeling on a particular day, or when we answer that question honestly, we demonstrate our understanding that all human beings sometimes feel good and sometimes bad, just like us, and we express our dedication to caring. When we smile and welcome the newbie or allow ourselves to be welcomed, we act out of our recognition that belonging is a common human need, one that is not an obstacle to, but in service of, waking up.

Observing the teens arriving on that first day of retreat, I was reminded of how I met the woman who is now my oldest friend. It was our first day of high school, and I was new in the school district and jumpy as a small bird, not knowing a soul. In the moments before our Spanish class started, Emily leaned over and asked if I would like her to draw a heart on my hand. I said yes, and she drew a tiny red heart near my right wrist with a marker, and we exchanged names. It was as simple as that.

There is far more love available to us in any given moment than we might be aware. And there is much, much more love in our hearts than we as adults have been conditioned to believe is appropriate to express. It would probably serve us all to get more deeply in touch with our inner teenager—hopeful, awkward, excited enough about the possibility of connecting with a kindred spirit that we’re willing to open up our hearts and make the first move.

♦

For more spiritual friendship, tune in to Kate Johnson’s Tricycle Retreat, “Admirable Friendship,” available to watch at any time. 

The post Making the First Move appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In the popular imagination the Buddhist monastic is solitary. Hours spent studying, chanting, and meditating leave scant time for that most trying yet rewarding of human pursuits: friendship. Or so the notion goes. 

In our far-ranging conversation, the nuns Venerable Thubten Chodron and Ayya Tathaaloka roundly dispel this prevailing conception. Restoring spiritual friendship (in Pali, kalyanamittata) to its rightful place as a central feature of both lay and monastic practice, they encourage aspirants to seek out deep relationships as a crucial site of transformation. 

Ven. Thubten Chodron is an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun who was fully ordained as a bhikshuni (in Pali, bhikkhuni) in 1986. She has since written numerous books and founded Sravasti Abbey, a monastic community in Washington State. Ayya Tathaaloka, also American-born, received full ordination as a Theravada bhikkhuni in 1997. She too founded a monastic community, Dhammadharini, which has an affiliated hermitage in Northern California called Aranya Bodhi. Both women have played instrumental roles in the revival of full ordination for women in their respective traditions. 

—Sarah Conover 

What did the Buddha say about spiritual friendship?

Ven. Thubten Chodron: Knowing that we need support for our practice, the Buddha organized the sangha as a group of spiritual friends. It’s very difficult to sustain the discipline necessary for both keeping up the precepts and regular meditation. In ordinary life we usually think of friends as people with whom we have fun, but friendship in Buddhism, especially in monastic life, is different because it is free of attachment. Its aim is to foster an attitude of long-term well-being between those involved.  

People often quote the Buddha as saying, “Friendship is not half of the holy life, but all of it” (Samyutta Nikaya, 45.2). When looked at in context, however, the Buddha’s statement refers to him, the Enlightened One, as the true spiritual friend because he guides us on the path to liberation.

Ayya Tathaaloka: This is the way the Buddha conceives of himself in relation to everyone else: that is, as the kalyanamitta, as the spiritual friend most excellent. In the early Pali texts, the Buddha repeatedly addresses each person he speaks to as a “friend.” There are a few exceptions, but really, he addresses everyone in a very honorable way, from the highest station in life to the lowest, whether monastic or lay, as a friend. 

The Buddha had a tremendous spiritual friendship with the being who became his wife in his final life, and who later became one of the bhikkhuni arhats, Yasodhara Rahulamata. There is also a recurring thread of the Seven Sisters—seven of the Buddha’s foremost women disciples whose life stories of spiritual companionship span eons.

AT: It was at Shasta Abbey in 1996. That is my first memory. Ven. Chodron so encouraged me at that time! I was straight out of South Korea and had just lost my community and my venerable bhikkhuni mentor. I had been on track for full ordination in South Korea, but got expatriated for accidentally breaking visa law, and so returned to the United States. I didn’t know if I could survive this upheaval until I came to the Western Buddhist Monastic Conference and found spiritual friends who were making their way. 

I remember meeting Ven. Chodron in the entrance to the hall where the Abbey’s monastic community gathered for their chanting. The great snow mountain, Mt. Shasta, stood just outside the window. I remember bowing with her and knocking heads! She told me that knocking heads when bowing was part of the Tibetan tradition. Yes, I was bumped right on the head with spiritual friendship.

I had been in one of the great Buddhist monastic seminaries in South Korea, and Ven. Chodron told me there should be things like that in the United States. She asked if I intended to be part of developing such seminaries. There I was, a novice who had just been thrown out of her country of training—who knew if I’d even get to ordain? All of a sudden she’s asking if I plan to start a seminary!

TC: By then, I had been living on my own in the West for sometime, so I completely understood what Ayya was going through. It’s not only the experience of being in the West while your community and teacher are in Asia, but of adjusting to the way people in the West view Buddhist monastics. I knew that monastics needed to support each other and be there for each other.

How do you foster spiritual friendship in the monastic sangha?

TC: Community life does not just entail living with other people, but being a community. Living in the same place is very different from being a community. When you are in a community, your awareness goes out to the other people you live with—you see who needs encouragement, who needs guidance, and who needs a laugh. 

When you’re just living among other people, your experience is much more about me and my practice, and so a certain kind of self-centeredness is present. I’m here because it’s good for my practice. And as soon as it’s not good for my practice, I leave. Why do we think a situation isn’t good for our practice? Often it’s because our buttons are getting pushed. Our ego can’t get its way, so we’re unhappy. 

When you live in a community, you get to know people very well. You get to know each other’s moods and habitual behaviors. This requires you to open your heart and expand your understanding and acceptance. You need to become much more open-minded, more caring.

And how do you facilitate this?

TC: You have to model it.

AT: You have to live it.

TC: In Asia, communities are already established, so when a few new people join they pick up on what to do. They feel it. It transforms them. Everyone has the same precepts, cultivates the same views, and pursues the same goals. We’re not just doing our own trip. In some ways I think this is hard for Westerners, because we’re so individualistic.

AT: We may actually think we are doing our own trip!

How do you facilitate kalyanamittata in lay practitioners?

TC: Discussion groups in which people openly share their reflections on a particular dharma topic are very good for creating community. For example, we’ll select a certain idea, like: “What is the meaning of prayer in Buddhism?” We’ll meditate together on three or four questions related to that topic, so that people can reflect on them in private. Then we’ll share our reflections on these questions. Each person has to speak, and there’s no dialogue until everybody has shared his or her reflections.

This is a good way to teach people how to talk about dharma in a personal way. Otherwise people go to a dharma center, meditate or listen to a dharma talk together, maybe have some refreshments afterwards, and then go home. When they chat, it’s about the movies they saw; it’s not about dharma topics or how their practice is going. These discussion groups create wonderful spiritual friendships because they enable people to talk about what the dharma means in their lives.

How do you prevent lay folks from co-opting the dharma, turning it into something that’s about I, me, and mine?

AT: When you have a deep, deep friendship with someone, you don’t only care, “Is this good for me?” You care for them naturally. I believe it’s completely natural to have such love, compassion, and kindness. It’s right there from the get-go in our relationship, for instance, with our parents. It’s almost always there. And if it’s not there, we feel like there is something wrong.

This feeling transcends lay and monastic communities. It is vital to developing the deep heart of lovingkindness in the context of dedication to dharma. So I am trying to tap into what we have naturally in us that can emerge and guide us.

Non-spiritual friendships can often be on tenuous footing. It seems like everyone is testing: “Can I trust you?” Well, what are we trusting? What is the deep foundation for friendship?

AT: It’s such an important insight that you are mentioning: that is, this seeing and knowing of the tenuous conditions that we so often try to secure. This is the source of stress, of dukkha.

When you see that and then ask, “What else? What else?” that’s where the big opening can come. You start to see what remains when this vast spaciousness opens up. It doesn’t have any flying knives in it; it doesn’t have any poisons in it. Such fears spring from shifting conditions, those fabrications that you’ve been trying to grasp and hold together. The remaining emptiness—so replete and lovely—is safe. It is the ground of spiritual friendship.

TC: That’s ego stuff. In the description you gave of testing the waters, asking, “Who can I trust, how far can I trust?” there is definitely a sense of “I” that needs to be protected. We have a notion of who we are and how we should be treated, so we wonder, “Are they going to treat me the way I think I should be treated?”

TC: Yes! It doesn’t have so much to do with them but with ourselves, because we feel so strongly that there’s a me that has to be defended. As soon as we feel that, vulnerability comes. We seek praise and approval and avoid blame and criticism. Those are two of Buddhism’s eight worldly concerns. But I can’t control what people think of me!

AT: For most people, the avoidance of vulnerability is an attempt to ensure safety, yet it ends up putting them at greater risk. Even if they think they’re entirely secure, something happens to remind them that they’re living in danger no matter what.

Monastic life is based on vulnerability. Our food—and every other material necessity—depends upon the kindness of others. Facing vulnerability in such a direct way, we begin to enter it and know it. The dynamics around it start to transform. It begins to feel safe.

TC: Yes. We’re practicing the dharma together, supporting each other in the process, and rejoicing in each other’s successes. In dharma friendship, we leave behind competition and jealousy.

TC: Exactly. We all want to cultivate the same internal qualities. We don’t need to compete, because that competition brings qualities that are the exact opposite of those we want to develop. It takes a lot of courage because although we want to cultivate those wholesome qualities, there is a lot of resistance in us. We have to confront that part of ourselves that wants security, wants to look good in front of other people, and wants to be the best.

TC: I try not to engage in chitchat, but I also realize that there are certain situations that require it. It is the way that we first connect with people. But my time is my most precious possession, so I am very careful how I use it.

AT: Health has been a great teacher in this regard, because my energy is limited. I can hear the clock ticking. I’ve stopped wanting to talk about unimportant things because it just fritters away my precious life energy, and I know what I’d like to use that for.

On the other hand, we’re human beings. And there’s a level where this dharma is just human dharma—it doesn’t have any special language. It’s just about our hearts—whether they’re suffering or not, and how they can bind or how they can open. There’s this very basic, fundamental level of human dharma that doesn’t need any official language. If we can connect there, then good. If not, then I trust we will in time.

For more on the concept of spiritual friendship, watch Kate Johnson’s Tricycle Retreat “Admirable Friendship,” with new installments added every Monday this month, available to watch at any time. 

The post The Whole of the Spiritual Life appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddha declared spiritual friendship to be the whole of holy life. For many practitioners in the 21st century, however, friendship is relegated to the margins of experience, taking a backseat to work as well as romantic and familial relationships. Join dharma teacher Kate Johnson for an exploration, both on and off the cushion, of the practice of friendship as central in our collective journey toward freedom and wholeness. She will approach friendship not as something fixed, but as a process in which we restore intimacy, loyalty, and generosity to our relationships with all beings, including ourselves.

The post Admirable Friendship appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.