“Friendship in Buddhism means that you have a guidance.”

Question:  Lord Buddha commented that “admirable friendship is actually the whole of the holy life”. However Ajahn’s teaching is that there is no form of friendship and ideally you have to be alone and you want to concentrate all your time & efforts in developing mindfulness. What is the context of Ajahn’s teaching?

Than Ajahn:  Friendship in Buddhist practice doesn’t mean that you hang out with somebody. Friendship in Buddhism means that you have a guidance, someone to guide you in your practice, that’s the best friendship like to have a Buddha as your friend, or to have your teacher as your friend but you don’t hang around with Buddha all the time, or hang around with your teacher all the time. You hang around with him when you need their guidance.

When you need their guidance then you go to your teacher or to the Lord Buddha. Once you have the guidance then you have to go and live alone to develop that knowledge that are given from your teacher. So the friendship in Buddhist practice is not a friendship in a worldly way, people cannot compare them likewise. In the world when you have a friend, you hang around with them, you do things with them all the time, you eat and sleep with them, this is not the kind of friendship we talk about in Buddhism.

The kind of friendship in Buddhism, kalyanamitta, means to have a good person as your friend, someone who is wiser and smarter than you, to help you, to teach you to practise and to become enlighten. It doesn’t mean that you have to live with your teacher all the time. You only come close to your teacher when he needs to give you the instructions. Once he gave you the instruction then he will instruct you to go and live alone in the forest to develop what he taught you.

Question:  How about peers?

Than Ajahn:  You have to understand that it is different kind of friendship. The friendship in Buddhism that we talk about is to have someone to guide you but not someone who stick with you and go everywhere together, because in order to be enlightened you have to be alone. Look at Venerable Ananda, he lives with the Buddha for over 20 years and he never became enlightened but after the Buddha dies, three months later he became enlightened, that’s because he was alone, so that’s the kind of friendship in Buddhism.

Question:  It is not good to be alone all the time, that’s why monks have to go for pindapatt. Is this understanding correct?

Than Ajahn:  We have time to do things together and we have time to do things alone. When you have to do things together like eating then we have to come and do it together. When we have to meditate then we have to be alone.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto