Given the emphasis on solitary meditation in contemporary dharma culture, it's surprising when we read in the Upaddha Sutta that, "spiritual friendship is the whole of the holy life". Let's explore what the Buddha could have meant by that.

Throughout this course, you'll find the text of each video beneath the talk. You don't need to read these, but they may pull out key ideas and exercises for reference. These materials will be collected for download in the unit's workbook.

The Whole of the Holy Life

A beautiful path

“Having good friends is the whole of the holy life.”

—The Upaddha Sutta

In this text, the Buddha lays out this incredible statement that good friendship (kalayana-mitta in Pali) is the whole of the holy life. Kalayana-mitta, good friend, is sometimes translated as admirable, beneficial, also spiritual. It's a different dimension of friendship. But kalayana actually means beautiful. 

"Beautiful" implies a sense of warmth and inspiration, but also something that moves us, inspires, encourages, in some sense moves us along on a dharma path. 

We're going to be using this phrase, dhamma friendship, throughout our work together to really point to—not only the heart elements of mitta, of friend (from which actually metta, the quality of friendship, is derived); and kalayana: beautiful, that which moves us on our path in the dhamma towards the wholesome, towards the good, towards the end of suffering. So there's a momentum.

This friendship is a jewel, a precious jewel on the path, lighting the way and also opening us to moving along, progressing, unfolding the dhamma in our lives together. Just like this beautiful relationship between Ananda and the Buddha, which endured more than 20 years of close companionship. Perhaps, you don't know, but Ananda listened to every text, every encounter the Buddha had and memorized it. And his recording has given us the opportunity to remember and directly engage these texts today. So it was their friendship, actually, which is responsible for our being here today and being able to engage directly with the texts. 

There are many relationships within the suttas (early texts). Moggallana and Sariputta, for example, who were friends from childhood, and who made a commitment to each other that their own spiritual path would be as important as each other's, and a commitment to the development and awakening of each other. They encountered the Buddha together. They both were awakened and worked together tirelessly with the Buddha over years of teaching into old age. So their friendship, the whole of the holy life, expanded from the beginning. It was good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.

You are not alone in the dharma

Even though friendship is woven into the suttas, somehow it doesn't get highlighted so much. We go to maybe the pith teachings and learn from them, we're inspired by them, but the whole context is a context of relationships. 

The Buddha taught in a dialogic way. He was very attuned and sensitive relationally, so he could address and adjust his talks to the minds, the hearts, of the people he was speaking to. So many beautiful examples of that. Each is a moment of, "Oh, that's what spiritual friendship looks like".

But in our culture, dharma friendship seems kind of undeveloped. To the extent that we think of Buddhism as primarily meditation, friendship is not developed as well. But also, in our culture generally, this quality of vulnerable or intimate relatedness is not always available to us as a more defended way. 

But here we're being invited to the whole of the holy life, where when you pause, you find this moment of friendship could be right here. It's not distant. Even my speaking and your listening: this is a dharma moment. This is dharma right here. It's living. 

So we have this notion that we all know about of sangha, of dharma community, holy community, sacred community, beautiful community, the community oriented towards kindness and compassion and towards that deep wisdom that frees the heart. And we know that in the triple gem, we honor the Buddha, we honor the dharma, we honor the sangha. The sangha is kind of the stepchild of the triple gem! It doesn't get the attention, the love, the skill, but also the understanding. 

So as we explore spiritual friendship, it is a beautiful, enriching contribution to our sense of what sangha is, of what dharma community can be. When we talk about our relatedness, we're talking about the relatedness that's built into our brains, our hormone systems. 

Our entire body evolved relationally. Our psychology is deeply relational. So wouldn't it make sense that friendship would be so powerful? That would be important, a critical part, according to the Buddha anyway, of this process of awakening, which is sometimes not easy, right? 

In this engagement with the whole of our lives in the dharma we aspire in some way to this beauty: to invoke it, invite it into our lives. When we have spiritual friends, that's about a hundred times easier. I mean, at this point, I can't even imagine trying to do this alone. 

So my heart really is tender for the times that I have felt—or for those of you who might be feeling—alone in the dharma. We're inviting you into this path of awakening where spiritual friendship is understood as taught, as crucial, as central, and that we can perhaps be inspired to appreciate and develop, to cultivate such friendships.