Reflections on Dhamma

Ajahn Metta ~

“Spiritual Friendship”

~ part of a reflection given at Coastside Vipassana, California
May 19th 2010

Spiritual friendship is the ground, the foundation of the path. Even though each of us lives and practices the Dhamma in a different way, we can support and encourage each other to continue and grow in our practice. What makes spiritual friendship so different from other friendships we have in our lives? I think what connects us is the love of honesty, of truth, the appreciation of being able to share our experiences and feeling understood in this by our spiritual friends. It's like entering a vehicle which transports us with an accelerated speed, to a place where we wish to go.

Having the opportunity to meet people who are further on the path than you yourself is a real blessing. Their wisdom, insights and understanding of the path goes far beyond our own and we do benefit from this.
My personal experience of having a spiritual teacher has been very beneficial and I feel a lot of gratitude for having had this support.
Having the path pointed out, shown where I was about to turn into a direction that was not helpful, not the right thing to do ... gave me the opportunity to reflect and understand what I needed to do. It has helped me a lot and accelerated the movement on to deeper levels of understanding.

As long as we have not come to a point to where we have deep insight and deep realisations, we all benefit from people who are further on the path. If you want to develop your practice, find somebody who you can look up to, who you can trust, who you can relate to and who you can ask your questions to. The quality of a good teacher is that he or she sees where you are and what kind of support is needed right now. A good teacher has always your well-being in mind.

Another level of spiritual friendship is coming together with people who are on the path like us. Coming together, we practise and share our experiences, our values, our love for the Dhamma and the joy to practise it ... coming together and sharing what is important, of value in our lives, what connects us with the truth. Both levels of spiritual friendship bring us in connection with the unknowing, help us to open up to the Unknown.
This maybe sounds like a contradiction, as you might think that by developing the path, we do experience more knowing ... and, yes, in terms of knowledge, study and contemplation, we do so.

But I am pointing here at moving into the Unknown ... turning to the acknowledgement of, 'I am not in control of this life and never will be'....
The deeper wisdom—the deeper insight into the path—will lead us inevitably to places where we see that we are not in control ... and this can be scary. This insight shows us that we don't know what comes next and that in fact it has been always like this. We just have believed that we did know and it was a safe delusion to do this, for each of us. With our choices in life we do direct our path and we influence our lives; but in no way do we know what or when the next turn will be, what it will bring up and where we are going to be in a few years time ... or even tomorrow.

Can we make friends with the Unknown with the potential that it holds? It is fascinating to really open up to this. I see it as the entrance to a deeper level, a deeper understanding of the spiritual path. It is like opening a door of awareness, a door which you have never opened before.

When I am able to share this experience with my spiritual friends, it encourages me to turn into this direction. To share, yes, this is scary and yet I know, sooner or later this is what I have to do; and we have the choice to see, when we are ready for this step ... sometimes.
This way of sharing with our spiritual friends will help us to continue and support us with our explorations.