A reflection on the Upaddha Sutta (Half of the Holy Life) about the importance of good friends, companions, and comrades on the Eightfold Noble Path. Good friends encourage and share in developing seclusion of mind, dispassion towards the sense pleasures of the world, and, ultimately, the cessation of suffering that leads to a lasting freedom and peace.
All of us can train our minds. When we are driven by lack of wisdom, ill-will, greed or confusion, we live in a wilderness of the mind. In spiritual community, we hold together to blaze a trail through that wilderness, establishing trust and confidence, and persevering. We are guided by wisdom and mindfulness to purify ourselves; and we are willing to make sacrifices – even to suffer – for the treasures of the Path.
If we can leave our fixed ideas behind, and return to the openness of our direct experience, we gain a new kind of knowledge, independent of our thinking mind that is immediate, fresh and deepens our trust in the natural unfolding.
