“I believe that it is possible to be friends with any other human being…” In this talk, Maitreyi explores the unique emphasis of friendship with quotes from Sangharakshita. Excerpted from the talk A Celebration of Friendship given at Glasgow Buddhist Centre, 2020. ***
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[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. So yes, and then our teacher, Ergin Sangharachita, says, "If you take friendship seriously, you bring in sooner or later the whole of the Dharma." So that quotation jumped out at me from an exhibition about the history of tree retina in the library at Adhistana. So in Tree Ratna, we swim in the Sangha. It's the element in which we practice. It's easy to take it for granted that the Tree Ratna Order and community has a particular and unique emphasis on the importance of friendship of Sangha without realizing how truly radical it is. So this is Bante many years ago in Bombay. I believe that humanity is basically one. I believe that it is possible for any human being to communicate with any other human being, to feel for any other human being, to be friends with any other human being. This is what I truly and deeply believe. This belief is part of my own experience. It's part of my own life. It's part of me. I cannot live without this belief and I would rather die than give it up. To me, to live means to practice this belief. But what does Bante mean about taking friendships seriously? It's not about being solemn, but about making it perhaps more and more conscious in our lives and practice. You could say it was celebrating friendship simply by coming together in this way, and we're celebrating it also by making more conscious how it enables us to practice more fully and deeply and how friendship can be a way of life. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny and thank you.
