True Friends

You have a whole hour to work on this skill of staying with the breath. Approach it like a game: See how long you can stay with the breath. If you fall off, just get back on. Fall off again, get back on again. See if you can tell when you’re about to fall off and figure out how not to.

Start with a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing in the body, because that’s what we’re focusing on: the rise and fall of the abdomen, the rise and fall of the chest, anyplace in the body where you can tell that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. There’ll be a feeling of energy rising and falling, coming in, going out. Try to keep your attention there. And don’t be surprised if it falls off, because the mind has a habit of wandering. We’re trying to teach it a new habit, and it’s going to take time.

So have some patience, but also be persistent. Just keep coming back, coming back, coming back. This is a skill that you’re going to need: getting some control over your mind, some control over your thoughts. It’s so easy for your thoughts to run wild, and you can make yourself miserable.

Years back we had a meditation session. We were sitting outside under the trees, and one woman had brought a friend who had never meditated before. It was a beautiful day: not too hot, not too cold, a nice breeze. It was a very pleasant meditation session as far as I was concerned. But the friend opened her eyes at the end and said, “I’ve never suffered so much in my life.” That was because she didn’t pay attention. You can breathe in ways that are really comfortable. You can create a sense of well-being throughout the body.

So you want to experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good right now: long, short; fast, slow; heavy, light. Or you can try in long and out short, or in short and out long, deep or shallow. Find a rhythm of breathing that feels good right now, refreshing to the body: energizing if you’re feeling tired, calming if you’re feeling tense. There’s more to the breath than just in and out, in and out. It’s the quality of the energy of your life. So give it some attention. And realize that you have some control over it, so learn how to use that control well.

Here it is: free pleasure, if you know how to breathe. We all think, “We all know how to breathe. Everybody’s breathing all the time.” But you can breathe well or you can breathe poorly. Most people don’t pay much attention to it, so the breath just goes in and out any old which way. But here’s your chance to breathe in a way that really feels good for the body, really feels good for the mind.

So for the time being, any voices that suggest that you want to go and think about something else, regard them as not your friends. Regard the breath as your friend. As with any friendship, it takes time for you to get to know it and for it to trust you. Subconsciously we’ve been squeezing our breath energy for a long time. So it’s almost as if your breath doesn’t trust you. You need to show that you mean it well: Pay careful attention to it and give it some space, give it some time. This is one of the best friends you can find inside.

As I said, it’s free pleasure. You can create a sense of well-being anywhere you go, in any situation, simply by the way you breathe. So it’s a good friend to have. As for the other voices in your mind that would suggest you go away, regard them not as your thoughts, just as committee members in your mind. We’ve picked up all kinds of voices inside our heads. Some from people we know—members of our family, teachers—others from the internet and other media, people we don’t know at all. You meet somebody online, you don’t really know them, whether they mean you well or don’t mean you well. You have to learn how to recognize the kind of people outside that you can trust—and the same principle goes for your voices inside your mind.

The Buddha says there are four characteristics of a good friend, a truly good friend. One is conviction—the belief that what you do, what kind of intentions you act on, really are important. If you act on skillful intentions, it’s going to lead to pleasure. If you act on unskillful intentions, it’s going to lead to suffering. It may take a long time for the results to come. You see a lot of people acting on bad intentions and getting rewarded, but those rewards last only a short time. Then there are long-term consequences that are not so good.

So you want to make friends with those who believe that their actions should be done with care and with good intentions, so that you can pick up their habits—like the voices inside your mind that say, “Act carefully, think carefully about what you’re going to do, what you expect the results to be. If you can expect any harm, don’t do it. If you don’t expect any harm, either to yourself or the other person, go ahead and do it. But even then, watch for the actual results. If it turns out you are causing harm, stop. If you’re not, go ahead and continue. Then when the action is done, look at the long-term consequences. If you see that you actually did cause harm, even though you meant well, there’s a difference between good intentions and skillful intentions. You want to work for skill. So take that as a lesson and you resolve not to repeat that mistake.”

That’s what it means to have conviction, that you really do pay careful attention to what you want to do and you’re trying to do it well—in other words, in a way that doesn’t harm anybody.

The second quality is virtue: Look for people who actually act in ways that don’t cause harm, and who warn you about how you can cause harm by killing, stealing, having illicit sex, lying, taking intoxicants. It may sound boring. The precepts are not necessarily entertaining. But they do protect you. And it’s good to have that kind of protection. It’s good to have that attitude to protect you.

The third quality is generosity: Look for people who are happy to share what they have, not only in terms of material things, but also their knowledge, their energy when they want to help you, being generous with their forgiveness. You learn good qualities from people like this. You learn that there really is a lot of happiness that comes when you learn how to share, when you learn how to give.

Think back to when you were small, when you first gave something away, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. It felt really good. You realized that you had some goodness in you, and you also had the attitude that you were wealthy enough to share. Those kinds of actions give you a sense of self-esteem. That self-esteem is worth a lot more than the object you gave away. That act of giving also taught you the lesson that you have freedom of choice. You could have chosen to keep the object, but you didn’t. So respect that freedom. Use it well.

That’s what the fourth quality is all about, discernment. The Buddha said that discernment begins with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” He wants you to think about the long-term consequences of your actions, and not just go for what’s pleasant right away. And the answer to that question—“What will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?”—is being generous, being virtuous, and meditating to train your mind.

The next step in discernment is to notice that there are some things that you like to do that’ll cause long-term harm, and things you don’t like to do that’ll give long-term happiness. This is where the wisdom gets tested: in learning how to talk yourself out of doing the things that you like to do that’ll be harmful, and how to make yourself want to do the things that you may not particularly care to do yet, but will lead to long-term happiness. This is the attitude of an adult. You don’t just go for what you like or don’t like. You think about the long term.

This connects, of course, with all the other qualities of a good friend: the conviction, the virtue, the generosity. We live in a world where our actions have consequences, and yet the world wants us to forget that. They want us to buy their things or join their group for whatever purposes they may have, we don’t know. The world does have this tendency to just go for the quick fix, short-term gains. You can’t let yourself be influenced by those kinds of thinking. You’ve got to learn how to have your own independent sense of what’s right and wrong, and what really will be for your benefit.

We have lots of people telling you how to be happy. The most reliable person is the Buddha. His teachings have worked for a long, long time. It’s not the case that they’re out of date because they’re old. They’re always up-to-date because he saw the basic structure of the human mind, how the human mind acts, and what actually happens as a result. Using that knowledge, he was able to gain freedom from all suffering. Then he taught for 45 years: never asked for any money, never asked for any pay for his teachings. He taught for free. And the people who received his teachings all said they benefited greatly. This has been true for thousands of years now.

So at the very least, give him a try. There are a lot of people from the past and a lot of people in the present who say you’ll be glad you did. And when you learn how to recognize your true friends inside, it also protects you from false friends outside.

Like that chant we had just now, about the people who make friends only to cheat them. Those are the ones who don’t really believe in the importance of good intentions. The people who are good only in word: They don’t have any virtue. There’s no truth to them. The ones who flatter and cajole—in other words, they talk about what a nice person you are, what a good person you are, how much they like you, how attractive you are, whatever: They want something out of you. It’s the opposite of a generous person. As for those who invite you to engage in what’s called “ruinous fun,” the kind of fun that would lead to bad consequences down the line, there’s no discernment there, no wisdom there. If you recognize your true friends inside, you’ll want to find true friends outside.

As the earlier chant said, when you avoid fools—and sometimes fools can be pretty clever, but they’re foolish in the long run—and you associate with wise people, that means you meet with good fortune and a happy future. You give a blessing to yourself. That means a lot more than just the chanted blessings that the monks give. You bless yourself through your own thoughts, your own words, your own deeds. When you do that, you can guarantee you’ll be happy.