Choose Your Friends

Close your eyes and be sensitive to your breath all the way in, all the way out—and then again, all the way in, all the way out. When we talk about breath, it’s not the air coming in and out the nose, it’s the movement of energy in the body that allows the air to come in, allows it to go out. You can feel that anywhere in the body. So notice where it’s most prominent right now. And ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it is, keep it up. If not, you can change. Make it shorter, more shallow; heavier, lighter; f aster, slower. Pay a lot of attention to what you’re experiencing right now. And also pay attention to the fact that you can adjust what you’re experiencing.

This is an important principle. The Buddha says that we should frequent wise people and stay away from fools. *Asevanā ca bālānam, paṇḍitānañca sevanā—*something we chant again and again. And what will wise people teach us? For one thing, when you’re with wise people, it’s easy to act in a wise way. When you’re with fools, it’s easy to act in the way they act. When you’re with good people, it’s easy to be good. When you’re with bad people, it’s easy to be bad. We tend to go along with the people we hang out with.

So choose the people you hang out with wisely. Look at what the long-term results of that friendship will be. As the Buddha said, you want to look for four qualities in a friend: conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. These are the qualities that you want to develop in yourself. So if you want to have a good friendship with this person, you want to develop those qualities as well—and ask that person how to do it.

The first thing they’ll tell you in terms of conviction is that the good things in life are the things in the mind—in other words, the qualities of the mind you develop. When you receive a gift, the goodness basically comes from the fact that somebody thought enough to give you the gift. That’s more important than the actual material thing itself. Wise friends also teach you, when you’re generous, to give some thought to your generosity. When you’re virtuous, when you take the precepts, give some thought to the precepts.

We take the precepts every week, but how much do we actually hold to them? How many times do the precepts get thrown away at the gate to the monastery? And the question is why? As the Buddha says, you take the precepts because you realize that the actions that the precepts forbid are really unskillful, and they’re really harmful. But a lot of times the harm comes in the long term, and you see a benefit in the short term from breaking the precept.

So you have to learn how to talk to yourself. This is what you learn from a good friend, how to talk to yourself so that you can see whatever disadvantage you may have from holding to the precepts. There are lots of cases in the world where other people are breaking the precepts, and you’re put at a disadvantage because you’re not breaking the precepts along with them, but you’re willing to take the short-term disadvantage because you think of the long term. So many people in the world say that that’s foolish. Those are the people you don’t want to hang out with, because when the long-term results come, they’re not going to be there to help you. If you act on unskillful things, they’re going to abandon you. They’re like the people who get you to do something wrong, and then when the police come, they run away.

As for generosity—give it some thought. What kind of things would be really meaningful to give? As the Buddha said, you give where you feel inspired. That can be anywhere. But if you want to get the most out of the gift, you have to stop and think: Who are good people to receive your gifts? What are good gifts to give to them? And what kind of attitude should you have? You give with an attitude of respect. You give with an attitude that something good will come out of this gift. You don’t just go through the motions.

So there’s a skill to giving gifts. There’s a skill to holding to the precepts. There’s a skill to thinking in terms of conviction in the power of your actions, the long-term consequences of your actions. These are the skills you develop as you develop friendship with wise people. So make sure you have wise people outside, and you start developing wise voices inside your mind. In that way, you learn how to depend on yourself.

In the beginning we depend on the goodness of others to give us an example. But ultimately we want to be able to stand on our own two feet. So whether we’re in the monastery or outside of the monastery, whether with good people or with bad people, we know how to maintain our own goodness. That’s one of our most precious possessions right there.