When you keep their company, your three poisons increase,
Your activities of hearing, thinking and meditating decline,
And they make you lose your love and compassion
Give up bad friends--
This is the practice of the Bodhisattvas.
My initial reaction to this verse is that I don't like it. I think that's the whole point of the bodhisattva is to leave the monastery and be in the world (like the Buddha) with all it's complications and negativity. You don't flee for your own spiritual development, you rush into the world.
But you can't be friends with lack of virtue. Friendship is only with a person who possesses virtue. There is no such thing as a bad friend, there is only a person who does not participate in friendship, maybe comrades in samsara.
You can monitor your feelings and be aware. There is not sin in taking care of yourself and guarding your development. You can't help people if you can't take care of yourself. Self care is very very important.
So when someone is draining your ability to hear, think and meditate, you make sure that they do not snuff out these abilities. You nurture and cherish your abilities to do these things, for everyone. If you're going to go down a dark spiral if you associate with someone, then don't associate with them. Being a bodhisattva isn't sacrificing yourself, unlike the Christian martyr. You are going for enlightenment for the sake of all beings, but destroying yourself doesn't do that. You could choose to sacrifice your body for others, but going down a negative path is not the same thing, and this life is precious.
I think of Ksitigarbha from the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra, who vows not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied.
But by no means do you need to constantly put yourself into harm's way either. It's OK to surround yourself in nourishing relationships and rarely challenge this setup. You should not pretend you are more spiritually advanced than you really are to please others.
You may have an Iago who gaslights you because he can't outright murder you, but feels he can undermine you, sabotage you under the guise of a loyal servant. Or maybe a Lady Macbeth, who encourages you to be murderously ambitious, and shames your concept of manhood to help get you there. Or maybe you listen to the flattering daughters like Lear, that support your grandiosity. Or maybe a Tybalt can draw you into a conflict to your detriment.
If you go on r/family on Reddit you will encounter people who realize their family is undermining them and perhaps are a not the all good that family is portrayed. On r/relationships on Reddit you will find that relationships change and people can realize or see someone has changed to be undermining. People change. They can be supportive and helpful for a while, and then change. Perhaps you give a friend the benefit of the doubt, or you give them a little more of a chance to be a full person with the negative and the positive that everyone has. But clinging to the idea of how someone is in the past might also be masochistic and unhelpful.
(go back to #4 here (there are actually 44 verses in the text, 2 preface, and 5 postscript))
Your activities of hearing, thinking and meditating decline,
And they make you lose your love and compassion
Give up bad friends--
This is the practice of the Bodhisattvas.
My initial reaction to this verse is that I don't like it. I think that's the whole point of the bodhisattva is to leave the monastery and be in the world (like the Buddha) with all it's complications and negativity. You don't flee for your own spiritual development, you rush into the world.
But you can't be friends with lack of virtue. Friendship is only with a person who possesses virtue. There is no such thing as a bad friend, there is only a person who does not participate in friendship, maybe comrades in samsara.
You can monitor your feelings and be aware. There is not sin in taking care of yourself and guarding your development. You can't help people if you can't take care of yourself. Self care is very very important.
So when someone is draining your ability to hear, think and meditate, you make sure that they do not snuff out these abilities. You nurture and cherish your abilities to do these things, for everyone. If you're going to go down a dark spiral if you associate with someone, then don't associate with them. Being a bodhisattva isn't sacrificing yourself, unlike the Christian martyr. You are going for enlightenment for the sake of all beings, but destroying yourself doesn't do that. You could choose to sacrifice your body for others, but going down a negative path is not the same thing, and this life is precious.
I think of Ksitigarbha from the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra, who vows not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied.
But by no means do you need to constantly put yourself into harm's way either. It's OK to surround yourself in nourishing relationships and rarely challenge this setup. You should not pretend you are more spiritually advanced than you really are to please others.
You may have an Iago who gaslights you because he can't outright murder you, but feels he can undermine you, sabotage you under the guise of a loyal servant. Or maybe a Lady Macbeth, who encourages you to be murderously ambitious, and shames your concept of manhood to help get you there. Or maybe you listen to the flattering daughters like Lear, that support your grandiosity. Or maybe a Tybalt can draw you into a conflict to your detriment.
If you go on r/family on Reddit you will encounter people who realize their family is undermining them and perhaps are a not the all good that family is portrayed. On r/relationships on Reddit you will find that relationships change and people can realize or see someone has changed to be undermining. People change. They can be supportive and helpful for a while, and then change. Perhaps you give a friend the benefit of the doubt, or you give them a little more of a chance to be a full person with the negative and the positive that everyone has. But clinging to the idea of how someone is in the past might also be masochistic and unhelpful.
(go back to #4 here (there are actually 44 verses in the text, 2 preface, and 5 postscript))
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