it's all dhamma.

On Spiritual Friendship

by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Some of the people you know now, who you are practicing with now, are going to be, and are already becoming, your close spiritual friends. These people are the most precious thing in the world to you. These relationships in spiritual practice are unique. They are not the same as other relationships. There is a quality to them that touches the absolute. It touches something beyond our personalities. This is not the case with ordinary human interaction and relationships. In spiritual practice we know that we are doing that together. We know that we are touching one another at that level. People who have that interaction and that relationship with one another move each other so much that your life is never the same.

So that is already there in your lives now. Maybe it takes forty years to realize, “Oh, we have done that together. We’ve had that precious time together.” You don’t realize it until it is over. But it is there now in you, so think of that. Think of who those people are for you and remember how precious they are.

I always tell people that you think you are going to the meditation hall for yourself. No. You are going there because of the other people there meditating. That is why you need to go. Don’t go for yourself. That only goes so far. If you are going for yourself, you won’t last very long, because there are too many other things that you want to do for yourself that will be more compelling. But if you are going there because you know that these other people sitting in the hall with you are the treasures of your life, then you are going there in a way that will really transform your life and will transform your heart forever and ever.

Incredible thank yous to my dear dharma sisters Ruxandra and Mary for sharing these words with me and to you and the Empty Sky Sangha for sharing our practice so intimately together for the past five and a half years. Thank you to the amazing global community of friends I’ve made, also students of Sayadaw U Tejaniya, during sitting, walking and talking meditation while at the Shwe Oo Min Dhammasukha Meditation Center between 2009 and 2011. Thank you to all in the virtual sangha who support me and my practice in all sorts of ways. It means so much to me when I realize that the efforts I make here resonate in some way with another being, and I am so grateful for all the wonderful connections I’ve been able to make through our shared love of the Dhamma.