Meditazione e preghiera: Maestro Dogen (1200-1253) Parte II

Meditazione e preghiera: Maestro Dogen (1200-1253) Parte I

Roma: convegno di medicina tibetana presso il centro buddhista Dzogchen a Piramide

16 Oct 2006

L’incontro con l’Oriente suscita sempre una grande attrattiva per l’occidentale, soprattutto quando si parla di terapie per il benessere del corpo e dello spirito.

Friendship from a Buddhist perspective

Who are good friends?

I have recently been slightly lazy when updating my blog, but I have just come across with an innovative and bizarre concept of friendship which almost made me re-think the one I understand.

For some people I came across with in my life, being a friend means minimizing the reach of a relationship, which means not being in a relationship; therefore according to this interpretation all the genuine values that are usually associated with this word result very reductive.

I realized that when a person uses this arid interpretation, they make of friendship an instrument of control and they will consider other people merely like a satellite for their own ego. What a miserable life! You can be the victim of this game and it is not a nice thing to experience at all, but on the other hand the sorrow that follows could be the fuel to improve our lives and continue our path of researching of the truth inherent in our life. This is expressed in the Buddhist metaphor of changing the poison into medicine, or even better, realizing the Mahayana's concept that the Samsara is Nirvana.

As for my personal experience I wanted to refresh the Buddhist concept of “Good Friend”, commonly expressed in Japanese as Zenchishiki. According to SGI’s President Daisaku Ikeda “Having good friends is like being equipped with a powerful auxiliary engine. When we encounter a steep hill or an obstacle, we can encourage each other and find the strength to keep pressing forward.” The Japanese monk Nichiren Daishonin (1222-1282) also says that “Even a feeble person will not stumble if those supporting him are strong, but a person of considerable strength, when alone, may lose his footing on an uneven path.”

We can say then the two sine qua non for a friendship are represented by sharing the common desire of creating values in our lives and to encourage each other to follow the right path, which does not means necessarily being Buddhists or whatever, rather it means being able to discern which actions and attitudes are respectful and which ones are not, without any sort of relativism that sometimes may represent a temptation that exempt us from our responsibilities.

Going back to our question at starting point, I do not personally think that I can be a friend of a person who does not share common values with me, but furthermore I do not like to be considered a friend just because someone else considers a friendship a convenient way of ending a relationship. I am proud of the concept of friendship I have always been believing.

London life

The 28 July 2007 represents a turning point of my life as I decide to move beyond the Channel to start my Life and learn to become an island, just to use an expression that my uncle from Perth (Australia) told me several times. The first place I lived was in a wonderful flat in London Bridge; this is an area in the South-East I came across with more than once because of my work and also because my Master course at the LCC  is nearby, might these be events karmically related?

It took me a while to get used to the British/English manners, more formal when asking, stating or assuming concepts. I can still recall an episode as bartender in a Borough High Street Café when a customer reckoned I was quite impolite by replying “You may wish to be more polite sir!”, after I told him with my Italian/Aussie accent: “You still got some froth on your mouth mate! “ Well…what could I  say then? I was too cheecky for him..

We live in such big and dispersive city, at the same time so little to a point where you are able to meet people or friends you had not been in touch with for ages!! One day for example, during an office-break stroll in Borough High Street I heard a voice calling me and had just realized surprisingly that he was an old fellow I had met during the high school; furthermore our respective fathers used to play in a music band in the 60s…since that day we met a strong friendship was born and never ended.

If it is true that time and space are relative principles, this concept may apply much more for this City whereas everybody is so concentrated on their own careers, academic paths, working deadlines that it is not possible realizing the flown of time until you slow down for a moment and think: “I have been living here for three years and it seems yesterday when I first came!”; when this stage comes you may get panic and decide whether it is time to rack off or stay, but honestly this is not an easy place to live all your life, raise a family and enjoy your superannuation (if you get it) and your basic state pension. 

Here is London, a tremendously glamorous city where you can enjoy your life without having the actual time to contemplate about it, meeting new persons all the times with the awareness that one day they will leave, a place where people say to you “How are you today?” just for the sake of doing it, or (for some people at least) where you may extremely want to enjoy the sense of freedom as an expedient to postpone the time you will wonder who you are, what you want and where you are going to.