Good Friendship

Strong communities depend on the personal relations between their members, and the most basic relation between people outside family connections is that of friendship.

The Buddha placed special emphasis on one's choice of friends, which he saw as having a profound influence on one's individual development as well as on the creation of a harmonious and ethically upright community.

Good friendship is essential not only because it benefits us in times of trouble, satisfies our social instincts, and enlarges our sphere of concern from the self to others.

It is critical because good friendship plants in us the sense of discretion, the ability to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, and to choose the honorable over the expedient.

Therefore the Buddha says that all other good qualities unfold from good friendship.

~Bhikkhu Bodhi