Buddhist Views on Overcoming Obstacles to Universal Friendship

One of the principal themes of the Conference on Actualizing Human Potential has been that of hospitality. While hospitality has always been an important theme in Asian cultures, a more common theme in Buddhist texts has been the closely related notion of universal friendship, that is, friendship toward all sentient beings, without exception. The opposite of friendship, of course, is enmity or hostility. The Theravādin scholastic Buddhaghosa refers to hostility as the far enemy of friendship; that is, hostility is as far from friendship as one can get, and as the opposite of friendship, it is destructive of it. Equally destructive of universal friendship is what Buddhaghosa called its near enemy, namely, a kind of friendship that is similar enough to universal friendship to fool one into believing one has attained the ultimate in friendship when in fact one has stopped short of it. The near enemy of universal friendship, says Buddhaghosa, is preferential or particular friendship, the sort of friendship one might have toward members of one’s own family or immediate neighbors or members of the same tribe or nation. This lesser kind of friendship manifests itself as a tendency to look after the needs of one’s own people before (or in some cases to the detriment of) looking after the needs of strangers or people from a different people or a foreign nation. When the Buddha’s devoted personal attendant Ānanda made the observation that friendship is half the religious life, the Buddha reportedly said “Friendship is not half the religious life, Ānanda, is the the whole of the religious life.” Given the importance of universal friendship as a key aspect of Buddhist practice, therefore, this paper will focus on that theme rather than the theme of hospitality. Hospitality will never be far in the background, however, since it can easily be seen as one of the natural manifestations of friendship, especially friendship toward the stranger or the perceived other. This paper will begin with a discussion of the principal hindrances to friendship, namely, the aforementioned near and far enemies of friendship. Next