Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
Today, I want to talk about the importance of diversity in our circle of friends so that we don't end up in a comfortable, little bubble of familiarity, where all of our beliefs, perspectives, and values are simply echoed back to us by everyone we know, everything we read, watch, or listen to, rather than constantly challenging ourselves
to grow, evolve, and be inclusive instead of exclusive. When I first tried to lose weight, it was difficult to spend time with friends who ate at Burger King every day, so I surrounded myself with people who regularly exercised, made nutritious food choices, and kept stress to a minimum in their daily lives. They later told me that helping me find the path to better health, also strengthened their own resolve to stay on it.
Spiritually, it doesn't matter how badly you want to grow and evolve, or how many inspirational books you read, if the people in your life keep you confined in a closed loop of destructive behavior. When dieting, Destructive Behavior is easy to define as French Fries and ice cream, for example, but what constitutes Destructive Spiritual Behavior?
Where do we draw the line? I've met people who struggle to make their mortgage payments, but have a house full of crystals and Buddha statues, hardcore activists with high blood pressure just one protest away from collapsing, and minimalists shaming other minimalists for not being minimalistic enough. True story. At its very core, Buddhism teaches the way to end our suffering is through right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The problem I see with this common translation of right speech, right action, et cetera, is the implication that there is wrong action, wrong livelihood, and so on. Instead of right versus wrong, I personally prefer distinguishing between behavior that is conducive to end our suffering, and behavior that is not.
This way, French Fries and ice cream aren't inherently wrong, they're just not very conducive to weight loss, if that's what someone is trying to achieve.
Now, it may sound like the same thing, but when curating a close group of friends for yourself -a Sangha, if you would- a spiritual community, we can't just surround ourselves with like-minded people the way I did when dieting, because then we're not simply distinguishing between those who are conducive to our journey and those who may not be, we are literally pitting people against each other, right versus wrong. And we are to learn from our Sangha, and be supported by it.
A good community helps us continue in the direction of peace, and therein lies the rub: pitting people against each other is war, not peace. This is why activism is always on the edge between nonviolent protests and a riot. At some point, fighting for WHAT we believe is right turns into fighting to prove that WE are right. It switches from an altruistic endeavor to an egotistic one.
And, yes, the Buddha was an activist in that he actively encouraged people to think for themselves, but that is very different from telling people what to think. So don't cut people from your life the way I eliminated fried foods from my diet.
Surround yourself with people who offer you a salad in one hand and a milkshake in the other, because strength comes from repeatedly and actively choosing what is conducive to your journey, not from living in a little bubble from which we've eliminated French Fries. As it turns out, an exclusive echo box only seems like a good idea at the start, but is ultimately not very conducive to our growth. This is actually exactly why monks are discouraged from making the monastery our permanent home.
We are urged to go back into the world of chaos and hostility, which is where we can help other people find the path, thereby strengthening our own resolve to stay on it. So look around your close circle of friends, and if you don't feel inspired, maybe you don't have a close circle of friends, maybe what you have is an echo chamber that actually stunts your growth rather than promotes it. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼