" FRIENDSHIP must serve as lids for the eye, as sandals for the feet. The friend must be "another Me". He must experience, in equal depth, the joy and the grief of the other. Friends must be like milk and water. Let Me elaborate this example. When milk, into which some quantity of water is poured, is placed on a burning stove, the water goes off as steam. The milk laments the separation and boils over. Then, the only way to keep it calm, is to sprinkle a spoon or two of water; its friend is back and it is happy. Milk cannot tolerate separation from its friend.
YOUR friends today attach themselves not to you but to your purse or to some advantage they can gain through your father's kindness. When your purse is empty or when your father is no longer in power, they bid you good-bye. Friends who drag one away into evil habits and vicious deeds, are prowling around in search of victims.
The joy one gets while promoting another's joy is incomparable. " SSB Discourse
Most of the time, as a friend, we experience the joy and grief of another but, not in equal depth. If we are to lament or cannot tolerate the separation from a friend, will that not be attachment? If so, is this not confusing to most people who is NOW practicing detachment and now read about this and start believing that we must not tolerate the separation from a friend? it is so contradictory. But, we must practice discernment and see the big picture and not take piece meal information and interpret it by itself. It would be reading a chapter in a book and making a conclusion when we really need to finish the whole book before me conclude anything.
So it is that most sacred book are now used in a way that people, nay the head of the organized religion make an interpretation of one line and jump 200 pages after and piece it another line together. That is why there is so much confusion in the world - let us see the big picture. Let us read the next paragraph and we then realized that true friendship is being compared to today's shallow kind of friendship.
Then, it talks about the joy one gets while promoting another's joy is incomparable. That is, if we learn the value of true friendship then we experience the joy it brings.
Now, this is beginning to be quite interesting. It is said "When milk, into which some quantity of water is poured, is placed on a burning stove, the water goes off as steam. The milk laments the separation and boils over. Then, the only way to keep it calm, is to sprinkle a spoon or two of water; its friend is back and it is happy. " - who poured the water into the milk, who placed it on the burning stove so the water goes of the steam? who then sprinkle a spoon or two of water so milk and water is back together again?
Do you see where am I getting at with this? There is that One who is doing all this. It may be safe to say that that One is the Source. That being the case, there is only One, there is no other - everything else is but an illusion.
There are those who think that the world exists and that the world is real.
There are others who think that the world does not exist and that the world is not real.
Rare indeed is that blessed one who does not think,
But who is ever calm, abiding in the Absolute.
by Nisargadatta
Be Well,
And so it is.
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