4. The Relationship Between Friends
The fourth and most important factor influencing social development is the quality of the relationship between friends
The Process of Engendering Responsibility
The problem is that no person is a perfect exemplar of all the qualities of a True Friend. It is therefore necessary to have tactical friendship starting with those around us
The Enemy in Friend’s Clothes
Our society today is a real melting point of different sorts of people, good and bad. There are a noticeable number of bad people in the world as we hear on the news
Noone can prosper in a social vacuum
…he regarded the people around us as an important factor contributing to one’s prosperity or deterioration. Working alone, one cannot be successful
Target Character Trait # 2 : Responsibility for the human dignity of others
Bias because of desire [chandagati]; results in unjust treatment due to the influence of personal love and pleasure.
The Discipline of the Enlightened Ones
“(I count amongst my) noble disciples those who have the self-discipline to refrain from the Four Defilements of Action, who restrain themselves from the Four Forms of Bias and who do not indulge in the Six Directions…”
The Origin of the Singalovada Sutta
Once upon a time, there was young man named Singala who was extremely arrogant. Singala did not listen to his parents’ advice despite the fact they were already enlightened beings-thus he had no idea of right or wrong.
Concepts for the instilling of Core Values
All that has been mentioned in the forgoing chapter are virtues which need to be instilled in the hearts of the people destined for self-improvement-because anyone with positive core values has the seeds of growing up into the sort of person for whom society is crying out.
The Relationship of Core Values to the Eightfold Path
Positive Core Values, or ‘Right View’ as it is called in Buddhism, will motivate one to practise in unhesitating accordance with the teachings of spirituality, our creativity and life assumptions corresponding more and more to the guidelines of the spiritual purity.
Core Value # 8 : We are endebted to our father
This eighth form of core value indicates that a child acknowledges his or her debt of gratitude to his father. The debt of gratitude a person has tovards their father is the same as that they have towards their mother, i.e,:
