The Enemy in Friend’s Clothes

Meditation

Meditation for Beginners

 

The Enemy in Friend’s Clothes

 

The four forms of behaviour that distinguish a man who lead us down the Roads to Ruin

 

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. Each bad person commits different wrongdoings and in various approaches. The Lord Buddha classified the bad persons into four kinds according to how such people interact with their friends. He called those bad persons ‘false friends’ which means that they intend to destroy you, but they act as if they were your friends. The four kinds of false friends comprise:

 

1. The Mercenary [annadatthuhara]

2. The Man of Empty Promises [vaciparama]

3. The Flatterer [anuppiyabhani]

4. The Man who Leads you down the Roads to Ruin [apayasahaya]

 

Such false friends are like poison-coated caramel, which initially might seem tasty, but will eventually cause your death. For each kind of false friend, the Lord Buddha also pointed out four distinguishing forms behaviour of false friends for each category, giving a total of sixteen characteristics of false friends.

 

The ‘flatterer’ friend will make us disappointed and annoyed because of his insincerity.

 

The four forms of behaviour that distinguish a mercenary are:

 

1. One who tries to appropriate your possessions;

2. One who sacrifices little in the hope of gaining much.

3. One who helps others only when threatened by the same danger.

4. One who only make friends to serve his own interest. From the actions taken by the ‘mercenary’ , you can see that they are greedy and want to gain benefits from others. Whoever make friends with persons of this kind would always find their possessions depleted as the result.

The four forms of behaviour that distinguish ‘a man of empty promises’ are:

 

1. One who promises you that he would share with you things that have already run out it lent you a hand if he had known earlier;

2. One who promises you that he would share with you things he does not yet have;

3. One who shares with you things you don’t need;

4. One who finds an excuse every time called upon to help;

 

Our society today is a real melting point of different sorts of people, good and bad.

 

From these characteristics of actions taken by the ‘man of empty promises’, whoever has such a person as a friend, will find themselves constantly ‘messed-about’ because the person is not reliable.

 

The four forms of behaviour that distinguish a ‘flatterer’ are:

 

1. One who toadies to your immoral or illegal deings.

2. One who toadies to your good doing.

3. One who sings praises to your face.

4. One who gossips about you behind your back.

 

The ‘flatterer’ friend will make us disappointed and annoyed because of his insincerity.

 

The four forms of behaviour that distinguish a man who lead us down the Roads to Ruin are:

 

1. One who is your loyal drinking companion.

2. One who is by your side roaming the streets at unseemly hours.

3. One who encourages you to all sorts of entertainments.

4. One who asks you to gamble.

 

Such false friends are like poison-coated caramel

 

If we make friends with a person possessing this type of behaviour we will do harm to ourselves this type of behaviour we will do harm to ourselves. The person would continuously lead us to involvement with different kinds of ruin.

 

In conclusion, having false friends with the characters above not only doesn’t bring benefit to you in any way, but also eventually leads your life to deterioration which is bery hard to remedy at a later date. Knowing the dangers of the four types of False Friend and their tell-tale behaviours we can use this knowledge to help us filter out the false friends from our human environment.

 

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