The Importance of True Friendship and Self-Reflection : หน้า 133/164

for who we are: Not in the mirror, but inside of our mind. If we focus on the external, then defilements cloud our mind. We will develop false friendships and these are people around you who have not been trained to live their lives morally: these people become false friends. There are four groups of them: (1) Selfish or greedy people, who want us to behave in a way to benefit them, (2) Smooth talkers, who are insincere and want us to do things that are on their agenda, (3) Flatterers, or people with no principles. These people enjoy good and bad things, but essentially are self-promoters and back-biters. (4) People who lead us down the path to destruction in our own lives. These people like to invite us to do the immoral things in life because they possess no wisdom. They cause society to decay, which will eventually cause the country to collapse. If all of the trends continue, they will continue to flourish. But we cannot just reflect about them from the outside, we must think of ourselves and work on our own development. "We need true friends. These are people who are (1) Loving: When you are happy, they are happy. They are supportive and encouraging and kind. (2) Good counselors: They encourage you, teach you, and guide you along your path. (3) Sincere: Through thick and thin, these people stick by you when times are tough. They accept you as you are and would put their lives on the line for you. We need people who will come and protect our things when we are gone, who are dependable in times of need, and who give more than what is asked. "Any society full of false friends will collapse sooner or later. However, if true friends are widespread, then the society will be efficient, powerful, harmonious, and honest. The Buddha saw this through the six directions in the mind, and grouped them as true and false friends. But we must also have these same behaviors that we look for in our true friends. And in order to get these characteristics, we have to meditate. In a sense, meditation is closing down our bank and checking our balance sheet. Everyone who does accounting has to do this because the bank has to check its balance every day. So we have to check our Boon Bank every day! And we do this through our own medita- tion. If we can do this, we will be developing ourselves for each person to observe this for themselves. Meditation is an activity in which we observe ourselves. And it is a duty for each of the six directions. "Each direction has its own duty. For the parents, it involves training children to be moral adults, preventing them from doing immoral acts, not giving them any debt to repay, and so on. But how can parents teach their children if they don't know what is good or bad?