Question

The Buddha mentioned the Four Qualities of Faith, Generosity, Wisdom and Morality concerning successful relationships. I can see how these and walking the same path are important. But how important are personality issues when faced with a decision to enter a relationship or not with someone? Are these as important as the qualities the Buddha spoke about? How much importance should we give to actually liking the person?

Answer

This is an interesting question. If you're a generous person (that's one of these four qualities) are you going to like a person who's stingy? No, not usually. If you are a very morally ethical person, you feel you shouldn't be adulterous and you keep to good morals, are you going to like someone who doesn't have good morality? No. If you're developing wisdom, if you like to investigate into reality, you like to read about the mind, develop yourself and so on, and you have a partner who would rather just read the comics and the sports everyday, just goof off, not develop their mind, and watch TV, are you going to really like being together? No. The fourth one, faith, or the Pali word is Saddha, basically means your spiritual direction. If you're a practicing Buddhist or meditator, as all of you are, and you're in a relationship with someone who doesn't like Buddhism and cuts it down, who doesn't like meditation and says, "It's silly, it's stupid, it's foolish," are you going to like that person? The answer is no.

Now, if these four qualities match, it will mean that you like the person because you have similar matching qualities. It's not going to be possible for these four qualities not to match and you like the person. If it ever happens to you, let me know, because I don't believe it can happen. You can become infatuated with a person. You can have lust for another person if they have a nice body and a lot of money. You can develop that sort of relationship with someone who doesn't match these four qualities, but how long is that going to last? That's not a true relationship that's going to last for very long. And if you just like the body or the money that the person has, is that actually liking the person? When it comes to liking a person, I believe that if these four qualities match, you not only have a chance of liking the person, I believe you will like the person. If they don't match, then I don't believe that true liking is actually going to take place.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.