Question

Rosemary told us that the Buddha talked about faith, wisdom, morality and generosity to be very important for a partnership. Can you please explain more about these qualities, the difference between faith and morality and why these four?

Answer

Confidence or faith: two people are going in a similar direction. It is difficult to be in a partnership where people are going in an opposite direction or people don't have the same confidence in a certain direction, because when we go on a spiritual path we change, often very quickly, and this can be very threatening to the partner. As we develop more within ourselves, we develop more inner strength and perhaps we don't need the other person in the same ways. If that person doesn't understand these changes and is not doing it with us, the capacity to feel joy with the growth of the other person is hindered, because it is too threatening. And so if we are going along the path together, we can be as a left foot, right foot, going along together, helping each other along the way.

If the person is very far behind, they may not understand why we do certain things, why we think certain ways and have different values, particularly, this is where we get into morality. But the aspect of being threatening can be quite strong, because in worldly love we want the other person to need us, to love us in those ways. When someone has more inner peace and happiness, they may not be so needy in those ways. However, if we are both going along the path together it becomes more a relationship of giving, that is where it goes into generosity. It is not so much a relationship based on neediness, but one of giving to each other. And if the other person does not understand our changes, they may wish to pull us back, so we do not go so far. Therefore, unless we develop a great deal of patience and equanimity and still go along that path, we may feel that we have to go back and this often hinders our development. So if people are going along a similar path there is not so much of this conflict, because there is an understanding of what is happening.

The difference between faith and morality? Confidence/faith and morality interconnect, as I said, but they are not totally the same. Because we are going in a certain direction, we may follow a certain type of morality. Other people who may not be following that direction may have a certain sense of morality, but it may not be the same. So they interconnect here. Why these four? You will have to ask the Buddha that... I don't know why these four, this is the teaching of the Buddha, he had much more wisdom than me.

Generosity? If we have one person who is much more generous than the other, then one person is giving a lot and the other person is wanting a lot, needing a lot and after some time this inner quality of generosity can become a source of conflict. Also arguments, when one person may understand through their faith that generosity is a source of happiness, whereas the other person may see the source of happiness lying in getting things. They may not wish to give so much, they want to get more, and so there may be a conflict about this other person being too generous, giving the money away, because "I want it for this!" So if the person doesn't understand the source of happiness coming from generosity there can come a lot of conflict out of this.

We're out of time, so wisdom will have to wait.

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.