Question

If you have a partner who is friendly, drugfree, helpful, patient, but not interested in doing a meditation course or a retreat because he doesn't think he needs it for mental development, what would you do?

Answer

What I would do, and what I would advise some people to do, sometimes it's the same thing. I am very fortunate, I have a lovely partner, everything works, we've been growing together, it's been very nice.

The Buddha talks about Four Qualities that can make for a good relationship. He says that if a relationship has these four qualities in a balance, that is, closely similar for each person, the relationship will work very well. If it doesn't have these qualities in balance, there will always be a bit of a problem in the relationship.

The first of these four is Generosity. Well, that is pretty easy to understand. When one person is always giving, giving, giving and being very generous, and the other person is always taking, it's not going to make for a good relationship.

The second one is Morality. Again, that's pretty obvious. One person wants to take drugs and the other person doesn't, then it's going to interfere with their relationship.

Next one is Wisdom. This is not quite as obvious, but when you think of someone who is very wise and someone who is not very wise at all, then it becomes more like a teacher-student relationship. Whereas if both people have similar wisdom they can discuss things, they are growing together and it makes more of a balance.

The fourth one is a Pali word, Saddha, and that's generally translated into Confidence or Faith. This can relate to our spiritual direction, and basically our faith that we have, our confidence in how we want to live our life. When it comes to actual religious directions, it's pretty easy to understand, say, if a Christian marries a Muslim, there is going to be friction. With any two different religions, there is bound to be some friction. When it's the same religion then there isn't as much friction in that area.

If you have a partner who is doing meditation similar to what you are doing, then it will go well. If you don't have a partner who does meditation, then that's an area that's missing in your relationship.

With the other areas; the generosity can be fine, the morality can be fine, but the wisdom is not always going to work if the Saddha is different. If the confidence/faith is incompatible, then that can link to wisdom because as you can imagine, say, with Buddhism, the basic wisdom that we are developing often interferes with a faith based religion. Faith religions believe in a God. They have these teachings that they consider wise, but Buddhism says "Wait a minute, now, we don't even know God exists, well, what's going on here?" Buddhism will question that, but for Christians it's accepted as the truth. So that ties into Saddha quite a bit.

So, are there benefits in living with this person if they don't interfere with your spiritual practice? If the morality and generosity are pretty much right, but the wisdom and the Saddha may not be, then you have to decide; can you continue with that relationship or not? Is it going to work in the long run? Are the benefits still better than the negatives?

And, quite frankly, that's what you want to ask for in any relationship.

I use an example of grass. Say, you want a yard, a very nice yard. And you need a lot of grass in that yard. Do you ever get weeds? Yeah, every yard gets some weeds. Now, if you want to keep a nice lawn, you pull the weeds out. And after you pulled them out, a few weeks later some more appear. That's just normal. But you like the grass so much that you don't mind pulling the weeds out.

Now, what happens if the weeds get too much? And you just don't want these weeds ever again, you've had enough of the weeds, it's just too much? What do you have to do? You have to put concrete down over everything. Grass and weeds, it all gets covered by concrete and you don't have any more weeds. However, you just lost all your grass. Now that's if the weeds are too much. However, if there's lots of grass, and you have a bit of weeds, if it's not too much that you feel it's harmful, then be happy that you have the grass.

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.