Mangala Sutta

~ By Ajahn Jayasāro ~

In the first two lines of the Discourse on Blessings (Mangala Sutta), the Buddha gives his most fundamental advice for life in the world: be careful who you associate with. However, the terms he uses may need some explanation. The Buddha says that two of life’s highest blessings come from ‘not associating with the foolish, but associating with the wise.’ I think that the difficulty most people would have with following this advice is that they would judge the majority of their associates to be neither outright fools nor particularly wise.

I would like to rephrase the teachings as follows: not cultivating destructive relationships but cultivating nourishing ones. Here, a destructive relationship would mean one in which the good and noble qualities in one’s heart start to wither and the mean and ignoble ones steadily grow. If one finds it more difficult to keep the precepts, if one finds oneself becoming more neglectful of spiritual cultivation, then this is not a relationship worth pursuing. If, on the other hand, it feels as if an association brings out the best in one, if one feels oneself growing in the Dhamma as a result of it, then that is a relationship to cherish. It is a blessing.

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"Food for the Heart", a series of Dhamma teachings handwritten weekly is posted on the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives page with Ajahn's kind permission.

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For other teachings by Ven. Ajahn Jayasāro, please visit the Panyaprateep Foundation website.