Qualities of a Good Friend
While in this transient world, wading through joy and grief, man has sore need of one of his kind to whom he can communicate his feelings, with whom he can share his discoveries and depressions, his moments of bliss and sorrow, to be by his side while trekking the hard road to truth and peace, encouraging and enthusing him toward the goal.
Who is one’s true friend? Who is one’s false, fake friend? It is clear that as understood today friendship and friends are far off the mark of the ideal. Friends who can confer real counsel, comfort, and consolation are precious gifts rarely found today.
A friendship knit by monetary bonds is disrupted as soon as you ask the loan to be repaid. When you oblige your friend with a loan, the friendship, too, is broken at that very moment. How can friendship be cemented by words or by coins? Heart must understand heart. Heart must be drawn to heart for friendship to last. Friendship must bind two hearts and affect both of them beneficially, whatever may happen to either, loss or gain, pain or pleasure, good fortune or bad. The bond must survive all the blows of fate, and be unaffected by time, place, and circumstance.
Each must correct the other, for each knows that they come from sympathy and love. Each must be vigilant that the other does not slide from the ideal, cultivate habits that are deleterious, or hide thoughts and plans that are productive of evil. The honor of each is in the safekeeping of the other. Each trusts the other and places reliance on the other’s watchful love. Only those deserve the name “friends”—who help in uplifting life, cleansing ideals, elevating emotions, and strengthening resolves. Those who drag you into pomp, pedantry, paltry entertainment, and petty pranks are enemies, not friends. Friends cannot be got by social status, financial squander-mania, outer scintillation, and verbal assertions. See into the very soul, the inner motives and motivator, the deeper aspirations and achievements, and then yield your loyalty to such.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp 83-84
The feeling of friendship must activate every nerve, permeate every blood cell, and purify every emotional wave; it has no place for the slightest trace of egotism. You cannot elevate the companionship that seeks to exploit or fleece for personal benefit into the noble quality of friendship. Perhaps the only friend who can pass this rigorous test is God.
To understand and practice this noble emotion, the Bhagavad Gita is an invaluable guide. When Arjuna was dispirited and dejected, Krishna injected courage and a high sense of duty into him and helped him avoid disgraceful defeat. Arjuna, too, like a good friend, took the advice in good spirit with the full confidence that Krishna meant well by him. Why, we know how confident he was of the wisdom and power inherent in Krishna. When Krishna gave him the choice, “To help you in battle, you can have either my entire army or myself alone, unarmed and determined not to fight in spite of any provocation.” Arjuna did not hesitate to decide which of these two he wanted. He chose the unarmed Krishna and prayed that He might be his charioteer during the days when he rode into the field.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp 85-86
