What is a Friend?

When we think of a friend, we think of someone who we can share our likes and dislikes with, someone whose company we can enjoy or maybe someone who can help us out in our time of need.

But what if our friend behaves in a way that we don’t agree with? Maybe they don’t reciprocate our kindness or don’t call us in our time of need? Would you still call such a person your friend?

Friendship Without Expectation

Great examples of friendship come to mind from the life of Swami Kriyananda, disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda.

One time he bought an expensive massage table for a man he had met for the first time. The man couldn’t contain himself and burst into tears. “I grew up on the streets an orphan having always had to fend for myself. The one thing I have always yearned for was the love of a father. Today I felt it for the first time in my life.”

Such acts in the life of Swami Kriyananda are many.

Could the man in this encounter be someone who Swami shared likes and dislikes with? Or whose company he enjoyed? Maybe, but considering they had just met, they were not able to enjoy such a personal friendship. Then how did Swami have such an effect on a relative stranger?

It seems that rather than considering himself a friend to this man on a personal level, he held an attitude of friendship, ready to include others and uplift them in any way he could.

Friendship then, instead of being extended to a select few, can be held in readiness to extend to all who are willing and able to receive whatever love we are able to give.

In my own life, I have tried to live by this example, though not always with success. But I believe that even in the effort, I have attracted true friends. Recently some of these friends helped me out with financial gifts which saved me from what could have been a great burden, despite having known them for only a few short years.

Paramhansa Yogananda teaches that friendship is the highest form of love because it is free of compulsion, freely chosen and given. Even in the closest familial relationships, there is always at least some obligation; however even here we can extend the hand of selfless friendship if there is receptivity.

The Friendship Between Guru and Disciple

For a yogi, the highest form of friendship is that between the guru and disciple.

This is being written near the birthday of Lahiri Mahasaya, guru of Paramhansa Yogananda’s guru. Such a story is beautifully told in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, the story of how Lahiri met his guru, Babaji. After having met, Babaji explains the extent of his love for his disciple:

“For more than three decades I have waited for you here—waited for you to return to me!’ Babaji’s voice rang with celestial love.

‘You slipped away and vanished into the tumultuous waves of the life beyond death. The magic wand of your karma touched you, and you were gone! Though you lost sight of me, never did I lose sight of you! I pursued you over the luminescent astral sea where the glorious angels sail. Through gloom, storm, upheaval, and light I followed you, like a mother bird guarding her young. As you lived out your human term of womb-life, and emerged a babe, my eye was ever on you.

‘When you covered your tiny form in the lotus posture under the Nadia sands in your childhood, I was invisibly present! Patiently, month after month, year after year, I have watched over you, waiting for this perfect day. Now you are with me! Lo, here is your cave, loved of yore! I have kept it ever clean and ready for you. Here is your hallowed asana-blanket, where you daily sat to fill your expanding heart with God! Behold there your bowl, from which you often drank the nectar prepared by me! See how I have kept the brass cup brightly polished, that you might drink again therefrom! My own, do you now understand?”

Lahiri replies“‘My guru, what can I say?’ I murmured brokenly. ‘Where has one ever heard of such deathless love?”

Deathless Love 

It is difficult for most of us to even imagine such friendship, but we can hold an attitude of loving friendship in readiness and each encounter can be used to deepen our love until we can experience and give such ‘deathless love’.

‘When ne’er the lover seeks
Self-comfort at the cost of the one beloved,
Then, in that garden of selflessness
Fragrant friendship perfectly flowers.

From ‘Friendship’ by Paramhansa Yogananda.