One Sacred Truth to Share

And May Be the Best Thing We Can Be

Monday, February 3, 2025

Aho’ Rajanaka,

I hope this finds you well. There are two letters today. The second will outline the schedule of Seminars & Rajanaka Sessions that will take us through June and to Rajanaka Summer Camp in July. We will begin again this coming weekend. Details forthcoming.

But I need to talk about a few things while the world burns, and we consider how to sustain our integrity garnering whatever shards of hope might yet remain. You need not read every word of the news to know we’re all in trouble together. And then there’s the way our personal lives create even more incitement to reflection and response. If you’re waiting for a break, for relief, I think you’re going to need a better plan.

In just the past few weeks there have been happy birthdays and unexpected deaths, celebrations of great accomplishment by old pals held in the highest esteem (that includes you, Francois) and changes in the world portending more cruelty and misery than I’ve thought possible. For all the complexity and apprehension, I don’t feel alone. That’s been my lifeline.

In the Rg Veda, the god who brings justice to the world is Varuna. He is never alone because he knows he should not act without counsel and a diversity of opinions. But what he knows in his heart is that he needs more than these trustworthy colleagues. He needs a friend. That’s why he inseparable from Mitra whose name, of course, means “friend.” Varuna-Mitra is treated as two friends and one being. That tells us something important.

At the end of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ the angel Clarence writes a short note of thanks to his friend George Bailey. He writes, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

I’ve come to realize this is my one sacred truth. It’s so true it’ll be true when we’re no longer around. Friendship survives us. And friends don’t depend on anything else, just us. We can make them and lose them and that too is why they’re so important: promises made, broken, lost, and found. Sounds human.

I lost another friend this past weekend. We had our ups and downs. He was a complicated person. Aren’t we all? I’m sure you do this too: when the time seems right you try to tell them that you love them, that you’re grateful for their care and interest. I think I didn’t do that enough with this guy. Time ran out. Maybe that’s how it goes sometimes. I’ve been reminded again not to miss another chance. Funny how we can fail each other and still not be failures. That’s why friends are as good as just about anything that’s good.

You learn when you have children that being a friend really isn’t the same as loving, ‘cause there’s not much of a choice in that kind of love, you just can’t help it. That love comes from inside out. But friends come when the outside makes its way all the way inside. If you’re lucky, your children can be friends too but that will take time and real effort. It doesn’t just happen. That’s another thing about friendship.

Of course we might think that its the love that matters more. It might be too honest to admit but I’ve loved truly those I don’t think of as true friends. That’s another reason why I think having a friend is different matter. Becoming friends is harder: you’re asking for something that’s not just there. You want it, make it, you have to do it.

In friendship you don’t have to believe in anything, so it’s not like God or country or other things that work on us like ideas or moral imperatives. Friendship isn’t a belief and it’s not about faith even when its about being faithful. Let me try to make that point clearer.

Now, I’ve never been much of a patriot though I cherish our unrealized ideals and none more than that every human deserves the justice and opportunity to live out their dreams. I tried with all my heart to believe in God, much to my parent’s chagrin, and it took a while to figure it out they were right about this one. Divine consolation is for other people. And I’ll be damned if I see a plan, or that I’m going to ‘a better place.’ If there is some mysterious purposeful omniscient Whatever and I get to meet It, well, we’re going to have words and then we’ll figure out if we’re really friends. I won’t mind if that doesn’t happen. I already have real friends.

I’ve at last given up the mysterious and the mystical for the comforts and traumas of friendship. Friendship isn’t unconditional, it’s not limitless nor does it always soothe or relieve us the pain. In truth, a lot of what’s best about friendship is gonna hurt when it’s good. For all its consolations friendship will take you to inconsolable truths, feelings of celebration and gratitude all toppled and tumbled together with regrets and unsettled accounts and things that never get finished. That’s the closest I think I can get to understanding what is best about this mortal life.

Friendship is as human as anything we really are and that’s where I’ve come to land. Transcendence ain’t for me. I prefer good company and even when you’re not around, I’ll be looking for you. I want to believe that I’ll miss you when I’m gone even if that’s not really what happens. When you remember your friends, I’d say that’s the kind of love that makes life worth the living. Not only the love we just have but like the song goes:

… Oh yeah, all right
Are you going to be in my dreams
Tonight?

… And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

Another letter is on the way with dates and times for future conversations.

Samaitraya, with friendship,

Douglas