‘Friendship’—much like the words ‘happiness’ and ‘love’—refers to an obviously meaningful human experience that is difficult to discuss at once meaningfully and non-obviously. The difficulty is acute enough that the likelihood of lapsing into clichés on these topics is itself a cliché. Yet wherefore arises the difficulty? Conceivably, the fault could lie in the poverty of language before life’s richness. Our problem, on this account, is not with friendship so much as satisfactorily describing it. While it often is the case we can tacitly do things we struggle to express in words, it could also be that our discomfort lies in the murky suspicion that general usage and social practice fall short of the concept’s genuine human significance.
Surely a friend is more than an acquaintance one shares brunch pictures with on social media. More plausibly, friends might simply be people with common interests who enjoy spending time with each other, whether in person or online. Friends are then the people one takes brunch pictures with to share on social media. Friends become and remain friends to have a good time, and as interests change, friendships dissolve. Still more plausibly, one might argue that ‘real friends’ are not only there for the good times, but are ‘there for you when you need them.’ Real friends are there to listen. But where judgmentalism is taken to be the greatest vice—possibly even the only vice—a real friend is someone who unconditionally supports whatever one’s present choices and self-conception may happen to be. A friend would then be someone who respects another’s feelings or ‘personal truth’ before truth itself.
The possibility of a tension between friendship and truth on today’s default understanding of the former suggests contemporary society’s more general inability to furnish a unified account of the good life. A tension between friendship and truth cannot but yield a self-defeating tension between friendship and happiness, for the sake of which people seek friends in the first place. As much as I have profited from astute discussions of friendship in the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Montaigne, it is in GurSikh tradition that I find the greatest correspondence between inner and outer realization—between knowing what is true and livingly truthfully. Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib happily abounds with illuminating references to the concept of friendship (dōsatī, mitrāī) and especially to friends of various kinds (mīta, sajaṇa, mitra, yāra, bēlī sakhī, sahēlī).
GurSikhī recognizes this life as a precious opportunity to personally know, adore, and find rest in the One who is the origin of all creation. This ultimate purpose structures the GurSikh understanding of the world, and friendship—like all other earthly relationships—finds its place and meaning in relation to it. Since the One who creates is supremely wondrous and generous, we find ourself in a world of wonders to enjoy in conscious gratitude. But we find only misery where idolatrous devotion to created things supplants our love and longing for the Creator. Friends worthy of the name recall us to our ultimate purpose, and thereby to what is divine in our nature.
Sabad plays a fundamental role on the GurSikh mystical path, transmuting our consciousness from self-centered suffering to perfect harmony in the One. At times, Sabad-s address as ‘friend’ the seeker who yearns to know the One. At others, the ‘friend’ is the Gurū, who reveals the path to the One. Even the One can be the ‘friend,’ ‘the parent,’ the ‘beloved,’ or the ‘husband’ at still other times. Finally, there appear critiques of unregenerate worldly friendship and its attendent woes. Evocations of the divine in the language of human relationships may operate at three levels. First, our everyday consciousness may be given some intimation of our relationship to the otherwise inscrutable divine being through a metaphorical likening of it to a familiar earthly relationship. Next, our deepening knowledge of the divine nature may elevate our awareness of the divinity pervading our relationships in the world. Finally, from the vantage of perfect union with the One, it stands to reason that such formulations are veridical descriptions of the variety of aspects under which the wondrous One creatively manifests the divine nature.
Turning to specific references to friendship from GurSikh scripture, Gurū Angad—the one who became Gurū Nanak’s inseparable limb—comments on the futility of friendship (dōsatī) with fools in two salōku-s in Asā kī Vāra. In the first, the fool is one who would direct orders to the One (the Sāhiba) rather than offering adoring supplication. Such low pretense prevents one from merging with the One capable of bestowing all flourishing (SGGS: 474). In the immediately following salōku, Gurū Angad likens friendship with a fool and loving someone biggety (vadārū) to drawing lines in water: they leave no lasting impression or trace. Friendship then demands virtues of both parties. Though the One is the fount of all knowledge and mercy, vainglorious folly can separate us from the One’s embrace. Gurū Nanak elsewhere remarks that churning water leaves one with water, but churning cream produces butter (SGGS: 635). Friendship divorced from wisdom—or effort absent reflection—is insufficient. Friendship must transform us into better versions of ourselves, yet this requires the cream of virtues, not the least of which is humility.
Gurū Ram Das specifies that if one were to meet any friend (sajaṇu) oriented towards the Enlightener (a Guramukhi), such a friend would relate to one the originary One’s glorious virtues (SGGS: 40). Gurū Arjan Dev teaches that friendship (dōsatī) with those oriented towards their own mental delusions (manamukhā)—on the other hand—binds one to the company of illusion (māiā). He compares transactional friendships that depend on receiving gifts to a false knot or to stones bound by mud. Blind to their own selves, the self-centered manamukhā make for lousy, unreliable friends (SGGS: 959). Dependable friendships then require self-knowledge on the part of both friends, not a desire to use the other for worldly advantage.
Gurū Arjan Dev seeks out that sort of friend or companion who continuously utters the immanent One’s Name (nāma), ridding one of the misery of vile habits (SGGS: 980). Gurū Amar Das similarly proclaims that only one who sings the immanent One’s (Hari-’s) virtues is his friend. The belonging, companionship, inspiration, support, challenge, and comfort human friendships grace our world with derive from the goodness of the One in whom they and all else finds its perfection. For all the excellences our human friendships may possess, our earthly friends cannot accompany us beyond this life. At their best, friendships are then spiritually profitable meetings on life’s path, allowing us to partake of one another’s inner struggles and realizations, orienting another and being oriented oneself towards eternal friendship with the One here and hereafter.
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Nihal Singh