' Friendship '...

"Once Ananda, his cousin, devoted attendant, and beloved pupil, said to the Buddha.

'It would seem one half of the spiritual life is friendship with good people,

association with good people, and communion with good people.'

The Buddha said in reply,

'It is not so, Ananda, it is not so.

It is not one half of the spiritual life,

it is the entire spiritual life.'"



-Gautama the Buddha
Samyutta Nikaya, verse 2
in Roy J. Matthew, M. D.
The True Path: Western Science and the Quest for Yoga
Cambridge MA: Perseus Publishing, 2001, p. 220