TOPIC

Friendship



More than any other kind of relationship, friendship is one of the most universal human experiences there is. Whether the friendship forms over shared experiences, dreams, likes, or even physical location, having a supportive witness to our joys and pains is a crucial part of our emotional and mental health. Our desire for deep, meaningful human connection if often most strongly fulfilled by our friends. Yet it doesn’t make forming, maintaining, or even ending a friendship any easier or more intuitive. We can struggle with what we should do or say to maintain a strong, healthy, compassionate connection with someone we care about. We all live in tension with the desire to be seen and accepted—with all our quirks and perceived flaws—and the fear of rejection when our whole selves become seen. The best place to start is the truth that good friendship is dependent on compassionate reciprocity of seeing and being seen.

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07:22

Aristotle’s Timeless Advice on What Real Friendship Is and Why It Matters

It’s impossible to say how much Aristotle wrote, but even from the fraction of his work that we have left today, there is a stunning amount of breadth in the subjects he covered.

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Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

John O'Donohue, poet, philosopher, and scholar, guides you through the spiritual landscape of the Irish imagination.

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The Dharma of the Princess Bride

In The Princess Bride, outcasts and loners find true friendship. Drawing on the classic film, Ethan Nichtern offers Buddhist teachings on how to make friends with yourself and others.

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FindCenterFriendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .’

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01:37

Feeling Disconnected from Your Friends Right Now? Watch This.

Every time a pattern in your life changes, your friendships will change too. You’ve experienced this when you started a new job, when you moved, when your kids started playing on different sports teams, and especially when you start pursuing different goals than the goals of your friends.

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How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship

Eva Hagberg spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always temporarily. Then, at age thirty, an undiscovered mass in her brain ruptured. So did her life.

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02:25

Stephen Cope: Soul Friends

Kripalu Scholar-in-Residence Stephen Cope explains how our deepest friendships help create who we are.

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FindCenterAffection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.

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Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World

Grounded in the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, Radical Friendship shares seven strategies to help us embody our deepest values in all of our relationships.

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03:59

How Do You Help a Grieving Friend?

It's so hard to know what to do when your friends are hurting. The thing is, you can't cheer someone up by telling them to look on the bright side, or by giving them advice. It just doesn't work.

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Relationship Challenges