56.26. Friends (SN56.26)

“Bhikkhus, those for whom you have compassion and who think you should be heeded—whether friends or colleagues, relatives or kinsmen— these you should exhort, settle, and establish for making the breakthrough to the Four Noble Truths as they really are.

“What four? The noble truth of suffering, the noble truth of the origin of suffering, the noble truth of the cessation of suffering, the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering.

“Those for whom you have compassion … these you should exhort, settle, and establish for making the breakthrough to these Four Noble Truths as they really are.

“Therefore, bhikkhus, an exertion should be made to understand: ‘This is suffering.’… An exertion should be made to understand: ‘This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering.’”

© Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Wisdom Publications, 2000)

This excerpt from The Connected Discourses of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Bodhi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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