Spiritual Friends

Susan Reviere
August 18, 2026

Dear Friends,

I’ve been away for some time on my sabbatical to tend to my health and the health of my family. My initial intention was to be away for six months but, unfortunately, it will be for a year. My gratitude is deep and my hope is present that I will be back in full in January 2027. I wanted to let you know about this extension and to say to you how much I have missed being more present with you.

One of my favorite sutta passages is in the Samyutta Nikaya where we find the story of the Buddha’s attendant, Ananada, inquiring about the role of the spiritual friends. Ananda asks the Buddha if spiritual friends are “half of the holy life?” The Buddha replies emphatically, “No, Ananda…do not say that spiritual friends are half of the holy life. Spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life.”

The Buddha is pointing toward the importance of sangha in our day-to-day living of these transformative teachings and practices. Too often we miss this in engaging with our practices as either solitary study and meditation, or we center the teacher in our practice. As a teacher who is also forever a student, I have done both. And in my recent time away, I have profoundly realized the truth of the Buddha’s teaching above. I have missed being with my sangha.

Stephanie and I were talking over coffee recently and the topic of sangha arose alongside my musings on my felt experience of being away (insights I’ll share at a different time), and I said, “I hope they miss me as much as I miss them.” And her wise response of “They don’t! And they shouldn’t…” reduced us both to laughter. Indeed…we often make the mistake of centering teachers as the heart of sangha when the opposite should be true - centering sangha in a teacher’s (and student’s) heart. When we all understand this more deeply, we navigate our lives better informed by dharma and we practice with the necessary humility that, as Ram Dass said, “we are all just walking each other home.”

Indeed, this walking with fellow dharma travelers is sustenance. And that walking together offers us the steady support of love, kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity…the profound and boundless homes of the heart. Leaning into these heart qualities is restorative, supportive, and always, I believe, one of the answers to almost any question. The sangha holds a deep, collective wisdom. The presence of our spiritual friends can serve, with these Brahma Viharas, to keep us on a wholesome, skillful path. I know that they have saved me in times of fear, despair, physical pain, and sadness. And I hope that these qualities in my own heart can serve to hold others in turn. I told my teacher recently that my one wish in the teacher’s seat is that the people that I encounter feel deeply seen through eyes of lovingkindness and compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh famously said that the Sangha would be the next Buddha. He said, “It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a Sangha - a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness.” This is our interbeing - and this is our truth on this path.