Buddyism: The Faith of Friendship

The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths. Buddyism teaches the Four Buddy Truths. Go forth and Buddify!

What the Buddha Taught

The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths about suffering and how to escape it. Buddyism teachs the Four Buddy Truths.

The Teachings of Buddyism

Buddies are happier. In How and Why You Should Maintain Friendships, Elizabeth Scott writes, "Friends add a wonderful dimension to our lives: they help us celebrate the good times, and they help us make it through the tough times. Having a strong, supportive social network has been associated with lower levels of stress, increased longevity, and greater levels of happiness." Her reference to a "strong, supportive social network" just means have some good buddies you can depend on.

Even the ancients knew about buddyism. Marcus Cicero has been quoted as having written, "Friendship improves happiness and abates misery by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

Buddies are healthier. A 10 year long study conducted in Australia showed that older people with buddies were less likely to die during the study. Research at Harvard has shown that people with buddies had healthier brains later into life, having half the rate of memory loss of those with fewer or no buddies. A 2006 study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology showed that among nurses diagnosed with breast cancer, those with buddies had a better survival rate than those without.

Buddies are safer. A buddy will watch your back. Everyone knows that it's a good idea to take a buddy along if you're doing something that can be dangerous, like swimming or hiking in the wilderness or hang-gliding. If nothing else, a buddy can call 911 for you. Remember the old song, "Stand By Me"? It's about buddies!

Buddies are stronger. Buddies working together are stronger than the sum of their individual strengths. Having buddies to do things with can help us stay motivated -- to exercise, to write, to do whatever it is we want to do.

I imagine that as a child, you heard the old story about a group of people discussing how to best protect themselves and having a hard time coming to agreement. Eventually, one of the group gives everyone a twig and asks them to break it. Everyone breaks their twig easily. Next, the leader asks everyone to find another twig similar to the one they just broke. He gathers all the twigs together in a bundle and invites anyone in the group who can to break the bundle. No one is able to. The members of the group learn that if they hang together, they will be stronger as a group than each would be individually.

Indeed, the ancient Etruscans and Romans had a symbol to represent this concept of strength through buddies. It was called the fasces and consisted of a bundle of sticks tied together with a bronze axe. It was used by the Romans as a symbol imperial power, and reflected the power of the Roman state. The Fascists named their party after this symbol. They had a good idea of buddy-hood, but what they used their strength for is disappointing.

The Principle of Symmetric Buddy Acquisition

The heart of the teaching is the Principle of Symmetric Buddy Acquisition: to have a buddy, be a buddy.