True Friendship: Guha, Sugriva and Vibhishana
Shri Ram made friends of a tribal chief, an exiled vanara and his enemy's brother. What the Ramayana says a friend is, and what a friend must do.
The episodes
At the Ganga, Guha, chief of the Nishad boatmen, offered the exiled prince his own small kingdom. Ram embraced him as an equal. In Kishkindha, Ram and Sugriva, each of whom had lost wife and kingdom, swore friendship before a fire and shared their griefs; see the Kishkindha Kanda. And on the shore before Lanka, Vibhishana, brother of the enemy, arrived asking for shelter. Ram's advisers suspected a trap. Ram took him in at once.
The reasoning
The Ramcharitmanas has Ram describe a true friend to Sugriva. A friend treats his own mountain of sorrow as dust and his friend's speck of sorrow as a mountain. He steers his friend away from the wrong path and onto the right one. He speaks of his friend's virtues and covers his faults. He gives and takes without suspicion, and in bad times loves a hundred times more. The one who is sweet to your face and harmful behind your back, Ram says, is best given up.
Three things follow from the episodes. First, Ram's friends were not chosen for rank; a boatman, a vanara and a rakshasa stood beside a prince. Second, friendship carried duties: Ram restored Sugriva before asking anything, and when Sugriva forgot his side of the pact, he was reminded firmly. A friend who never tells you an uncomfortable truth is not doing a friend's work. Third, Ram trusted first. He judged that the risk of being deceived was smaller than the wrong of refusing someone who needed him.
How to practise it
- Choose friends for character, not for position or usefulness.
- Show up in your friend's bad time without being asked.
- Tell a friend, privately and kindly, when he is going wrong.
- Keep your side of an understanding even when the other person has already given you what you wanted.
Next: Equality and compassion. The greatest friend and servant of Ram has his own page: Hanuman.
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