Kalayanamitra: Good or Moral Friend

(Continuing from previous post)

I gained many new friends at DIMC Azusa, a branch of Dhammakaya Temple in the USA.  After feeling such a warm welcome and gaining lots of friends, I hoped we would come back again.

My parents had a very short discussion about whether they would come back to this center/temple again in the future (technically it is a meditation center, but the Buddhists that come use it as a temple, so from this point on I will just refer to DIMC as the temple).  The discussion was something like this:

     Mom:   Honey, lets come here from now on.

     Dad:     Okay.

Since then, we would come to the temple almost every week if we didn't have any other plans.  We became regular followers and continued to learn Dhamma from the monks and staff.  They were always happy to answer our questions and increase our knowledge in what the Dhammakaya Temple is doing.  From our experience, we can see honest people, doing an honest job, guiding people towards a path of goodness.  The Pali word is Kalayanamitra, a moral or good friend.  They were there to help us to do good and show us a way to do good deeds.  We never felt forced to donate money, food or energy to help them, but they in return never stopped helping us learn to meditate and understand Dhamma.