You Must Have Friends

Last January, Ugandan Theravada monk Bhante Buddharakkhita visited several US dharma centers—including Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and New York Insight—to raise awareness for his project of the Uganda Buddhist Centre (UBC). Founded by Buddharakkhita in 2005, the Uganda Buddhist Centre is dedicated to providing a place of refuge for those seeking spiritual growth and transformation around East Africa. Recently, it was announced that UBC has the chance to permanently protect thirteen acres of wetland on the shores of Lake Nalubaale (Lake Victoria)—the source of the Nile—and to expand their work by building a new retreat center there—the first of its kind on continental Africa. This past August, Buddharakkhita and his followers launched a GoFundMe to support this initiative. 

While at New York Insight, Buddharakkhita sat down with New York Insight’s guiding teacher, Leslie Booker, for a wide-ranging conversation about his origins in the dharma, building foundational infrastructure in addition to foundational Buddhist practices in his homeland, and the timeless words of the His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

First of all, Bhante, I want to welcome you back home. Welcome back to New York City. Welcome back to New York. Insight. You have such a beloved community here, and we’re so happy to have a space to be able to welcome you back on a more regular basis. Thank you for being here. New York Insight is twenty-eight years old, but we came back into our physical space a year and a half ago. We had the intention of creating an environment, a culture of belonging, so whenever people came to the space, they had whatever they needed, they felt like we had curated the space specifically for them. 

When you were envisioning, dreaming into the Uganda Buddhist Centre, what was the initial idea of what you thought it could be? And what has been the proliferation of that first seed you planted? What did you think it was going to be? And what is it now? When I was in India, I attended a meditation retreat in 1994 for twelve days. It was a Tibetan meditation called lamrim, a graduated path to enlightenment. Doing that for twelve days, I felt so peaceful. And I said, Wow, I’ve never learned this. I said to myself, I wish I could go to Uganda and tell everybody about this. That was the moment where it started. I came up with the idea for something called the Afro-Tibetan Friendship Society. I formed it, and I was brand-new to the path. Then I decided to look for advice. So that’s how I applied to go to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama. 

I had met him several times publicly, but I wanted him to bless me, and I wrote to his office, and they told me, we’ll get back to you. After six months I got a letter saying you are invited to a session with the Dalai Lama, a private audience, five minutes only. What could I do in five minutes? So I said to myself, OK, I have only two questions. That’s what I went with. I met him, and I asked him, “I’ve just meditated for twelve days. But meditation is so good, I’d like to introduce it to Uganda. Can you bless me?” He blessed me. Then the next question is, How can I do it? I started with a big dream. I told him, I want to introduce the dharma to all of Africa. That’s why I call it the Afro-Tibetan Friendship Society. I told him about the organization I was forming. But I didn’t know how to do it. Did he? He scratched his head a little bit, then he said, “You should get friends. Get friends. Get friends. You must have friends.” And that was his only advice, get friends. I thought he was going to introduce me to Richard Gere! But it wasn’t happening that way.

Bhante Buddharakkhita with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in 2011. | Image via Facebook

At that moment, I didn’t think that it was very profound advice, actually, because I was so isolated in India as an African. Where was I going to get friends? I was still doing my studies. There were even some Africans I met there, one from Eritrea, one from Ethiopia, and whenever I floated the idea, they thought I was crazy. How can you establish Buddhism in the entire continent of Africa? Because that was my dream. I finished my studies. I went to Tibet and stayed there for a while, one month and a half. Then I went back to Uganda, I went to a few African countries, telling people everywhere I went about this big project, all of Africa. And everyone was saying, How much money do you have to start a business? I said, None, I’m a meditator. What meditation? Medication? They couldn’t understand what meditation was. Then I thought maybe I’m not ready for this project. 

I decided to go to South America. I stayed there for one year, then I came to the United States in 1999. And along the way, I started getting real friends, including my teacher, Bhante Gunaratana, then Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield. I started really accumulating the good friends that the Dalai Lama was talking about. I went back to Uganda in 2005 to establish the Uganda Buddhist Centre. When I started in Uganda, I had only an alms bowl. I didn’t have funds, but I had friends. So my friends were advising me on what to do. I would get some funding in Canada and then make sure that I trained all the people who wanted to become Buddhist in Uganda first, instead of working from one country to another, which was my initial idea. 

If I could create a thriving community in Uganda, then I would attract Africans to Uganda. I could train them in Uganda and disperse them. I had learned that from the Buddha himself. He trained sixty acariyas (Pali: spiritual teachers), and he sent them all over, even to Egypt! The one he sent to Egypt was named Dhammarakkhita. I started training students from Uganda, Egypt, and all over Africa. From this picture, when you came to Uganda, there were five students, and they were learning dharma, and then they were going to other schools every day. I had funding. I could give them money to attend other schools. I didn’t even dream about starting a school—primary school, high school, or any of that. But when they started going to other schools, they would stay longer and longer, and when they came back, I had to start again from scratch. They had forgotten what I taught them. 

I decided that I would raise funds to establish a school so that children could stay there and learn dharma while going to school. I started a preschool with twelve children. We were supported by Buddhist Global Relief, by Bhikkhu Bodhi. The twelve children attended for free. They came to learn dharma. They meditated. They were so peaceful. 

Then I built a primary school and later a high school. And then, with all the kids in school, the children were getting sick. I said, let’s create a medical center. With the school, the parents could not pay money. They were poor, they could not manage the school fees. I said, Why don’t we create what you might call a women’s empowerment project, to provide women with skills so that they could earn some money to send their children to my school. It was just one thing leading to the other. 

So you were responsive to what was happening there. You planted a seed, and then whatever grew out of that, you responded to that. Definitely. When I see that the community is thriving in Uganda Buddhist Centre, that’s when I start to dream. I say, What about replicating it in other countries? But what’s going on in Uganda? It just happened organically.

It’s beautiful, and I know that you also built several wells in the community so people could come in and get fresh water. And I remember when I was there, every morning I would go down and pump water and then bring my water back up. You’ve created more opportunities for people to have access to water, because before, they were walking down to Lake Victoria to get water. Yes, they were walking to Lake Victoria, and that water is not healthy water. When I started teaching in Uganda, I thought, people in Africa are not coming to listen to my talk the way I give it in the US. Something came to my mind: How about teaching by action? By precept. So then I say, OK, let me teach Buddha’s teaching, which is known for words about compassion, but we will do compassion in action. So that’s how I started establishing this well, out of compassion, to show people that this is a teaching that they can see for themselves. 

The first borehole (well) was in the temple, but people were afraid to come to the temple. That became a problem. So then we constructed it outside the temple. Later on, when it was clear the people didn’t have enough water even with those two wells, we constructed another one. Then we saw that the nearby school was also having a problem with water. Then I gave each school a borehole. On a typical day, we found that 2,000 people are getting clean water from our wells. And I felt so good. That created a lot of joy. And I saw you enjoy that water. It is good, clean water. You remember? 

Yeah, it is good. Minerals taste good. I’m very glad that you were the beneficiary of that!

Trying to wash your hair while pumping a well is very challenging! Something I learned when I was in Uganda is how many people of Southeast Asian descent were born and raised in Uganda—including New York City’s new mayor! He was born in Uganda, yes. You should have called him here!

The advice that the Dalai Lama gave you, make friends, I think, is gorgeous advice and universal. And I don’t know if people get how profound that is. Make friends. Make kalyana-mittata, spiritual friends. Have people that can go on that journey with you. What other advice would you give to anybody who wants the dharma to not just be something that they leave on the cushion but something that they take with them as they move through life and navigate the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows? There are so many, but I look at what has sustained me over the years. The Buddha said that there are two things that are causes and conditions for attaining enlightenment. One of them is spiritual friendship. In one discourse, Ananda approached the Buddha and said, Half of the holy life is spiritual friendship. The Buddha said, no, Ananda, don’t say that. Having a spiritual friend is the entire spiritual life. I advise people to have spiritual friendships, and that means having a community, because that’s where you find spiritual friends. When I started. I backslid because I moved away from spiritual friendship. But when I went to IMS, there was a community. We practiced together. We talked. They would tell me which teachers were coming, and then you went and listened. 

Make sure that you have a spiritual friendship. You have a community. And if you don’t have a sitting group, create one.

The best advice is having a spiritual friendship. The second thing the Buddha mentioned is wise attention, which is internal. It means, in other words, to follow the noble eightfold path. Really, the advice is having two things, one internal and one external. Make sure that you have a spiritual friendship. You have a community. And if you don’t have a sitting group, create one. The second one is to make sure you practice on a daily basis. You need a formal practice, even if it means five minutes, even if it means one minute. Whatever it is, make sure that you have a formal practice. And then, of course, there’s also informal practice, where you start the foundational practices. What is the foundational practice? It is sila, ethical conduct. If you don’t have the foundation of sila, however many retreats you go to, you cannot sustain them. You’re going to come back, and you come back to zero. It’s just like warming your water but not boiling it. It cools down again. 

So, for me, I find those two go together. One is the spiritual foundation of the sila. Then you need spiritual friendship, a friend who you can go to with questions. And then look for a community that is supportive. It’s very, very important to have a spiritual friend and community, and also it’s good to maintain a regular practice with the foundation of sila. I hope that makes sense.

♦

Adapted from a talk given at New York Insight Meditation Center in January 2026.