Kindness is the sweetest friend to our souls. In a world that is so challenging and fraught with uncertainty kindness to ourselves and to others brings us sanctuary. It is the invisible home that makes visible sacred and shows us how to live more effectively and with more dignity.
Being kind is perhaps the most practical way we can be. The practice of kindness not only creates co-operation and community but it also mysteriously opens our eyes to new ways of solving our difficulties. At the most basic level it is in practicing kindness in our relationships, our work, and our environment that we become gentle friends with ourselves. Then everyone benefits.
Phrases posted on Facebook, May 2015
For years now the Dalai Lama has been teaching us how important kindness is not just for each of us individually but for the future of the world. I want to hug that subject to my heart for the month of May and hope you will, too.
Isn’t it true that we make ourselves unhappier than other people do? Self-kindness is the key that can unlock those stuck, stark places inside us. Perhaps a kindness a day can be our new way. That doesn’t mean extra helpings of twinkies, does it?
We can notice that any time we are reactive and defensive some nerve has been hit. Taking the focus off the trigger and asking instead where we have not treated ourselves kindly can stop the fuse from continuing to burn. We may not have rested enough, been understanding of the pressures we are under enough, eaten the right food, or stopped criticizing ourselves. We can always pause and make a kindly self-assessment to find out as much as we can and begin again to be kind.
The Dalai Lama teaches us that kindness is possible in every situation no matter what it is. That’s one huge understanding I want to try to hug to my heart.
On this Mother’s Day I am reminded of something my mother told me: “You can’t have enough mothers”. Anyone (man or woman) who has been truly kind to us has mothered us. Let’s celebrate that sense of things today.
When we are spontaneous and genuine we lose nothing in doing little acts of kindness. We are just lighting another person’s candlewick with our flame. Nothing is lost. Only more light is gained.
Calculated kindness is somehow never felt as kindness by another. It’s still part of the old way—'”a tooth for a tooth” only now it’s “a good for a gain”. Real kindness has self-forgetting at its core and is always felt by another as a free gift.
Sometimes kindness is a deep quiet inside yourself that you are somehow given not just for you but also for the sake of everyone.
Sometimes kindness is made of the words you don’t say especially when you are dying to say them.
Genuine acts of kindness always make us free.
Any, even a tiny act of kindness has ramifications far beyond the moment.
Kindness has a mysterious way of restoring the balance between right and wrong.
Kindness is like a clear, deep well. It is full of refreshment. When we allow it to flow out to others are we not washed with it also?
Even empty rooms in which people have consistently been kind and respectful towards one another somehow fill up with those qualities. When we enter them, the rooms embrace us with their energy, and we can’t help but feel a silent welcome.
“Give it time,” we say and feel some comfort from those words. Neither slow nor fast Nature takes its organic time. When we give our natures and the natures of others a sweet organic time, the experience is often felt as kindness. “Give it time. Give it time!”
