kindness

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” HH Dalai Lama

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” HH Dalai Lama

HH the Dalai Lama

I’ve always felt that it takes just as much effort to be kind as it does to be mean or cruel. In some ways it feels less costly emotionally and doesn’t bind up all my mental energies as when I am mean. In later years I thought that maybe this is just a personal perspective but was interested to find the word ‘kind’ meaning friendly is derived from the Old English gecynde “natural, native, innate,” originally “with the feeling of relatives for each other”. The word ‘unkind’ meaning “lacking in kindness” is “strange, foreign, unnatural,” from un- (1) “not” + kind. So it seems that my feeling was more universal than I thought.

Here in the heart of ‘The City’ as London is called, kindness is hard to find as everyone struggles to survive as too many people are jambed into too small a space! One evening in a lift at the tube station, a man started lashing out at me with his hands & a cane (would you believe it?) I think I went into shock, first time being attacked & all that & in a huge crowd of people. However a couple of people broke out of their prickly protection and were very kind to me. One man put himself between me and the attacker which stopped the attack and a young woman stroked my arm saying ‘It will be OK!’ I stumbled out of the lift and another man picked up a button that flew off my coat after the attack. I walked up the street and another young business man caught up with me to see if I was ok. It was the kindness of these strangers that totally redeemed the whole situation & I came out of the shock and felt no bad feelings towards the attacker. I was amazed at how kindness had so much power to make a difference and easily discounted meanness & aggressiveness.

In our relationships, whether family, friend, work colleague or partner even a tiny expression of kindness can come back to us tenfold! Not only does it require less effort and makes you feel good to boot, it has such a power to transform others in their lives. Kindness also tends to spread, when someone has been kind to you your heart opens and makes it more possible to do the same for others. It is one of the best investments you can make in all your relationships as it will come back to you in ways you cannot imagine.

In our fast paced, highly pressured world now, giving or receiving a random act of kindness can change the colour of your day! Good relationships can be developed just on this simple philosophy alone – of random acts of kindness!

Here is a great video advertising random acts of kindness, enjoy…..