We should try always to be kind.
Be generous, cause happiness, listen to other people, see things from their point of view.
Avoid causing pain. Do no harm.
Give and help and soothe and cheer.
Be this way not just with people but with all creatures that have feelings.
This is so simple that nothing more needs to be said, but I don’t want anybody to feel cheated out of a full blown blog post so I’ll ramble on for a while.
The Bible says, “Love your neighbor.” In other words, love everyone we interact with.
This is a hard instruction to follow because we have very little voluntary control over love.
But it’s easy to choose deliberately to be kind. We have lots of voluntary control over kindness.
Kindness is love in action. Kindness is what love does when it rolls up its sleeves and puts on work boots.
By acting in a kindly way, we feel more love. Our hearts expand and heat up.
Seekers sometimes like to talk about how kind God is. They would do better to be kind themselves.
There is great spiritual power in being kind. It’s a powerful sadhana. I know somebody who became enlightened by working as a hospice nurse for 20 years with the feeling, “The fact that I have the opportunity to serve my patients is a gift to me from God.” She did no other sadhana, and it didn’t seem like sadhana to her because she wanted to do it.
A different friend told me recently that she rescued a cat which later got run over by a car. Injuries included a broken pelvis and gangrene. My friend spent a small fortune on vet bills and nursed the cat back to health over a period of months.
Then my friend told me that she hasn’t read much spiritual literature. If I remember correctly, she said this with a tinge of regret or self-recrimination.
There was more truth, more spiritual power, in what she did for that cat than in all the spiritual books that have ever been written.
Spiritual writings are dust. Scriptures are dust. This blog post is dust.
Life and truth are in our hearts not in words.
This post has a sequel: More About Kindness.