The Power of Kindness
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Human beings are often unkind. To themselves and to others.
“Unkind” means to treat a person, an animal, or our world as if we are not related, as if we are not “kin.”
Unkindness is the direct expression of our sense of separation from the totality of life.
Tantra is a discovery of the relatedness of everything. And so it is a discovery of kindness. We discover that we are all of the same kind. We belong together. We live in a state of continuity.
This relatedness is not the relationship of things that are separate. It is the relationship of nonseparation.
Continuity is our real condition. We do not have to go out and create it. We have to discover and remember it.
We discover continuity, usually, moment by moment through our practice. Each time we rediscover our “kind-ness,” our kinship with all life, spontaneous kindness is the result.
Each time we contract and live from the perspective our tensions and limitations, unkindness is the result.
Kindness is not just something nice we do for others. It is not mere social convention or politeness. Contrived kindness only underscores the sense of separation felt by the person doing the contriving.
Kindness is a powerful force that arises from the understanding of our continuity. With true kindness, the most difficult tensions, or karmas, can be relaxed, resolved, or avoided altogether.
Most of us have had an experience such as this. You are feeling a deep tension. Perhaps it is so pervasive, you have grown accustomed to it. Or perhaps it is present in your consciousness. In any case, you are soldiering on, trying not to let others know how you feel.
Then someone, even a stranger, comes along and says one truly kind thing, or performs a kind act. Suddenly, you are crying. It is as if the skin of the tension has burst, and a more direct expression of your essence can be free again. The colors in the world become bright again. What seemed dead has come back to life. For that moment, or perhaps much longer, you are able to experience the relatedness of all life.
You have remembered kind-ness.
This frequently happens when we go to receive blessings from spiritual teachers. We think teachers have some magic power, and they do: the power of kindness.
Kindness is the real secret to how spiritual Masters help us to release our karmic burdens.
The swift sword of kindness of the Mahasiddhas and Boddhisattvas arises from a profound recognition of our continuity.
But the power of kindness is not only granted to Mahasiddhas! Whenever anyone develops the capacity to remember and act from the embodied understanding of the continuity of life, whenever anyone manifests spontaneous kindness, greater freedom is the result. Long-standing patterns for oneself and others can be resolved in an instant of true kindness.
Un-kindness takes many forms, and these hurt everyone by keeping us in greater limitation. In order to discover kindness, we must first self-recognize the pain we are in and stop fooling ourselves about our condition.
Most of us can recognize a grossly unkind act, that is, an act that grossly expresses someone’s sense of separation.
But we also perpetrate great unkindness on ourselves and others with our obsessive speech and thoughts. These, without exception, express over and over again our desperate feeling of separation.
Even the person who always seems to be pushing everyone away with unkindness is expressing the pain of separation. In fact, every act of unkindness, is paradoxically an attempt to make a connection with others.
If we are angry or disparaging of others, we are still relating to others on that level. We are trying to bridge the divide we feel, but with negative emotion.
Recognizing this is a substantial step toward relaxing a little bit and allowing a more natural feeling of continuity to approach. But we must make an effort to remember our real condition over and over again as we find ourselves slipping back into unconscious expressions of our sense of separation.
This is not easy. At times this process of remembering brings immediate relief. At other times we contact deep feelings of grief and fear. It is helpful at these times to be constant in our connection with nature, with our daily seated and integrated practice, and with the company of spiritual Masters through satsang and inspirational readings.
There should not be a moment in the day when you are not, in some way, doing yourself the kindness of helping yourself to remember your real condition and your continuity with all life, especially with the life of your spiritual practice and tradition.
This constancy of making the effort to stay with your real situation and recognize your continuity with those who have tread this path before, and who are treading it with you now, will eventually lead to greater and greater lengths of time in which you are able to relax and enjoy with kindness the kinship of all life.
OM Shanti,
Shambhavi
New Year 2007
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