An enforced week of being stuck indoors, due to illness, had me reflecting on an email I received recently from a friend.\u00a0 My friend had attended a large Buddhist gathering which, on the whole, she had enjoyed but she also wrote, \u2018I didn\u2019t feel there was much kindness going on\u2019.\u00a0 Her words struck a cord with me because I knew exactly what she meant.<\/p>\n
In work situations where we have to take part in various seminars and presentations, we rarely expect to come across examples of kindness or caring.\u00a0 And when it does happen, we are usually pleasantly surprised because it is seemingly \u2018out of context\u2019.\u00a0 But, for a Buddhist, when we attend teachings or centres or study groups and come into contact with fellow Buddhists, there is maybe a certain amount of expectation that we will be, at least, kind to each other. There is always so much lofty talk about compassion and Bodhichitta, and aren\u2019t we encouraged to aspire to become Bodhisattavas?\u00a0 So, why is it often so difficult for us to just be truly kind to each other?<\/p>\n
It may be that when we attend these large Dharma gatherings and are caught up in the moment that we simply forget what it is to be kind.\u00a0 Perhaps we are so in awe of the teachers and will do anything to be near to them that we don\u2019t notice someone sitting next to us who is having a hard time. And maybe the teachings we hear so many times just don\u2019t reach our hearts but stay closed in the part of our brain that tells us that we are \u2018good Buddhists\u2019 because we have a great teacher and receive deep teachings and know all the right Buddhist buzz words. But, still, we don\u2019t know how to be good human beings.<\/p>\n
A number of years ago I read a book titled Random Acts of Kindness (365 Ways to make the World a Nicer Place) by Danny Wallace.\u00a0 Danny is an English author and \u2018personality\u2019 and the reason for writing the book was to document an experiment where he tried to form a cult, just to see how easy it was to do that. He realised early on that any cult or group needs a common purpose or goal and he decided that his cult would have the common goal of random acts of kindness.\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting book because it starts off just as a kind of a joke and develops into something rather profound.\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the book, the readers are encouraged to take a pledge to perform random acts of kindness (which are anonymous). And what are these kind acts? It isn\u2019t giving large amounts of money to good causes; it isn\u2019t anything big at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s something as simple as smiling at a stranger or\u00a0giving up your seat for someone, leaving a biscuit on a colleague’s desk just because they look a bit down.\u00a0 And the biggest realisation that came to Danny? It\u2019s, as we all will know from Dharma teachings, that just from performing these random acts of kindness, we will feel good too!<\/p>\n
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