© 2005-2009
Sharon Salzberg
Teachings
www.sharonsalzberg.com
Teachings
Force of Kindness
I have been engaged by kindness nearly my whole life, fascinated by it at times, repulsed by it at others. Particularly when I was young and others extended kindness to me, I felt humiliated by the apparent evidence of my pain. I hated that anyone could see that I was hurt. And yet, now I see that those early gifts of kindness planted the seeds of a nascent self-love within me. Those seeds were really what allowed me, more than anything else, to survive the often-painful circumstances of my childhood. As I got older, I was less resistant to acts of kindness, more moved by them, more able to acknowledge how important they had been and still were to me.
Since then, the pursuit of kindness has magnetized much of my spiritual journey. That is, once I got over my disdain of it as an “also-ran” quality, the kind of characteristic you cultivate if tougher, finer things like wisdom elude you. As I continue my meditation practice everyday, and try to live out my deepest values everyday, kindness has only grown in importance as a crucial element of those efforts.
It is not a cushy, undemanding path. It is easy to overlook the power of kindness, or misunderstand it. The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patterns of fear and jealousy. Those around us may devalue our dedication to kindness. We may devalue it ourselves. There are many challenges, many subtleties, many intricacies. But if we can commit to the open-hearted exploration of kindness, it will reveal itself as a force that can change our lives.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out of the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
(Excerpt from Sharon’s book The Force of Kindness, Pages 1-3)