Kindness doesn't have to be cultivated.
It can be cultivated,
We can engage in methods and practices that rev up our kindness motor,
So to speak.
But if that's our way of being kind,
We've got a problem.
Because what happens when kindness is appropriate,
But we've no time to warm up the engine.
Say for example someone at work is upset,
But we've been stressing out over tasks or mourning,
Or one of our children has been misbehaving but the other needs warmth.
There's no time in these situations to do some kind of practice to generate kindness,
And I suspect you will agree that these situations are like most.
So what to do?
The popular option is to try to save up kindness so that it can be spent later.
For example we might practice loving kindness meditation,
Feel all warm and fuzzy inside,
And then take that buzz with us out into the world.
This certainly has benefit,
But it depends upon our having time to meditate,
And time in 2022,
As I suspect you will agree,
Is short.
The best we can hope for in any model of formal practice is that we get so good at it that it takes us less and less time to generate kindness.
This would be a great outcome,
But it's still contrived,
And there's still a when-then game in play.
When I've mastered loving kindness meditation,
Then I'll be able to be kind all the time.
Bad news,
There's no consensus on how long it takes to master any form of meditation.
The big question here is this.
Must kindness be generated,
Or is it something that occurs naturally?
If it must be generated,
Then we've no choice but to figure out a means of doing so,
Or we're all going to hell.
But what if kindness is a function of our natural condition,
And all we need do is stop obscuring that natural kindness with clinging,
Aversion,
Desire and reification?
Then all we'd have to do is relax.
Imagine you're sat on a park bench,
Perfectly peaceful and content.
What reason would you have to be unkind?
You'd have to dream one up,
Wouldn't you?
You'd have to fabricate a reason to be unkind.
This,
Dear friend,
Is the clincher.
We are so thoroughly trained into fabricating reasons to be unkind that we consider this to be natural.
And that's so important I think it's worth repeating.
We are so thoroughly trained into fabricating reasons to be unkind that we consider this to be natural.
Now,
There's a really,
Really good reason for this,
Which is survival.
When food was scarce,
Our ancestors had strong motivation to be unkind.
We can imagine how generosity back then may well have led to death by starvation.
But I wonder,
When was the last time you fought over a scrap of meat?
Survival,
If you're listening to this talk,
Is almost certainly taken care of.
So now you can relax,
Right?
Right?
But we don't relax,
Do we?
That old circuitry in the brain,
The self-preservation instinct,
Is now best defined as hyperactive.
We have an abundance of food and water,
We have shelter,
We have clothing,
We have medicine,
Yet still we think twice about whether to buy that homeless person a sandwich.
Now,
We can stack generated kindness on top of this,
And that's a really wonderful thing to do.
See homeless person,
Think twice about buying them a sandwich,
Generate kindness,
Buy sandwich.
But there's another option.
Be relaxed,
Have no good reason to not buy someone a sandwich.
Sounds a lot simpler to me.
So the next question,
Of course,
Is how do we relax?
And this is the basic question that wisdom teachings are meant to answer.
The Buddha taught for 50 years,
Giving all kinds of advice to all kinds of people.
But what it all comes down to in the end is this.
Relax,
Chill out,
Take it easy,
Be cool,
Rest.
And if we could just follow these simplest of instructions,
There'd be no problems,
No worries,
No reasons to not share a sandwich.
But the Buddha was wise,
And so he made concessions.
He saw that lots of people couldn't take that simple instruction to chill out.
So he shared methods and practices like loving-kindness meditation and Anapanasati.
Most of us feel that we need to engage in these methods for some amount of time,
And that's perfectly fine.
Whilst we're engaged in dualistic perception,
We're going to be doing something,
And meditation is vastly more healthy than binge drinking.
But let's remember that the whole game is to relax,
Relax,
And enjoy the natural kindness that remains when reasons to be unkind are absent.
