The Kindness Of Others

Venerable Sangye Khadro guides a breathing meditation to calm the mind and leads an analytical meditation on appreciating the kindness of those we hold near and dear, whom we don't know, and whom we find difficult. Meditating in this way helps us to find something to appreciate about every being we come into connection with and strengthens our wish to be of benefit to them.

Transcript

We'll start with meditation on the breath and then we'll do a meditation on how we can cultivate more kindness and compassion,

Openness towards others,

Which is always useful.

Okay so get your body into a comfortable but conducive position for doing meditation.

Try to sit with your back straight but let your shoulders relax.

And in fact try to have your whole body as relaxed as possible.

Try to be without tightness or tension anywhere in your body.

And notice if there are thoughts in your mind that are not related to what we are doing.

Any thoughts of the past or the future or problems or issues,

Just put all those thoughts aside for now.

You can always pick them up again later but give yourself a break.

This is good for you to give yourself a break from thoughts,

Worries and so on.

Then become aware of your breathing.

Again don't control your breathing.

Always allow your body to breathe naturally,

Natural steady rhythm in and out.

And then try to keep your awareness on the breath for each inhalation and each exhalation of each breath,

One breath after another.

And whenever the mind wanders away,

Which it will,

That's natural,

You get distracted by a sound or some thought pops up in your mind or anything else,

Anything other than the breath.

Just notice that that has happened.

Let go of it,

Come back to the breath.

And try not to get upset with yourself if your mind does get distracted away from the breath.

It's actually a good thing that you notice when your mind has become distracted.

That's something most people don't notice.

So just the fact that you notice when your mind has gotten distracted and gone away from the breath,

That is a good thing.

So you can pat yourself on the back for that,

Not literally but mentally.

Just feel,

Oh,

This is good.

This is a sign of improvement.

And then,

Yeah,

Just let go of the thought and come back to the breath.

So let's do that for about 10 minutes.

Okay.

Let's do it.

Okay.

Let's do it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

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Okay.

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Okay,

So you can relax.

Open your eyes,

Change your position if you need to.

So,

For the second meditation,

I thought it would be nice to do a meditation on cultivating kindness,

Loving kindness for others.

There's a number of different methods,

But this one has us contemplate the kindness of others.

Now,

Kindness,

Of course,

Can mean people being nice to us and giving us gifts and smiling and speaking in a nice way to us and so on.

But it doesn't only refer to that.

There are other ways that people are kind to us that we may not normally recognize as kindness.

For example,

Every day we eat food,

Probably quite a lot of food,

Several times a day.

And many people never really think about where the food comes from other than,

Okay,

I go to the shop or I go to the restaurant and buy it.

The production of food requires a lot of people and a lot of time,

Starting with the farmers who grow the food.

Most of our food is grown in farms.

And that takes months of sowing the field,

Putting the seeds,

Letting the crops grow,

Taking care of them,

Making sure they have enough water,

And then harvesting them,

Cutting them down,

Bringing them to either the market or to a factory where they're made into pasta or put into packages,

Rice,

And so forth.

So there's a lot of people involved in the whole process of preparing food,

Producing food.

And probably most of those people we never meet,

We never have actual interaction with,

But we benefit from the work that they do.

If they didn't do the work they did,

We wouldn't have food to eat.

So that's an example of kindness.

Those people who produce our food are kind,

Even though we may think,

But they're not doing it for me,

They're doing it to make money,

To support themselves.

But we don't know that.

I mean,

Many people do feel very happy about the work that they do,

Thinking about how it benefits others.

And whatever their motivation is,

Whatever their thoughts are,

The point is we benefit from that.

We benefit from the work that they do.

It's kind of a different way of thinking,

But if we get used to that way of thinking,

It helps open up our mind more and more to other people,

Even people we don't actually know.

So that's just a general idea.

But normally in this meditation,

We start by thinking about our parents.

Now,

All of us are now adults,

Our bodies are fully grown,

Fully developed,

But long ago when we first came into this world,

We were tiny,

Helpless,

Unable to do anything for ourselves.

We wouldn't have survived if it weren't for other people taking care of us.

And most of the time,

The people who take care of us are our parents,

Our mother and father.

If that's not the case with you,

If you were raised by other people,

Then just think of them.

Think of whoever it is that took care of you when you were in that state of your life.

Tiny,

Helpless,

We can't remember that.

Okay.

I don't think anybody remembers being an infant,

Being a baby,

Your first movements crawling on the floor,

Standing up,

Walking.

I don't think we remember those things,

But we can imagine it and just get a sense of how much we were dependent on other people and how people were there to take care of us when we needed it.

So think about that.

And then we'll go on and think of some other examples of kindness.

But this is a really powerful meditation just to realize how we are not so independent as we think.

We tend to feel I'm independent,

I can do what I want,

I can take care of myself.

But in fact,

That's true to a certain extent,

But still we do need others.

We do depend on others and others are there for us when we need it.

So this is a really helpful way of opening our mind,

Opening our heart and starting to feel more appreciative of others,

More grateful to others.

And that paves the way for having more kindness and compassion for others.

So once again,

Get into a good position for meditation.

Clear your mind of other thoughts that aren't related to the meditation that we're doing.

Put those thoughts aside for now.

Decide to really focus on the meditation to the best of your ability.

So start by feeling your body.

So right now your body's probably fully grown,

Fully developed,

Healthy,

Strong,

Full of energy.

You're able to do lots of things and you might sometimes feel I am independent.

I can take care of myself.

I can do whatever I like.

But this wasn't always the case.

There was a time many years ago when this body was very,

Very small.

The body of an infant.

We probably can't remember that,

But we can use our imagination.

We've all seen babies and we know what they look like.

So it's helpful to imagine yourself as a tiny newborn baby.

And just to have that tiny body,

You are completely dependent on your parents.

There's no way bodies can come into existence without a mother and a father providing their body parts,

The egg from the mother,

The sperm from the father.

Just to have this body that enables us to be alive,

Do all the things we do,

We are dependent on our parents.

So they were kind in that way,

Providing us with our body.

And most probably they didn't just provide us with a body and then deserted us,

But they took care of us when we were small and helpless.

Just spend some time imagining yourself as this tiny baby and how you needed your parents to feed you,

To change your diapers,

To hold you and comfort you and give you affection and attention and take care of your every need because you couldn't do anything for yourself.

Thank you.

And then as our body grew and we grew older,

Our parents and other caregivers were probably also our first teachers,

Teaching us the most basic things like crawling,

Walking,

Talking,

Saying words,

Using our hands to feed ourselves,

To put on our clothes and so on.

We do those things now without thinking,

But we didn't know those things when we were an infant.

We had to learn them.

And it was probably our parents and other people who taught us those things,

Who helped us learn those things.

And they also provided us with our needs,

The food that we ate,

Clothes that we wore,

Toys to play with,

As we got older books to read and so on.

It's also helpful to think that parents spend a huge amount of time and energy looking after their children,

But it's all volunteer work.

They don't get any salary for doing what they do.

There's no wages they collect at the end of the month.

They do all that work for free from their heart out of love.

Another group of people we depend on in our life are teachers.

Once we got old enough to start going to school,

Then we had teachers who taught us the most basic things,

How to read,

How to write,

How to add and subtract.

Then as we grow older,

More and more things,

Enabling us to have enough knowledge that now we can get jobs and take care of ourselves,

Earn money,

Travel if we want to.

All the possibilities,

The opportunities we have in our life are there because of our teachers spending a lot of time and energy patiently teaching us.

Okay.

So everything we own and use and enjoy comes from others.

Other people and sometimes animals provide us with these things.

For example,

Food.

Think about just one meal that you eat,

Maybe the last meal you had or the meal you're going to eat later.

Just think of the components of that meal,

The different types of food in that meal and where they came from.

Probably most of them started off in a farm,

The farmers working,

Producing the food,

Other people harvesting it,

Picking it,

Bringing it to market or factories,

People working in shops,

Supermarkets,

Cafes.

Just get a sense of the huge number of people that had to work in order for you to have that food.

Okay?

This is to give you an idea of how you can contemplate how you are dependent on others,

How others provide you with the things you need and use and enjoy in your life.

And if this contemplation does give rise to a feeling of,

Wow,

I'm really grateful to other people,

They do so much for me,

Then see if you can bring that to the thought,

I would like to be kind to them in return.

I would like to do whatever I can to be helpful to other people and to the world.

I would like to use my life in such a way that I benefit others and I benefit the world.

Reviews

Lovely. Imagine how wonderful the world would be with more kindness. Thank you.

Gratitude!!!

thank you for sharing this beautiful meditation 🙏🏻 namaste