Anatomy of Kindness

 In my research on a possible upcoming book about Loving Kindness practice, I came across Kevin Griffin's book Living Kindness. In fact, I read this book before, but I believe it's one of my favorite treatments of the subject. Rather than seeing loving kindness as some kind of touchy feely prayer that elevates a person to a blissful state, Griffin grounds his ideas of loving kindness in real lived experience, without sentimentalizing it by making it only a fanciful thought. In fact, he provides many examples that show the difficulties that many people face when trying to extend loving kindness to all beings everywhere including those we have difficulties with.

  During my walk home yesterday, I asked myself, what makes for kindness exactly? Being an analytical sort, I am naturally one to try to break down something into discrete parts. I believe these parts could be described as "respect for complexity" "openness", "curiosity", "trust", and "humility". To summarize these points:

1) Respect for complexity: rather than concluding that something is the result of one thing (which usually leads to an attitude of blame) or results in one thing (which usually entails regret), looking at things with kindness means taking a more holistic approach and seeing that all results from interconnected and complex situations. In other words, a kind mindset steers clear of dualistic or hard-lined thinking, opting for a softer and more flexible approach to viewing situations

2) Openness entails an ability to see and feel things the way they really seem and feel, as opposed to trying to block out painful emotions. This may seem antithetical to kindness, but it seems that being kind requires tolerating difficult emotions and placing a certain kind of embrace around them so that we feel that they are tolerated. A soft openness, however, also suggests not attaching too much to one emotion or another--that is, to see that emotions are not who we are but rather they sit within us

3) Curiosity entails the desire to understand--to really understand the why without going to a place of labeling or condemning something. Curiosity continues openness with a state of inquiry into the why that does not attempt to change it into something else. Both openness and curiosity pertain to a sense of acceptance but also of wanting to know more and how things connect

4) Trust--trust means that we can be ok with uncertainty and allow that whatever is happening does come together even if it hardly makes sense in the beginning. A trusting mindset is one of faith in mind, that we are more than the sum of our identities, roles, etc.

When I put these elements together, I may get something close to kindness, although it's important to really feel a sense of optimistic and warm beholding, rather than treating these as neutral. Kindness is an effort in itself to see things in a way that we appreciate who we are and what we contribute as well as others around us.