Small Kindness

  Coming back from a 5 day meditation timekeeper retreat, I begin to realize that there is a simple kindness that everyone has, which can arise when the right conditions are in place. That sounds a little bit silly, but what I want to share is that the kinds of qualities that timekeeping are meant to arise in people are really the conditions in which kindness can manifest. Some of those qualities include humility, attention to small details, and the ability to take care of the different signals for the sake of the practitioners. There is a kind of interaction between person and environment which is really delicate yet so crucial to the process of being an effective timekeeper. After coming out of this retreat, I start to develop a different sensibility toward volunteering. I start to realize that every little bit of attention I give to something truly counts in the final result, and it adds (or detracts from) the professionalism of a finished work.
   What's the relationship between this kind of care and kindness itself? Well, I have found personally that when my ambitions in life are very big, I don't have the ability to see what's in front of me. Conversely, seeing simple details in the here and now can furnish endless opportunities for small yet significant moments of kindness. Life sometimes furnishes examples. On the way to the Chan Hall, a practitioner whom I was talking to turned around very swiftly and warned the woman behind him not to step on a caterpillar which was slowly inching along the ground, soft and furry. I was quite moved by the fact that this practitioner so quickly spotted the caterpillar in so brief a period of time, as though he had eyes in the back of his head! It was as though every living creature was precious to this man, and he showed it through his behavior in that split second.
   Kindness also seems to come with appreciation. When I am not trying so hard to be really good at something, but take a moment to appreciate what I can do in this moment, my personality naturally becomes softer. During the timekeeper training, I tried to do a kind of "perfect" prostration in accordance with the regulations. When I couldn't quite do it, of course, I did feel inadequate. Yet afterwards, I reflected that this is what I can do at this time, and it can certainly improve as long as I have the blueprint of what a prostration might look like. I don't need to be there right now or right away, but I can let that blueprint grow on me somewhat, until it becomes a part of me. This is very much like the metaphor of planting a seed.
     I think what stops kindness is the habitual tendency to look for more, to want more in little time, and to compare ourselves with others. Another aspect is the anxiety that comes from thinking in an all or nothing way: it has to happen now or never, I am either all good or all bad, and so on. These kinds of polarizations don't mesh with the reality of how things grow in the natural world. Again, to use the metaphor of seeds, trees never grow into their full size overnight. Part of the beauty of seeing a tree is precisely that it grows in its own way, at its own pace, using the natural conditions it needs around it to find its own growth.
   What I am suggesting is that if a person changes their mindset a little bit, they can find themselves becoming softer in their personality. It's not necessary in these cases to rush through life, and one can savor the delicate aspects of life in a state of movement and change.