When asked how he is able to remain calm and happy despite his exile, tensions between Tibet and China, and the struggle to keep his culture alive, the Dalai Lama laughs. “My religion is kindness,” he explains. Consciously practicing tolerance and compassion for yourself as well as your “enemies” can reframe negatives into positives.
In the best-selling The Hidden Messages in Water (Atria, 2001), author Masaru Emoto demonstrated that water exposed to affirmations, words of gratitude, and prayer formed more beautiful crystals, as shown through his photographs. Emoto concluded that we can affect the structure of water in our own cells by repeating kind words, promoting health and peace. Mainstream scientists may cringe at Emoto’s research methods, but Richard Davidson, a neuroscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has proven that Buddhist monks who meditate on loving kindness and compassion emit more powerful brain waves and generate more activity in the part of the brain that is responsible for positive emotions. There is indeed a positive physical reaction to thinking good thoughts.
Loving Kindness, or “metta” meditation, is a Buddhist practice that cultivates an open and loving heart. Practicing kindness meditation can be as simple as reciting a mantra out loud. Phyllis Pilgrim, director of spiritual practices at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, has participants in her programs say: “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I live with ease.” Repeat the mantra substituting yourself for the name of someone you love, then someone you feel neutral about, casting the net wider, and most challenging someone who has caused you pain or anger. Some practitioners then send the message to the world, but Pilgrim has participants bring the mantra back to the individual because we have to be kindest to ourselves before we can be kind to others.
It’s not as easy as you might think to be kinder than necessary, which is why religions are devoted to its practice. The Bible also tells us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. While the Talmud says, “The highest form of wisdom is kindness.” In the late 1980s, David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist, surveyed 16,000 subjects in 37 cultures around the world about their most desired traits in a mate. For both sexes, the first preference was kindness (the second was intelligence). It’s universal to crave kind words and thoughts.
The hardest part of practicing kindness is replacing resentments, which limit our compassion, with acceptance, which expands compassion. As Jack Kornfield says in his book A Path With Heart (Bantam, 1993), eventually you can meditate on your mantra or practice loving kindness anywhere in traffic jams, on buses and airplanes: “It will calm your life and keep you connected to your heart.”
By Judy Kirkwood
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