Do you feel kindness more for people directly in contact with you or far from you?
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
i think there are two types of persons : one social and other not-social (i.e. meaning those who like to be alone).
i am not a social person. the only persons i have in my life are my parents, my wife and my daughter. i have colleagues at office, but my talking with them is only work-related. neither i am interested in sports or movies, kind of a boring person i am. i think it also is related to the way we are brought up. i am the only child of my parents.
on the other hand, my wife is a social person. in her family, she has 2 brothers and 2 sisters. she talks with them frequently and is also in contact with her other relatives. even though she does not study about compassion and kindness, i find that she is much more compassionate and kind than me.
even though i might feel some compassion for the people, who are far away from me, like in news if i heard some suffering somewhere else in the world - but when it comes to people who are in direct contact with me like my family, i usually find myself criticizing my parents, criticizing my wife and scolding my daughter.
So thought of asking you all that do you feel kindness more for people directly in contact with you or far from you? Are you a social person or a person who like to be alone? How do you develop kindness in you for others? please suggest. thanks in advance.
Comments
I think that is common, and that most people experience the same. It is easier to be compassionate for people who we do not deal with their faults and shortcomings every day. But those are also the greatest opportunities for us to practice as well. Learning how to generate compassion by thinking about it, imagining the people suffering and conjuring empathy for them is a good thing. But putting that feeling into action takes things a very necessary step farther...and the people in our daily lives offer us the best chance to do so.
@misecmisc1
My kindness or impatience with others is simply a reflection of my own moment of practice.
Within a meditation practice , the boundaries that define self and others soften to the point of insignificance so that far or near become one. Here empathy applies to whatever sense info is being received
Outside of a meditation practice , the boundaries that define self and others, are continually maintained as the definitive empowerment of our own ignorance. Here empathy is conditional to the protection of a self over others.
Being social or introverted is neither an innate help or hindrance to the development of one expression of empathy over the other.
Can you please explain the above statement in more detail? Do you mean that by kindness, we leave the sense information as such and do not try to change it through our intention.
So does kindness need a self to manifest itself? Then how does an awakened person, who has removed his ignorance and who lives in the moment, act kindly and have compassion for others? Is it not the case that to act kindly to another person, we have to initially think that there is another person separate from us and that another person is in pain, so we need to act kindly towards that person?
Please tell. Thanks in advance.
Why does any of that actually matter, exactly?
Just be Kind! It really doesn't matter about enlightenment and kindness, does it?
Kindness needs the desire to be kind, and as the Dalai Lama says,
"Try to be kind whenever possible.
It is ALWAYS possible."
Within a meditation practice , the boundaries that define self and others soften to the point of insignificance so that far or near become one. Here empathy applies to whatever sense info is being received.
Empathy is just reality unfolding where the selfish self stops obscuring it.
Within the confines of a self verses others perspective, the application of kindness remains of secondary importance over the maintenance of that perspective.
That self is just a dream construction whose operating program limits empathy to the interests that best serve that construction. That operating program manifests through our habitual manipulations of all of our sense info.
A meditation practice is our active withdrawal from continuing to propagate those habituated responses. Here, empathy manifests naturally as the boundary's between self and others starts to dissolve.
Being social or unsocial, near or far, while it might affect an empathy hobbled by self interests, has little to do with the wider empathy found beyond the self's dream.
It is very easy to feel compassion (and enjoy it!) for people we see on TV or read about. I try to not get carried away by such feelings too much. I don't think that's even real compassion-- it's more of sentimentality.
A stressed coworker? A cranky wife? A sick and depressed parent? I have to make quite an effort to keep it together in those situations. And when I manage to cope and to be even a little helpful in such cases, it's a very different "compassion". Doesn't have that sweet aftertaste like compassion for someone on TV but rather a refreshing icy feeling like a gust of cold sea wind. Or like sore muscles after a long hard climb. That's the kind of "compassion" I need to develop more.
Indeed.
Poor little kitten. Don't be cruel to [insert celebratory/character] of choice. A sort of projected compassion. It is all rather self indulgent pseudo emotion. Generated in safety and seclusion from the real . . .
The people around us might respond to our emotions. Kind of in a real way . . .
Sentimentality is pseudo emotion. The reason we are critical or find it more difficult to generate real emotion to those we know is due to knowing their flaws.
We do not waste our money on undeserving beggars, love on flawed Angels, metta on the ungrateful . . .
In short we love ourselves, our opinions and tightness. Love is expansive not restricted or discriminatory. The average person is selective in their 'love'. The great Mystics and examples follow their heart and give their love.
Simple really in theory. Takes practice . . .