The Force of Kindness by Sharon Salzberg

Author:Sharon Salzberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781604077445
Publisher: Sounds True

I had an illustration of the possibility of experiencing happiness in the midst of challenge in the summer of 1999. The Dalai Lama had come to New York City for several days of teaching at a rented venue, followed by a large public talk in Central Park. Entering the park on the morning of the public talk, I at first didn’t see the crowd, but I could hear the sound of Tibetan monks chanting in the distance. Walking toward the sound, I finally turned a corner and was stunned to see a veritable ocean of people. Everywhere the eye could land there were people, gathered to hear the Dalai Lama. Some estimates had the crowd at 250,000.

We sat in an unusual kind of quiet for so large a number, waiting for the Dalai Lama to begin speaking. And when he did begin, he began with a statement I found startling. He said, “In many ways, it hasn’t been such an easy life.” He went on to describe how he had to assume temporal power at the age of sixteen, flee into exile in his early twenties, daily try to keep a culture in exile intact, daily hear of the devastation and suffering going on inside Tibet. “In many ways it hasn’t been such an easy life.” Indeed.

Then abruptly he giggled and said, “But I’m pretty happy.” And of course this is what one sees in him. Despite his burdens, he doesn’t seem weighed down, morose, or hopeless. And clearly this isn’t a conventional kind of happiness, the fragile joy of getting what we want until it shifts, or being able to hold tightly onto something for a while as a totem against change or death. It’s a different quality altogether, a quality sustainable in varied life circumstances, pleasant or painful. He continued, “The reason I am pretty happy is because of the force of compassion. Compassion makes me feel at one with everyone.”

The Dalai Lama’s statement was particularly striking because of the 250,000 or so of us sitting there. I bet a lot of us could have said, “It hasn’t been such an easy life.” But not too many of us could have followed that with, “But I’m pretty happy!” This is the transformative power of compassion, which can directly experience unhappiness and yet have kindness born from it.

Compassion reveals familiar barriers like disdain, enmity, and division to be constructs built by culture or custom or personal needs or fears—but not necessarily fixed in stone, inevitable, or inherent in our being. How much better it is to feel at one with everyone, even if life is hard, than to be embroiled in bitterness, or for us to decide that it is better to be without friends because we think we cannot afford to care for anyone else.

When we see how quickly life just disappears, how even the longest life span is over in a flash, we realize how important it is for us to create the conditions that help us most quickly, most directly, and most strongly move toward true happiness.

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