Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye from “Words Under the Words”

Grief

"Let your grief be as full of joy as it is of sorrow.  Let it be proof of how much you've loved, how deeply you've allowed life to live in you, how wide the river of your heart has become.  Instead of turning away from love so as not to invite loss, love fully, and learn to grieve."  Inayat Khan

Happiness

"Happiness is the joyful participation in the sorrows of the world."  Joseph Campbell

Feeding the Fire

"If you aren't feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn't have anything to feed on.   It peeks and passes on.   Instead of relating directly with sorrow or loneliness or the anger, we think that the way to end it is to blame it on someone else.   We think, curiously enough, that this will make the pain go away.  Instead, acting out is what makes it last."   Pema Chondron

Acceptance

"Learn the Alchemy
true human beings know
The moment you accept
what troubles you've been given,
the door will open.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off. That undressing,
and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief."


Rumi