Kindness, Taoism and the Golden Rule

What is Kindness?

Kindness is to live to one’s essence.

The core of Taoism is about kindness.

The sage releases their own stories, while accepting the stories of others.

The sage is kind to the kind and also kind to the unkind: for virtue is holding to kindness.

Being as a child, within grace, when allowing ourselves to percieve and embrace essence without judgment.
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 49

Generally speaking, people rarely take the time to be kind to themselves in how they spend their lives. Being kind means being equal in the transactions you do have for life’s balance sake.

The golden rule is a lifestyle choice to help people walk a kind path and balance their actions.  Most people know the golden rule like this:

Do unto others as you do unto yourself.

The question is, do you see how the golden rule can become unbalanced? Stated in this manner, people often take the rule only to be nice to others. Let’s balance this statement out a bit:

Do unto others as you do unto yourself.
Do unto yourself as you do unto others.

You see, while the first line could imply the second line, in the literal sense, it is unbalanced, and people fall into the trap of only pushing kindness outward. Sadly many people miss that implication and then only push out kindness to others and forget to be kind to themselves!

When helping another person balance, who has given too much, the first thing you must do is remind them to be kind to themselves. To show a person, it isn’t kind to give away too much if it means diminishing your essence so that later you cannot help another.

Kindness requires balance.

The Heart of Kindness is Simplicity.

Never use kindness to control others. Too many leaders fall to the dark side and use unkind tactics for purposes of control. Hence, you will often find fear, conflict, forced conversion, segregation, and other unkind tactics to force others to follow doctrine or laws from politicians and pulpits. Such tactics are always self-defeating since in being unkind, they harm the very person inflicting them. Sadly this is only apparent in the long view of things, so patience tempers kindness.

• Ask yourself: Am I living kindly?
  Do I treat others with Kindness?
  That is, do I treat others as if they share the same essence of life as myself?
  If not, then ask yourself why not?
• Examine any leader’s actions and ask, are they Kind?
  That is, do they treat others as equals?
  If not, then ask them: why not?

Unkind acts are those actions trying to control something in an unbalanced manner. As a result, all unkind actions will always create unbalanced situations. If you are stuck, trying to solve a problem that always seems to spin out of control, or if everything you try fails, then re-look at the problem and try instead to use kindness in how actions are applied.

Kindness is not: always be nice.

Kindness is to treat everything with respect and as part of the same essence as yourself.

This is why applying kindness is such a difficult process to grasp. Kindness requires balanced actions. To always be perfectly nice is as unbalanced as always being terrible. In chasing stories, people seek intricate answers and drama.

In being human: it’s a personal choice if we make kindness complicated or simple. We are in awe of people like the Dali Lama because he chooses to make the process simple. But the real truth: it’s a personal choice. It’s in every person’s grasp to choose simple. So remember, when you are tired of making life complicated, try * simple * for a change of pace.

Release making kindness hard and live simply.

How to Work with Unkindness

Right now, many people feel we are living in an unkind culture. People find their actions of kindness are lost to the greater greed of a Consumption-based society.

So people look outward for saviors and hope

The truth is, we

• Don’t need new ideas on how to save the day. Someone may come along to re-package old ideas in a new manner to start a movement, But the information needed is already at hand.
• Don’t need a person to save us.
  In the end, we each save ourselves; if you have to follow another person to become yourself, then ironically, chances are you aren’t truly living in your own heart.
  We follow others not to discover our hearts; we follow others because we enjoy their company and have like-minded destinations to explore.
• Don’t wait for the government to change. We are the government; we don’t save the day only by voting. We save the day by including other actions and building a better place now. Let’s face it many of the laws of the last three decades have been laws imposed to limit people’s rights. We need normal individuals to get back into politics and remove special interests from the process. Will this be easy no, but it requires average people to step up, live, and be active in their life, and for us all to start being involved in politics. Not only by voting for the parties or special groups but by being the ones to get voted in!!!
  We need everyday people in government jobs to get brave enough not to fear to lose their jobs but rather doing their jobs for the people. Too many people work in government only for the job as salary rather than to live life in public service. I have worked in and for the government for many years. I’m not claiming high moral ground. I understand the problems a government worker faces, and sadly the system has evolved to force government workers not to be effective. This has to change. The only way it will change is if people stop complaining about the government and get themselves involved at all levels to support the government processes. The United States is “We the people”. As long as “we the people” and “government” are at odds, then the government “Isn’t of the people”. It’s this polarization that opens the doorway for special interests to take control of the process.
• Don’t let crisis take you away from your essence. Many times people in quarter-life and midlife crisis are struggling to rebalance their life. It’s easy to give up power to others. A crisis is a time to redefine your life. Make crisis kinder by being stronger in yourself. At first, it won’t feel kind as you make others uncomfortable with your changes. They will push you and try to force you to fit their essence. This is a challenge to balance out what you need compared to what they need in life. This means you won’t find one perfect answer that keeps everyone happy. Take care of yourself, then those you love and do your best to balance your answer. If they don’t like your path or answer, you can then move on in life. Don’t give up your power in the path of being kind!

Embrace Kindness

We create relative to the reflection of our actions.

so

We receive what our actions reflect.

For example:

• Those living in conflict will inherit only ashes of the past
• Those supporting Big Business will primarily end up as cancer victims, as they reap the toxicity produced. Too many people have bought into the consumer model, and a large part of the price of that consumption is cancer, diabetes, depression, chronic fatigue, and so many other diseases.

As kindness represents our essence.

Then only kindness reflects what we are without distortions!

People living to kindness will inherit a world worth living in since it will be a world:
of the people
for the people
by the people…

Living kindly isn’t idealism; it’s a reflection and how our actions reflect who we are in life.

Use this as a guide to help understand if you are helping things or making things worse. Then make life corrections accordingly if you want the world to be a better place.

If what you are doing is causing conflict or waste or illness in any manner, then that’s the major clue you are not acting kindly nor truly compassionately. Such conflict can break our very soul apart. Sometimes in the kindness, we need to reconnect to missing parts of our life and soul.

It isn’t easy to act kindly. There is much we inherited that must be cleaned up and many mistakes we have made also. We seek shortcuts, and the truth is we must remove Judgment from how we measure kindness.

However, we each have an entire lifetime to practice it and get it right.

Being kind is doable if we just, do it.

Continue to Part  2 – Kindness and Morality

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