Ideas to Nurture Kindness and Compassion
Please add one or more ideas to nurture kindness and compassion by choosing 'Add Comment' at the bottom of the page. Seeds of Compassion focuses on children and all those who touch their lives, so we're very interested in hearing from kids! For example, how can your school be a kinder place?
Listening
- Compassion begins with listening. Teach kids how to listen...and listen to them.
- Through quiet, centering and inviting a compassionate presence to be with me in whatever feelings or situations I may be encountering/experiencing. Let that presence deepen in me.
- One way to increase deeper understanding and appreciation of another's Path is to respond to the question: What is it that others say about your faith that hurts you? And the follow up question: What is it you most want others to know about your faith? We learn most by allowing ourselves to listen.
Learning
- Working with children in the Dharma School, as well as modeling it in my life. Being mindful that every choice is an opportunity to choose love or to choose fear, and choosing love.
- Look for the lovable little 4-year-old within everyone you meet to soften your heart and bring a twinkle to your eye: this always helps me assume good intentions beneath the person's story or complaint. And of course I must do this for myself: cultivating self compassion gives me the capacity for compassion for others.
- One should learn something from the trees. When they achieve 50-60% of their annual lives they return the heat and beauty they have received from the sun and turn into beautiful shades of yellow, orange and red. When people achieve maturity (in years) they should learn to be generous, kind and helpful to all people around them. Personally, I try to be extra nice to all young people; it gives me joy to do so and it takes so little to make them happy.
- Teach it [compassion, kindness] in our schools.
Art, Poetry, and Storytelling
- I have many ideas and they are bound up with the art forms that I practice, poetry and storytelling. I have countless examples from personal experience working with young people. I think that web sites re: the poetry of compassion and kindness and the poems and stories that people create in response to them, would be a powerful way to spread this positive life enhancing spirit. I also believe that intergenerational programs that result in community readings and performances are of tremendous value in spreading kindness and compassion.
- My father's mother used to sing this song, "An Evening Prayer," by C. Maude Battersby, to me. While its words reflect a Christian God, its lessons regarding compassion are universal:
If I have wounded any soul today,
To teach me personal strength and the equality of all people, my father had me memorize "If" by Rudyard Kipling:
If I have caused one foot to go astray,
If I have walked in my own willful way,
Dear Lord, forgive!If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
Taking Action, Setting an Example
- Send clothing to those less fortunate, especially in our own back yard.
- Focused humanitarian efforts shared by individuals and groups involved in the effort.
- Smile at people. Slow down. Show unexpected kindness. Find something affirming to say to each person you meet. Talk to children with respect and love. Notice the lonely. Listen well.
- The next time you feel judgment toward another person, dig deeply into your own essence to act with the love and peace you wish to see in the world.
- Turn off your TV and PC. Give children as much screen time hours per week as they are years old: ten 10 year old, ten hours per week, two year old, two hours per week. Buy a bird feeder and keep it filled. Yes, pigeons sill invade, yes, a hawk will come and hunt and kill in your yard, yes the squirrels are thieves. Be compassionate towards yourself when you are angry or frustrated about the little wrens and chikcadees getting shoved out or eaten. Understand that you are clinging to your own notions around wanting this to be a certain way. Keep doing this even if it is a little costly or starts to get boring. What are you noticing about your self? Go outside of your home and greet people you don't know.
- A little smile goes a long, long way! I have always benefited from the kindnesses of strangers and aim to be kind to "strangers" in return--it goes a loong way, even if you yourself never see the results!
- Look in the eye of each homeless person with kindness.
Comments
Compassion is a beloved cousin of communion... And communion is what mother and baby experience during pregnancy. They partake the same blood, soulful vehicule of life. It will be the most formidable white revolution the day communities all over the word will lovingly surround pregnant mothers with a supporive environment. Beautiful gardens, as well as places for them they to enjoy the synergy of their fecund bellies while painting, singing, sculpting, embroidering, weaving, writing poetry and meditating, would be an invaluable gift to to future of human civilization. A compassionate way to equip each incoming child with a well formed brain, a neocortex capable of compassion, empathy, insight and intuition. Then, yes, good parenting and good education will bring great fruits. A womblife impregnated with sorrow instead of joy, anxiety instead of hope, monotony instead of creativity, breeds future perpetrators of the ubiquitous violence that has plagued humanity for millennia. From epigentics to prenatal psychology, from cell biology to social intelligemce, we have enough evidence for understanding the crucial social relevance of pregnancy and start acting now for the well-being of expectant mothers. Godspeed to "Seeds of Compassion". Laura Uplinger
I look upon this website with much awe and delight!
I wondered why there hasn't been much use by the public yet, and I thought, well, how does it feel? Is it inviting me to respond to an invitation to change, or an invitation to celebrate who I already AM?
On this page, or another, another good conversation to have would of course be:
What are seeds of compassion to you?
Is compassion a 'somthing' you can give, or a space you hold for truth to occupy when it's particularly hard to see? Or something else?
What are you doing already to cultivate seeds of compassion?
If those are the seeds, what fruit did they come from? - what blossom, what need for compassion in the past, are you now able to meet?
How do you CELEBRATE compassion in your life?
To me, an important part of cultivating seeds of compassion is cultivating the eart/space I make for these seeds. I work with children as well as adults, and compassion for Self is the skill that allows us to sow seeds of compassion without even trying :-D
Seeds of Compassion - for me - are like dandelion seeds - a radius of softness all around, and a cloud of wonder left behind, and a taproot that is deep and centered, inspiring all my seeds, flying or caught tightly, to root and grow and live and bloom as well, all in good time.
Just a few of my practices of self-compassion:
1) As a woman, dancing is more effective than sitting meditation for me. For some people, other artforms are better, or cominations work best. I have a practice of dancing once a week in a group where there is clean, spiritual intent: I go to tap into my divine essence, who loves me and all beings as Self, as One, even when I felt like I didn't 'deserve' it... and I allow the music to move and heal and reveal and bring home my body to me. These are just some of the gifts that this practice has allowed me to bestow upon myself more and more easily:
- Curiosity
- Ability to not take things personally, good things and uncomfortable things
- Ability to be still and move at the same time
- Discipline in listening to my body's wisdom, and, later, Alignment of mind-smarts and body-widsom
- Invulnerable Vulnerability: being able to be Real all the time (actually, a higher standard for Love, Openness and Authenticity from myself in all of my interactions)
- Peace of mind
- A sense of belonging, rootedness, and community
and much, much more...
These Gifts I have cultivated in myself have been what friends and strangers alike thank each other for every day.
2) I celebrate all the things I do with compassion, and focus on modeling my behavior in difficult moments on my own compassion successes. Compassion starts with myself, so I allow myself to stop mid-thought when I notice that I might be beating myself up for not being compassionate.
3) I celebrate all the people who I have good feelings about immediately, and convey in no simple terms the consequences of their actions on me... and never saying things that compare them to me or others, nor using words like 'they' or 'most people'. I keep it personal and allow for extrapolation of the positive.
4) I celebrate my own gifts to others, and allow myself to focus on moments that felt really great to my body. Deeds and thoughts are indistinguishable from one another. With practice, I can now recall copious amounts of blissful body-sensations quite easily just by pausing while having one such moment, and saying, "What wonderful things have I been experiencing from This Place inside me?" That practice makes it happen more often, too, because when I start feeling Compassion/Passion/Peace/Bliss... I recognize it and can focus on it... and the way I act is inundated with Joy and Oneness!
5) I allow my goals and perspectives to change and shift, trusting that I am always seeking deeper truth. For instance, after I finally allowed myself to realize that I loved to cook, but felt lonely, as well as entitled to more cooking care than I give (timewise) or can pay/bargain for... I relaxed! and I realized that I was ready to live with other adults and each fulfill once-a-week cook duty. The home that beconed for me almost immediately already had such a system in place... Now I receive 4 home cooked meals and give one - every week!!! And the goal is to make it a 4 or 5 star meal on a green-local-bulk budget ... FUN!
Giving the Gift of Compassion for Myself has given me the space and frame of mind to be Everything I Know Myself To Be Deep Inside for EVERYONE else.
What have you been giving yourself?
What works for you?
How familiar are you with the path to the Well of Love to draw from any (and all the) time?
How would it be to LIVE there?
In my life experiences I have came to the understanding that to feel compassion one must learn to forgive. Forgiveness is the basis of compassion. From this understanding life experience, Jesus has been the one to show me this walk. Without him I was failing, and falling into a darkness that is unbecoming to myself. God is Love. Love is compassion. Compassion is simple.
When you are searching change in love look to Jesus, and you will find stronger, complete love. You will find God. Your compasision will overflow.
Love Always and God Bless
Angela jp
Exploring Tenderness
Tenderness is active. It caresses and loosens. It unfastens and affirms.
Tenderness affirms the fragility of life. It nurtures and nourishes.
Tenderness is flexible and harmonious. It is strength, in an ocean of vulnerability.
Tenderness is assertive. It affirms values and the wisdom of growth.
Tenderness is personal. It opens our defences to face our inherent softness.
Tenderness sprouts, grows and blooms compassion and love.
http://nadiipp.googlepages.com/home
Tenderness evokes creativity. It accesses the unexpected.
Tenderness is decisive. It is vision without blemish.
Tenderness consults patiently. It responds from consensus.
Tenderness is practical. It chooses actions, which respond to needs.
Tenderness informs our struggle with mortality, maturing it into a glowing presence of acceptance.
Tenderness liberates the past into the present. It balms the pain of betrayal while dancing in the esteem of accomplishment.
Tenderness unifies the present, with an holistic and hopeful acceptance of the future.
Tenderness is reflective rather than reactive. It evolves intuitions that work.
It’s vision is broad. It includes what it can. It levels barriers. It designs optimum futures. Its structures complement and are benign.
Tenderness is the height of reason.
Tenderness is wisdom.
Tenderness is beauty.