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    The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion
    The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion
    The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion

    By Sharon Salzberg

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A friend criticizes you. You grow impatient with someone you’re trying to help. A cell phone user annoys you on a train. Would your first response to these situations be kindness? In The Kindness Handbook, Sharon Salzberg explores with insight and clarity how kindness for ourselves and others can be the quality we choose to steer our lives by.

    From the foundation of this transformative practice and its entry point through you, to its daily expression in your life, this book features a thoughtful collection of anecdotes, stories, and practical tools to inspire kindness for any life situation. The Kindness Handbook is your personal companion to explore the rich landscape of kindness—and help you see just how it might shift and open up your life to greater joy, meaning, and compassion.

    “For kindness to be more fully realized, it needs to be distinguished from being ineffectual or meek. It also needs to be infused with wisdom, supported by courage, and threaded with balance.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of The Kindness Handbook

    "This book is like having Sharon and her gentle wisdom on call, 24-7, to remind you that in every moment, kindness can make a huge difference in how the next moment unfolds, in yourself and in others. This simple practice will light up and lighten your life.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses and Arriving at Your Own Door

    “Sharon Salzberg is a powerful teacher of the enduring value of kindness. Here she brings her teachings to us in a beautiful and accessible form through moving stories and powerful exercises. The world needs more kindness. Sharon is showing us the way.” —Roshi Joan Halifax, abbot at the Upaya Zen Center

    “With the deep wisdom gained by her many years of dharma practice and the greatness of her Being, Sharon leads us gently with confident strength and inspiration down the path to true happiness and love. Sleep with this book under your pillow!” —Krishna Das, author of Flow of Grace

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSounds True
    Release dateOct 1, 2008
    ISBN9781591798286
    The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion
    Author

    Sharon Salzberg

    Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, and her seminal work, Lovingkindness. Her forthcoming release, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom, is set for release in April of 2023 from Flatiron Books. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has amassed six million downloads and features interviews with thought leaders from the mindfulness movement and beyond.

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    Reviews for The Kindness Handbook

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      In this book Sharon Selzberg explores with insight how kindness for ourselves [and others] can be the ideal by which we guide our own lives and destiny.Thoughtful and insightful, she uses many illustrations throughout as examples. Numerous quotes from Budhha, the Dali Lama, and Martin Luther King, Jr.If for no other reason than to gain perfect harmony and peace within yourself, everyone should read this perfect little work on kindness. I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      I think this book has changed my life. Sometimes i would want the author to go more in depth on some topics like contentment but this book is of a handbook nature indeed, it touches on many different aspects of kindness. And is written with immense compassion, understanding of our humanity - good and bad - and has many amazing insights to take to real life and just see for yourself they are true and they work. I am very grateful for this book.
    • 3/5
      Salzberg shares the way we can subtly shift our thoughts and actions toward compassion.And, in doing so, we can change our lives.

    Book preview

    The Kindness Handbook - Sharon Salzberg

    day

    Introduction

    It takes boldness, even audacity, to step out of our habitual patterns and experiment with a quality like kindness—to work with it and see just how it might shift and open up our lives. This book is an invitation to do just that. Kindness can manifest as compassion, as generosity, as paying attention. It can be offered to ourselves, to those whom we know and hold in high regard, to those whom we find difficult, to friends, to strangers, to all of life. For kindness to be more fully realized it needs to be distinguished from being ineffectual or meek. It needs to be infused with wisdom. Kindness needs to be supported by courage and threaded with balance.

    Sometimes the practice of kindness brings ready, joyful results. Other times it takes an awful lot from us and is exceptionally hard—but it still feels like the right thing to do. Sometimes the most important recipient of kindness is the one most commonly overlooked—ourselves. Other times forming a dedication to care for others is the single most important thing we can do to experience and abide in our own genuine happiness.

    This handbook is a collection of stories, meditation exercises, inspirations, poems, and teachings, all pointing to the power and grace of kindness. There are three main sections: The Foundation, which examines the fundamentals of lovingkindness, compassion, and a truer sense of happiness than many of us experience day to day; The Entry, which explores several different dimensions of love and compassion for ourselves, the oft-hidden ingredient that establishes kindness as a real possibility in our relationships, families, and work in the world; and The Expression, which carries kindness into multifaceted arenas in our lives, looking at how our deepest aspirations and day-to-day realities come together to remake our lives in the midst of ordinary circumstances.

    Through its meditations, anecdotes, and readings, this book is designed to be used progressively if you wish, as a guidebook through the wide-ranging landscape of kindness. It can also simply be opened to any page—what is being presented on that page may help frame a contemplation on what is being presented in your life.

    the Foundation

    The Underpinnings

    of Kindness

    As the Buddha said, Just as the dawn is the forerunner and the first indication of the rising sun, so is right view the forerunner and the first indication of wholesome states. Our view of who we are, what we are capable of, what matters in the world, molds our intentions, which in turn mold our actions. How we look at our lives becomes the basis for how we act and how we live and whether our choices are shaped by love and kindness. Transforming our understanding transforms our whole life: our happiness, our degree of connectedness, our freedom. None of these are fixed in the particular externals of who we are; they are held in the universal potential of what we might become.

    The Search for Happiness

    I have a friend who went to India a while ago, and the day before he was going to fly we had a phone conversation. It turned out he was going with another friend who had made all of the travel arrangements, and this person hadn’t realized that for just a little bit more money they could have flown business class instead of economy class, which of course on such a long flight would have been far more comfortable. We were speaking about whether they could manage to change their tickets, if there would be a penalty, and how much nicer it would be to go business class. If they could arrange for the upgrade, they reasoned, they would arrive rested instead of exhausted and unhappy. Right in the middle of this conversation about moving into business class, my friend said, I wonder how much it would cost to go first class?

    I know that state of mind so well. As soon as you get into business class, you start thinking about first class. This is how we are conditioned—there is always something else to want, even before we take a moment to appreciate what we already have, or are about to have. The variety of opportunity and circumstance is infinite. We get into a mind state of looking for an upgrade, and another upgrade, and yet another; it can be endless. Living more consciously is about turning around the habit of always wanting more. It is about deconditioning, about getting out of such constricted mind states and discovering a radically different kind of happiness—one that is not so vulnerable, that does not lead to certain dissatisfaction. We need to loosen our grasping and our clinging, and we need to have the courage to step out of our conditioning.

    An essential question we might ask ourselves is, What do I really need right now, in this moment, to be happy? The world offers us many answers to that question: You need a new car and a new house and a new relationship and ... But do we really? What do I lack right now? Does anything need to change in order for me to be happy? What do I really need? These are powerful questions.

    When I have gone on retreat in Southeast Asian countries there is generally no charge for staying at the monasteries or the retreat centers, where all of the food is donated. Often it is donated by groups or families who come to the center to make the offerings. I’m sure that all of these groups of people offer absolutely the best that they can afford, but each day what is provided can differ quite a lot depending on the circumstances of those who are donating. Sometimes it is a lavish, bountiful feast. Sometimes it is quite meager, because that is all that the family can provide.

    Time after time, I went into the dining room for a meal and looked at the faces of the people who had made the offering, since they commonly come to watch you receive it. They would look radiant, so happy that they’d had an opportunity to feed us, to offer something that would help sustain us. They seemed so happy that we were going to be meditating, exploring the truth, and purifying our minds and hearts on the strength of their offering. In that moment, when they were so genuinely grateful for the chance to give, I would ask myself, What do I really need right now in order to be happy? I realized that I was getting fed a lot more by their joy and delight than I was by the actual food.

    The Dalai Lama has said, If you are going to be selfish, be wisely selfish. In other words, if we carefully look at our lives, we can see that we spend an awful lot of time looking for happiness in the wrong places and in the wrong ways. We yearn to be happy, and this is right. It is appropriate; all beings want to be happy. The problem is not in the urge, or yearning, but in our ignorance. So very often we don’t know where happiness is to be found—that is, true and genuine happiness, abiding happiness—and so we flounder, and we suffer and cause suffering to others.

    As I go through all kinds of feelings and experiences

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