Kindness is evidence of impenetrable strength. It is the willingness to stay soft in a world that tries to harden you at every corner. It is the ability to absorb your own emotions and diffuse them, to decide what you want to act on and what you want to put back out into the world, regardless of what the world has put you through.
Brianna Wiest • The Pivot Year
So, why cultivate loving-kindness? It is not to pacify our grief and outrage, but rather to protect our hearts from becoming what we despise. We cultivate loving-kindness even for those that contort themselves into defending ethnic cleansing because it’s in confronting our deepest revulsion that we touch the depths and power of our buddha nature.
To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can
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