Stories of Kindness from Around the World

It feels sooooo goooood when we plant little seeds, they stay there dormant and then flourish :-) For a year and a half I tried to do a kindness week at my daughter's school, sent the head teacher endless links to Ted talks, gave smile cards to pupils and teachers, etc..

When I had to stop volunteering at the school ,I just let things go until this month when I got the following front page school bulletin that made me believe that education is changing in the right direction.

From the Head Teacher: " Dear Parents, Kindness and Compassion (“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” - Dalai Lama).  As you may already know from recent bulletins, the school has developed seven ‘core values’ as part of the launch of our new status later this year to become a sponsored academy.

One of our values is ‘kindness and compassion’ and this is my reflection on what this could mean for our school community. I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives, but the key to developing compassion is to try and make it a daily practice.

How do we do that? I read somewhere about different practices that we can try out and perhaps incorporate into our everyday life. Here is one you can try out.

Morning ritual Greet each morning with a ritual. Try this one, suggested by the Dalai Lama: “Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” Acts of kindness start within.