(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be beneficial!)

Whenever I write about kindness, generosity, compassion etc., someone will ask me “Before we help someone, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves if the person deserves\is worthy of our help, generosity and kindness”?

Here’s what the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (SMR) tells his students in response to the view — (that our help should be conditional) that underlies that question:

Especially I think these days it is a sense very much of materialistic culture where everything is appealing to our sense of satisfaction and us wanting. And often when we need to give we become uncomfortable. We might actually feel like whoever we’re giving to is not worthy….. Being kind to another person doesn’t necessarily mean, or be determined by, the action of the other person. It’s just that kindness is appropriate. In fact, the more the other person is suffering or irritating, in a sense, the more kind and compassionate we should be. <source: from Seminary at Shambhala Mountain Centre, Colorado, July 17, 2010>

In short, while we usually practice conditional (“what-can-I-get-out-of-this”) kindness, we can now practice unconditional kindness. And while we might feel uncomfortable at first, we get to like it!

The benefits of practicing unconditional generosity:

• the mind becomes happier, less claustrophic, enoyable for everyone; and
• we create “tremendous merit and benefit personally for our own personal lives, as well as for the community…and the world as a whole” (SMR) because our intention is pure, not bound by ego.
• we are open to receive; if we are open to receive, then we grow.

There is no better reality than the one we live in – where a good heart can be realized. – Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche

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