Suitable Kindness

We need to remember that most of practice can be summed up in kindness. -- Charlotte Joko Beck

"I remember, the first year I came here late Hélène van Horn took me sightseeing in Holland and we visited a place where they used to weigh females and give you a certificate ascertaining that you had a certain weight, thus stating you were not a witch. That was done in your own country (Holland?), just a couple of miles from here and a couple of centuries ago. It is like that in the east, in India, in China, in Tibet, everywhere. Somehow the world-culture in a certain period decided that the female body was inferior. Whatever the reason may be, culture or not, it is there. That is why Tara made the decision that she would like to remain a female and function as an enlightened being in female form. Maybe Tara was the first feminist.

This is a very important point and it gives us two different messages; one: compassionate people like to take difficult tasks; two: liberation of the female can be done only through a female. (Is this a blind political statement?) In a way it is true; problems of human beings can only be solved by human beings. I don’t think the gods are going to solve the human problem. They can help. I also understand that the Tibetan problem has to be solved by the Tibetans; the others can only help. So male problems can only be solved by males, and the women can help, and vice versa, the female problems can only be solved by women, and the men can help. So, I am the only one that can solve my problem, and you people can help. Which means that each one of us can only solve his own problems, and the others can only help. That means that you are responsible for yourself. You see this when you look at the society and when you look at the individual. That is why Buddha said you are responsible for yourself...

Is there anybody who says, ‘I am a mean person?’[One hand goes up.] Congratulations! This is interesting. Even in here where we are with about seventy people, only one raises her hand, so the others identify themselves with being a kind person. Or they like to be so. Even the one who raises her hand will like to be a kind person, I am quite sure. But the point is, compassion or kindness should not remain a word, it should associate with feeling. Compassion and kindness are felt at the heart. That is important. Some people, of course, have a tremendous problem being kind. They try to be kind, they try to be compassionate, but there is a big struggle. These struggles are coming from where? In one way you have an intellectual understanding of compassion being something good, kindness being something good. The intellectual understanding is there, yet your habitual pattern, your way of functioning, your emotional moods, take you a different way. That is why you have this internal pull and push. Almost everybody faces that.

One of the problems is that the head says, ‘This is not good, no, no’and the habitual pattern says, ‘Yeah, yeah’. So you pull yourself apart. Really true. You begin to see and think, ‘I should not do this, I did it nevertheless, how bad I am!’And then people have sad feelings, cry, do all sorts of things, all because there is a struggle between the personality and the ideology. It is not the personality, it is the habitual way of functioning. From the personality point of view we a wonderful personality; from the habitual point of view we have mean actions. One person was brave enough to say, ‘I am a mean person’; she raises her hand, admits, and we all just keep quiet and laugh. But if you look into yourself, each one of us has mean ways of functioning, each and every single damned person in here has mean ways of doing. That is human nature, and if you don’t have it you are not a human being, you must be a god, or a cow...

And the wisdom of generosity of looking towards others is: is this particular generosity going to be suitable for this particular person or not? For example, what is the generosity of a chocolate to a diabetic or whiskey to an alcoholic. You see, even though you committed yourself to be very generous and sharing, you have to say no in certain areas. That is how the wisdom of generosity works."

-- Gehlek Rimpoche, The Practice of the Triumphant Ma Healing practices based on the Deity Tara