This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations by people like you. Thanks for coming on such a beautiful day. And I'll try to speak for just the right amount of time. so that you'll have an opportunity to go outside at the right time. Today, I'd like to speak about what is kindness. Michael and I are in the process of leading a practice period that many people are trying to do. The practice period is a period of sustained reflection on the subject.

[01:00]

And the name of the practice period that we're doing now, which will go for eight weeks, is A Thousand Hands and A Thousand Eyes, leaving no one behind. This was before we remembered No Child Left Behind, but the idea is that really The practice of kindness leaves no one out. And so, even though this is San Francisco Zen Center, and this is a Zen talk, a Dharma talk, on Zen teachings of kindness, I'd like to include some teachings and quotes by other people, besides people in the Buddhist lineage, because this is really a universal human subject. which the Buddhists have happened to have studied for a long time. I've been studying this subject of kindness for quite a long time, and the longer I study it, the less I know what it is.

[02:20]

And I don't mean that in some fancy Buddhist way. But just in a normal human way, the more I try to study and practice kindness, the less I'm really sure that I'm right, the less I'm really sure of my ground, and the more I have to ask or include other people in that definition. And so I looked at some examples of teachers and their lives, Buddhist teachers and their lives, in talking about kindness. And maybe the best quote I came across was from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Buddhism from Tibet. but now exiled, and so he's really a human leader, a leader within world culture.

[03:25]

He said, when speaking about Buddhism, my religion is simple, my religion is kindness, my religion is kindness. So what does that mean? So one thing about kindness is that we all know what it is. I don't think there's a single person who doesn't. And so when I try to find out what it is precisely, as Michael was talking about last week, there's a precision in kindness and a discipline in kindness. So I was trying to find out, well, what precisely do we mean when we say kindness? So I did what many people do now, and I Googled it.

[04:31]

Thanks, Google. This isn't an ad. They didn't ask me to say anything about them, but it's very helpful. And I found out that most of the definitions of kindness use the word kind. in the definition itself. So clearly there's an assumption that we know what it is. So here's some samples. The quality of being warm-hearted, considerate, humane, and sympathetic. Forgivingness, the tendency to be kind and forgiving, or a kind act. Wikipedia gave a good definition. Kindness is the act or state of charitable behavior to other people. It was considered to be one of the knightly virtues and is a recognized value in many cultures and religions.

[05:34]

See, ethics and religion. There was a quote about kindness, there's a page called Quotes About Kindness. Kindness is a language which the dumb can speak and the deaf can understand. So it means you don't have to be able to hear. And Mark Twain even said, Mark Twain said a similar thing about kindness. that it's the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. In other words, it's a universal language. It doesn't depend on particular sense faculties being the same as everybody else's. And then I also noticed when I was reflecting on kindness that the word has different translations.

[06:39]

They're different words for what we think of in English-speaking language, English-speaking culture, as kindness. There's words for things like kindness in many different languages, and they all mean something slightly different. They all emphasize a slightly different activity. So I also Googled translate kindness. to see the words. And I'm sure my pronunciation is going to be atrocious, and I'll ask for some help. So Afrikaans, because it began with an A, says, and please, if anyone's a native speaker of any of these languages, please say it out loud and let me know if my interpretation, you know, or let me know what the the heart of the word is.

[07:44]

So I got for Afrikaans Frendeligkeit. Frendeligkeit. So it means the heart of a friend, right? Okay. Similar to Dutch. What's the Dutch? Dutch is with a V, I don't know. Oh, Vorkomendheid. Vorkomendheid. Which means loving heart. What is it in German? Freundlichkeit. What is it in Spanish? Bondade? From goodness? What do you think? Is that what you would use? No? How would you say kindness? But he said, well, he said... For Portuguese, they gave bondad.

[08:46]

And for Spanish, they gave amabilidad. Amabilidad. What's the feeling of amabilidad? Amiable. Amiable. So that kind of friend thing? Yeah. Yeah, like amigo. Okay. And then they gave Latin. was benevolentia or humanitas, humanitas. So there's something about being human, human heartedness. And Italian gave gentilezza or bonta. I don't know how to pronounce it. Gentilezza? Okay. Gentleness. What is it in French? Gentilles. Gentilles. What is it in Russian? Anyone? Huh? What does it mean? Good-heartedness.

[09:49]

Good-heartedness. How about in Chinese? Anyone speak Chinese? Anyone? I'll get back to you. Huh? They're away. Any other languages that Anyone speak Hebrew? Which means goodness. Korean? Anyone? Vietnamese? Any other languages? from loving-kindness. Okay, so it sounds like we're getting a theme of loving-kindness that maybe I should pay some attention to. So that it isn't like the story of the blind man and the elephant.

[10:57]

Do you know that story? Does anyone not know it? Okay, so I'll say that. This is a story that is taught in many different cultures. So there's a Jain version of the story and a Hindu version of the story, as well as a Buddhist version of the story, which is given someplace in the Adhanas. And so there was a king who asked six blind men to gather together and tell him what an elephant was. And so he had an elephant. And so the men were sensing the elephant.

[11:39]

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