Kind People Should Live

 Kind People Should Live

What is kindness? Perhaps it should first include a love that isn’t overly extravagant, a compassion that doesn’t forget those near or far, and a giving heart with clear motives. Beyond that, the pursuit of beauty, the insistence on truth, and even a devout faith in a benevolent religion likely don’t exceed the scope of kindness. By this measure, there should be many kind people—but in reality, that’s not entirely true. Kindness requires the right environment.

Humans are animals, or more vividly put, humans are “soft-bodied creatures.” This means that compared to other animals, human desires, emotions, and spiritual worlds—perhaps even including the soul—are far more elastic. In opposing environments, people with similar temperaments might emerge; in similar circumstances, entirely opposite temperaments might take shape. This phenomenon can’t fully be attributed to differences in biological genes, uncontrollable random events, or even the universal endpoint of life. It’s quite fascinating. Thus, when discussing the external environment needed to foster an individual’s kind temperament, we can only speak in broad terms. Focusing solely on the individual risks veering off course. And when viewing kindness through such deviations, demanding kindness in an unfair environment feels somewhat unjust. Here, “unfair” likely refers to both extremes: promoting kindness in an environment of oppression or excessive freedom carries an air of fantasy; cultivating kindness in a closed-off or overly open setting feels like asking too much of people. Put another way, fairness, freedom, and openness are relative concepts. From a societal perspective, the essence of the “middle way” might lie in balance.

How does societal balance come about? Society is a collective, and regardless of its size, the desires, emotions, and spiritual worlds of individuals—perhaps even their souls—must find equilibrium within the group. This is somewhat like searching for the boundaries of the universe on a physical level. The kindness of one’s temperament is like a microscope or telescope in that search: with it, you might still not find the boundary; without it, you certainly won’t. From this angle, the social value of people with kind temperaments becomes strikingly clear. Only when there are more people with kind temperaments can a benevolent social environment begin to take shape. And only a benevolent social environment can nurture more individuals with kind temperaments. This is likely a virtuous cycle. Of course, many times it can also spiral into a vicious cycle—one that often starts more easily and accelerates faster. Power too readily turns inward, and when power becomes excessively self-serving, what are the people under it living for?

What are people living for? Is it to embrace happiness? Sometimes, it should be. Is it to endure suffering? Sometimes, it has to be. More often than not, joyful things don’t last long, while a simple knot in the heart can torment someone for a lifetime. Birth, aging, sickness, death, joy, sorrow, and perhaps countless moments of loneliness—all might be part of every individual’s self. In the end, people live to complete themselves: to find an anchor for their self-worth, a resting place for their emotions, a life that leans toward positive meaning, and the strength to bear both happiness and suffering. The vitality of the self, the emergence of a selfless Buddha-mind—perhaps the temperament shines through in the balance between the two.

So, it could be said that a person with a kind temperament, no matter what kind of social environment they live in—sometimes truly boundless in its darkness—no matter how they end up living—sometimes utterly despairing—should still persist in living. Lowering desires, tempering emotions, enriching the spiritual world, and even holding onto a hope that the soul might find some degree of redemption in the end—they should still persist in living.