I'm reading The Kindness Handbook, which is the companion to the other Sharon Salzberg book I read. She was talking about a program that was run for elementary school students to teach them "mindfulness", i.e. to stop and breathe and think before they act. At the end of the program, they asked the kids what mindfulness meant to them. One kid said mindfulness is "not hitting someone in the mouth" which Ms Salzberg thought was brilliant. I concur.
She was also talking about a study that was done, showing that babies develop the capacity for altruism by the age of 18 months. The experimenter would "accidentally" knock something to the floor and on video you could see the babies look at him to see if it looked like he needed help. If it appeared the experimenter was having trouble, the babies would come over and pick up the object and hand it to him. If it looked like he could get it himself, they wouldn't, and likewise if he clearly threw the object down purposefully, they wouldn't go pick it up. The experimenter would take the object from the babies without saying "thank you" to control against them being reinforced by praise or approval. Pretty cool, right? And begging the question of what kind of experiences in life extinguish that apparently natural human behavior to automatically help someone who is struggling.
Finally, a story about the Buddha himself. He came to stay in a town and the local big shot, who was not a fan, went down to him full of insults and imprecations. Buddha asked him whether he ever had guests come to his house and if so, did he offer them food and refreshments? The guy said, yes, of course. Then Buddha asked him if they do not eat the food and refreshments, who does it belong to? The guy said, if they don't accept it, then it still belongs to me. Buddha said, well, I don't accept your anger and insults. They're all still yours. I like that. Let's all start a policy that, if someone insults us, berates us, says shitty things to us, we just refuse to accept the "gift." They can just keep their toxicity, thanks!
xoxo
2 comments:
Oh my...I love that. Yep, thats being added to my Post It note wisdom collection.
Thank you. :-)
1) very enlightening. I will try to remember that.
2) the man behind those altruism studies is now a professor at Harvard and I work in the same department as him!
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