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"My Religion Is Kindness"

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to explore the phrase, my religion is kindness, which is commonly spoken by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. So when we hear that phrase, my religion is kindness, I think for most of us, this hits home because it points to something fundamental to all spiritual and personal growth paths. It points to a basic truth about how we're able to show up in the world when we wake up. We're able to be kinder.

Love and its expressions in kindness, compassion and gratitude are an intrinsic part of our deeper nature. But when we get caught up in the mind and it's conditioning, these natural qualities may lie dormant or only partially expressed. But as we go through the process of waking up through mindfulness, we learn to be gradually free, more and more free from being caught up in the mind and it's conditioning and we learn to abide more and more fully in this loving awareness. As the sixth Zen patriarch once said, "Do not tell me that awareness and kindness are different. Awareness is the foundation of kindness.

Kindness is the expression of awareness." So if this loving awareness is innate to us, then what blocks us from feeling it, from expressing it? Or we spend a lot of our day-to-day life caught up in a haze of thought, caught up in the mind. And the way the conditioned mind is programmed, is it operates like a survival machine. Thanks to evolution, our minds constantly scan the environment for danger, a problem and threats. The mind tends to be hypervigilant and has a bias towards noticing the negative and thinking about what could go wrong. This conditioning gives rise to stress, anxiety, negativity, shame, and a constant background feeling that something's missing, something's not okay yet.

We're not okay yet. When we're caught up in the mind, when we're caught up in stress, fear and unworthiness, it can be really hard to be our best selves and be kind. But mindfulness teaches us how to unwind, settle and soothe the conditioned mind while also allowing us to come home to ourselves in presence. Once we're present, then we can let go of being governed by fear and let our actions flow from love. So with that in mind, let's settle and for today's practice.

And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us in this community.

Melli O'Brien

4.7

"My Religion Is Kindness"

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to explore the phrase, my religion is kindness, which is commonly spoken by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. So when we hear that phrase, my religion is kindness, I think for most of us, this hits home because it points to something fundamental to all spiritual and personal growth paths. It points to a basic truth about how we're able to show up in the world when we wake up. We're able to be kinder.

Love and its expressions in kindness, compassion and gratitude are an intrinsic part of our deeper nature. But when we get caught up in the mind and it's conditioning, these natural qualities may lie dormant or only partially expressed. But as we go through the process of waking up through mindfulness, we learn to be gradually free, more and more free from being caught up in the mind and it's conditioning and we learn to abide more and more fully in this loving awareness. As the sixth Zen patriarch once said, "Do not tell me that awareness and kindness are different. Awareness is the foundation of kindness.

Kindness is the expression of awareness." So if this loving awareness is innate to us, then what blocks us from feeling it, from expressing it? Or we spend a lot of our day-to-day life caught up in a haze of thought, caught up in the mind. And the way the conditioned mind is programmed, is it operates like a survival machine. Thanks to evolution, our minds constantly scan the environment for danger, a problem and threats. The mind tends to be hypervigilant and has a bias towards noticing the negative and thinking about what could go wrong. This conditioning gives rise to stress, anxiety, negativity, shame, and a constant background feeling that something's missing, something's not okay yet.

We're not okay yet. When we're caught up in the mind, when we're caught up in stress, fear and unworthiness, it can be really hard to be our best selves and be kind. But mindfulness teaches us how to unwind, settle and soothe the conditioned mind while also allowing us to come home to ourselves in presence. Once we're present, then we can let go of being governed by fear and let our actions flow from love. So with that in mind, let's settle and for today's practice.

And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us in this community.

Melli O'Brien

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Melli O'Brien

4.7

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Melli O'Brien

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