‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye

‘Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.’

From a yoga perspective I keep coming back to it and finding something different to relate to and unpack. There’s the obvious resonance with non-attachment and impermanence in these lines isn’t there?- ‘feel the future dissolve in a moment, like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved’

But my mind keeps wandering to something about how, from a yogic perspective, that perhaps we’re striving to transcend the need to experience that loss ourselves to be able to respond with kindness and compassion.

Yoga Sutra 1.33 reads

‘maitri karuna mudita upeksanam sukha duhkha punya apunya

visayanam bhavanatah cittaprasadanam’

‘The mind becomes clear and serene when the qualities of the heart are cultivated: friendliness toward the joyful, compassion toward the suffering, happiness toward the pure, and impartiality toward the impure’

Isn’t this ‘cultivation of kindness’ at the heart of our work, “The mind becomes clear and serene when the qualities of the heart are cultivated.’ Its this beautiful idea that we all have loving kindness, peace and generosity within us and that it can be cultivated, like a plant, that it might grow stronger and blossom and become the lens through which we view the world. And that perhaps is why my mind wanders away from that poem to the thought that, as beautiful as it is written, I like to think that we should not need to experience such loss to know kindness, that its always there?

Or is there a misunderstanding. I came across the context of the poem itself, and its a powerful story. The author was travelling across a remote part of Colombia on a bus when it was robbed. A man was killed and her and her husband lost everything – money, passports, ID, the lot. The poem came to her, she says, while sat in a square just after a complete stranger approached – witnessing her desolation – and displayed a gesture of loving kindness to another stranger – a ‘rich’ America tourist in her moment of great need.

So maybe the yogic lesson, and its relation to the sutra 1:33 lies in the story behind the poem and its example of compassion to ward the suffering of others, rather than the poem itself?

I don’t know, simply musing on some beautiful words and a heart -warming story. Inconclusive I know! And probably wrong, but after all its a social media post not a thesis, so you’ll hopefully let my mind wander 🙂