The Joyful Journey: How Far Can Kindness Take You?

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How Far Can Kindness and Compassion Take You?

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As we excitedly await the follow-up film to Tashi and the Monk, we are thinking about the power of kindness and compassion and wondering: 

How far can kindness and compassion take us? 

We know that kindness has taken us a long way already. 

Before Jhamtse Gatsal was a community, it was an idea. 

“What I want to do,” the young monk Lobsang Phuntsok would say to almost everyone he met, “is to create a community for unwanted children that will be a Garden of Love and Compassion.” 

At that time he had none of the external resources he needed to realize his vision. What he did have were seeds of love and compassion and the wisdom needed to nurture them. 

From the power of these seeds our community came into being.

The first 34 children who arrived at Jhamtse Gatsal in 2006

Lobsang teaches that each one of us contains the seeds of love and compassion. They germinate first in our intellectual minds, but our hearts are the only places where they can truly grow, and through their growth transform the world. 

In his way of thinking, the Garden of Love and Compassion isn’t only located in the Himalayas. 

The Garden is also in all of our hearts.

To truly know how far kindness and compassion can take us, we each need to attend to our hearts. 

A society built on peace, kindness and compassion isn’t possible unless each person begins with themselves. It starts with how we treat ourselves.

But what does that look like?  

Compassion is subtly different from kindness. 

It’s the ability to recognize suffering—and to respond with care, understanding, and a genuine desire to alleviate it. 

Compassion is unconditional; it doesn’t pick and choose based on our likes and dislikes. 

Compassion is for all beings. Because each one of us is included in “all beings” as we learn to cultivate the seeds of compassion, we focus not only on compassion for others, but also on compassion for ourselves. 

Compassion for ourselves is not selfishness. Instead, compassion for ourselves allows us to approach our own suffering with the same loving kind heartedness we would offer a dear friend. 

We could be gentle with ourselves when we make mistakes, reminding ourselves, “I’m human, and I’m learning,” instead of spiraling into self-criticism. 

We could pause in difficult situations to ask, “What do I need right now?” or say, “That’s enough for today,” rather than pushing relentlessly on. 

As we practice treating ourselves with compassion we create a safe place inside ourselves. This allows us to very gently open up and notice parts of ourselves which we might not have been able or willing to see in the past.

Lobsang teaches that:

All awareness starts as self-awareness, seeing all sides of ourselves, even the dark sides. . .  Awareness is unbiased, it allows us to see the wholeness of things. Only when we see ourselves and others in this way can we truly cherish all beings.

We develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, and with this understanding become better able to love and care for others.

How far can kindness and compassion take us?

We invite you to continue exploring this question with us as we launch our new film, to be released in spring of 2025: 

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