Warriors do not concern themselves with peer pressure, peer approbation, or being socially accepted. Warriors make their own decisions about the needs of a situation based in awareness and kindness. Warriors do not feel the need to always do what everyone else is doing. Warriors do not wait for others to take the initiative or let the opportunity to help pass by because of a fear of making the first move. Warriors do not fail to practise the wholesome deed because nobody will see it. Warriors always have the energy to bother. They do not indulge indifference just because their lack of involvement does not appear to matter.
Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor´dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2006, ISBN 978-0-9653948-4-0, chapter 8 Spacious Passion in Passionate Space, page 183
If we are kind and warm, we will tend to expect others to be kind and warm. We will approach others with an optimistic attitude. If met with aggression we are less likely to respond with aggression, because this is not the stance from which we began. Greeting people in a kindly way offers them the opportunity to respond in a kindly way. If they do not, this does not need to unseat our kindness. We can simply remain kind. If aggression does upset our kindness so that we respond defensively, then we were ‘wearing’ kindness as an artificial definition, rather than as the nature of our being in the present moment. If the wearing of kindness is a good-hearted attempt to become a compassionate person developing awareness, then we can simply acknowledge that we lost it that time, let it go, and re-dress ourselves in kindness. If we do this often enough over a long period of time, eventually our ‘cloak’ of kindness becomes the quintessence of our being.
