Hide Your Kindness from the Wicked

What if kindness were not a weakness, but a door closed to the wicked? A simple text, almost childlike, to help us find again the courage to be gentle. But kindness must remain hidden; protect yourself. Show it when there are no wicked people around.

Home / The Satsang blog/ The Revelation

What if kindness were not a weakness, but a door closed to the wicked? A simple text, almost childlike, to help us find again the courage to be gentle. But kindness must remain hidden; protect yourself. Show it when there are no wicked people around.

Kindness must remain hidden. Show it when there are no wicked people around. It is true that the wicked, the unscrupulous, take advantage of kind people, and that this is not pleasant for kind people. But that is no reason to become wicked in turn. Simply hide your kindness and show it only to those who deserve it.

Kindness, a Weakness?

In our societies, kindness is often seen as a kind of social handicap. In France, there is a famous play and film, Santa Claus Is a Stinker, in which one character says of someone: “I don’t want to speak badly of him, but it’s true: he is kind!”

In schoolyards as well as in workplaces, kind people are often terrorized by wicked fools, and very often it is the latter who win. Why? Because the wicked do not care what people think of them, and they have neither scruples nor empathy.

Scruples: Only the Kind Have Them

The word scruple comes from the Latin scrupulus, meaning “a small sharp stone.” Roman legionaries gave this name to the little stones that slipped between their sandals, the caligae, and the soles of their feet. They had to stop to remove them, because the pain and wounds they caused hindered them as they walked.

Sometimes we are afraid to show kindness, to smile, to say kind things. Afraid of what? Afraid that others will take us for simpletons and use our kindness against us. So we keep it for those close to us. We hide it. We are almost ashamed of it.

We Want to Be Strong

We want to be strong-minded, truly strong-minded, someone no one can fool. You cannot pull the wool over the eyes of a strong mind! We see all those people who systematically refuse to believe what the media and those in power say, out of a mere posture of vanity.

But what we are looking for is not to be strong or weak. It is to be happy. Happy with what? Happy without an object, simply because, at every second, we have the chance to be alive, to see, to hear, to feel.

Happiness is not satisfaction. We may be satisfied with a beautiful car, a house, a good meal — but are we happy for all that? No. We confuse happiness with satisfaction, and when we are poor and the social elevator is broken, we despair of ever being happy one day.

Everything is so expensive. The rich, those who have everything, are also surprised not to be happy. So they try to become happy at any cost, amassing more and more, sometimes at the expense of the poor and of morality. But nothing works: happiness is neither in the possession of goods nor in the enjoyment of pleasures.

Happiness is simple, and that is precisely why it is difficult to reach when one is not simple. It is found in the awareness of the present moment, because the present moment contains the treasure that life distills for those who are alive. In every moment there is a simple, gentle, luminous eternity.

Live in Full Awareness

Place your awareness in the present moment, and you will taste the happiness of the moment. It does not solve daily worries, small or great — those are solved by acting as one should, when one should — but it gives what it alone can give: peace.

Find your center again and live in full awareness, otherwise you pass by the very savor of life. Kindness will help you, because the door of the present moment is closed to the wicked. The wicked live on a level of consciousness where that door does not exist — the door that leads to the center of being. Kindness is a virtue, more than a mere quality, like empathy, tolerance, indulgence, generosity, understanding, compassion, scruples, and indignation.

Wickedness, on the other hand, is the elder sister of cynicism, indifference, cruelty, contempt, arrogance, vanity, lies, deceit, hypocrisy, slander, jealousy, and greed.

Speaking of Love to a Wicked Person

When you speak of love to a wicked person, he projects his own wickedness onto the one speaking to him and suspects hidden motives, some shameful intention to deceive him. So he responds with aggression and insult.

The kind person, because he is kind, feels guilty and wonders what foolish thing he has done to provoke such anger. The kind person rarely thinks that a wicked person is wicked. He tends to believe instead that he himself has been clumsy, and that he deserves the other person’s anger.

The door of the present moment is found on a level of consciousness accessible only to the kind. Be kind, even in secret, and know that the wicked are not right. Stop feeling guilty. Do not torment yourself: there is a place where your kindness will be recognized and useful — the Kingdom, in which the strong-minded person does not believe. The strong-minded person believes only in himself.

Beware of the wicked. Remain kind without showing it, and keep away from them whenever possible. Do not be kind to a wicked person: he would take your kindness for stupidity, for proof of weakness or submission, and he would abuse it with cynicism. Do not be wicked toward him either, even if you sometimes have to defend yourself — simply remain indifferent.

The Kingdom belongs to the gentle, the kind, the simple, and the modest. Kindness must be good for something, after all. Enjoy your life while you have it, do what you must in this world of men, and put the Kingdom — the present moment — first among your concerns. Jesus said: “Seek first the Kingdom, and all the rest will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

If you have any questions, please write here:

madhyama.marga@gmail.com