A History of Kindness

[Luke]

I always found it depressing that most of what we call "history" is simply the details of how certain groups of people killed other groups of people for land or other economic resources. Kindness seems to play such a small role in what we study in history classes.

For this reason, I thought it would be nice to start a thread in which people could post about great acts of kindness which people have performed in recent times or long ago. The examples don't need to be limited to Buddhists. We Buddhists don't have a monopoly on kindness, and I find the actions of many kind people of other religions (and of no religion) to be very inspiring.

I will start with the story of a Chechen surgeon, Dr. Khassan Baiev, who risked his life repeatedly to perform life-saving operations on the children of Chechnya. Both the Chechens and the Russians put a price on his head because he treated both Russians and Chechens. He didn't discriminate. He wasn't an activist or a politician pushing any political agenda. He simply tried to heal as many people as he could with his own skills and limited supplies.

Here is a video about him:
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWe8O-Fx ... re=channel
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLgVO8jo5vg

The video reminded me about how much suffering there is in the world everday and about how important it is to show loving-kindness to all our fellow human beings. I hope that one day I will have even a fraction of the courage and compassion that this man has.

Please post your own inspiring examples of amazing kindness.

[dumb bonbu]

Chiune Sugihara

Visas for Life
the remarkable story of Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of Jews