Unlock Joy Through Kindness, with Andy Puddicombe

(mouse clicks) (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) (soft calming music) Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to Radio Headspace, and to Tuesday morning. I wonder if you can remember the last time that either you did something for another person, completely unconditionally, no sort of idea of receiving anything in return, or perhaps the last time somebody did something for you, acted with unconditional kindness, unconditional generosity, no matter what their circumstances. There's something really interesting in the formal practice of generosity. And I know that can sound a little bit strange in some ways 'cause we might think that generosity and kindness is all about spontaneity in the moment, and in many ways it is, as it's certainly the naturalness of it. Over time, I think we can actually sort of transform generosity so that it's no longer based on this idea that we're gonna get something back in return. And we may well think, "Well, I'm not expecting anything in return," and maybe we're not. But I think more often than not, there is like maybe this idea, even down to the simple thing, like maybe we hold a door open for somebody and the person just walks through without any kind of acknowledgement. Somewhere, maybe not in everybody, but somewhere maybe there's a feeling inside of us that says, "Oh wow, they didn't even say thank you." So there was some generosity in opening the door, but maybe there was also an expectation of thanks in return. Maybe it's we're about to pull out onto the road or something like that and we allow another car to go past. There are lots of different situations in life where there is an idea that maybe we're just doing something 'cause we are kind, but actually there's some kind of expectation attached to that. And I was thinking of this in relation to an exercise that we used to do at the monastery where I lived. And once a day, in some monasteries twice a day, we would come together for food. And although there wasn't a lot of chatter at the table, we would set the table for however many people there were and we'd sit down to eat. (plates and utensils clanking softly) But we would always leave one seat free at the table, and we would always have one plate free in the middle of the table. And it was a really nice sort of exercise that we would do, at the start of every meal, you would look at your plate, and you would take the nicest looking thing on the plate, you know it's a plate of food, but somehow when we look at a plate of food, we normally kind of identify the bit that we would most like to eat, the bit that looks tastiest. So we would take this little bit of food, small amount, and we'd put it on the plate in the middle of the table. Now the idea was...