Buddhist Acts of Compassion
This collection of real-life stories reads like an antidote to a world  that sometimes feels cruel, overwhelming, or just plain rude. In a sense, this  could be called "Chicken Soup for the Buddhist Soul," with each story offering a  stirring example of how we can spread loving kindness and compassion throughout  the world. Editor Pamela Bloom collected 40 first-person stories of compassion  as told by Buddhists from all over the world. We hear the story of a monk who  welcomed a dying, underprivileged child into his home, giving the boy nine  months of peace and attention before his death. A civil rights protestor tells  how she learned compassion and love for the "opposition" from a jail  cellmate.In the introduction Bloom explains that readers do not have to have any  affiliation with Buddhism to appreciate the underlying principle here--the fact  that acts of compassion not only relieve the suffering of others, they relieve  our own suffering. "Loving sentiment begins to arise out of our deepest  connection to all life," she explains. As a result, acts of loving kindness  "become appropriate to the situation without leaving any messy imprint of the  'do-gooder.'"--Gail Hudson