Seeing the Size of the Cloth: From Broken-Heartedness to Joy

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness"

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

The Buddha on Causality and "Proximate Cause"

Suffering is the proximate cause of faith.
Faith is the proximate cause of elation.
Elation is the proximate cause of joy.
Joy is the proximate cause of calmness.
Calmness is the proximate cause of happiness.
Happiness is the proximate cause of concentration.
Concentration is the proximate cause of seeing and knowing reality.

Seeing the good in someone is the proximate cause of lovingkindess (metta)

Sharon Salzberg, "Suffering as an Opening to Faith" http://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast-episode-21-suffering-as-opening-to-faith/

The proximate faith is considered to be suffering. This is the peculiar teaching...so what is it that happens within some people, some hearts, some minds, so that one comes from that space-one emerges from that space into greater faith, trust, confidence, clarity--these are all synonyms actually. Something quite magical that happens, a kind of alchemy-purification where one takes suffering and somehow born out of it is faith, and I think it has to something to do with this --"seeing the size of the cloth," seeing a larger universe, a bigger picture, maybe having an immense space of heart within which to hold the suffering or the sorrow, because the result of that quality of faith is a also very special kind of happiness. Faith in this sense doesn't mean maybe what we might associate it to mean with earlier Judeo-Christian religions perhaps- but mostly its a sense of as the literal translation from the Pali is to "place your heart upon." [Faith here] means 1) knowing you have a heart 2) knowing it is a valuable, valueable thing when you place your heart somewhere--that it is no small gift 3) being able to make that gift, to place your heart somewhere, to make that kind of offering means confidence-trust-clarity-- a joyful giving that honors yourself in the giving. a very very special kind of happiness.

Lasim lev שים לב (lit: to place your heart) pay attention