Our biggest delusion is self-focus and kindness helps you to reduce it. It’s not possible to be self-focused when you’re doing something for someone else.

The second major benefit of kindness is that it fills your mind with good stuff and increases your positive karma (as explained in World View and Samsara), leading to positive benefits in the future.

Thirdly, spreading a little happiness makes the world a generally nicer place.

Finally, looking for acts of kindness helps you be more observant of the world around you and increases your overall wisdom. It’s also beneficial for increasing our mindfulness and awareness in general.

It doesn’t have to be major acts of voluntary service, little acts are sufficient. If you open your eyes and your mind to it, you will see people in a queue who are fumbling to find change, or struggling to get upstairs with shopping, or waiting to get out into the flow of traffic, or looking for directions, or a million other little things. Make someone’s day by helping them out and bring a smile to their face.

I once saw a sign outside a church which said; “what have you done today to make God smile?” That’s probably one of the best ways to describe it.