This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Happy Hour: To Love the Tender Human Condition Starting with This Fleeting Moment

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Happy Hour, everyone. Lovely to be with you, practice together in this moment in time, whatever the time zone might be for you around this special globe of ours, this planet Earth.

So, what I'd like to invite us to practice with today is mettā^[1], kindness, goodwill for the human condition, for this human condition that we are a part of. We have a mind, we have a body, we are a denizen of this planet Earth. And being human has so many joys and so many challenges. This human condition on this Earth, both internally and externally. Internally, of course, there are the three poisonous roots^[2]. They're called the roots: greed, hatred, confusion. It's clinging to things that don't make us happy, aversion that comes up even when we don't want it to, and confusion about not knowing, not really knowing any better. Not in our heads—in our heads we might know what might lead to happiness—but from our hearts, not knowing any better.

So internally there are... Oh, I think the meeting is locked. Hold on. How did that happen? Okay, all right. Thank you for letting me know on YouTube that the meeting was locked. Ah, yes, there we go. I'm sorry, everyone. I unintentionally locked it. Well, speaking of the human condition, sometimes you lock the Zoom room without intending to. And yeah, so our minds don't always work as we intend them to. So here we go, to err is human. The perfect example right here, causing suffering for friends who are trying to join but were not able to. So I really appreciate you letting me know, Fred and others on YouTube. That's why I was wondering where everyone is tonight.

So mettā for the human condition. I love that example. Yeah, mettā for the human condition here. We are making mistakes internally, and also externally, so much going on in the world. So much going on in the world, so much strife, challenges in so many different places in the world. So mettā and compassion for the human condition, for all these humans we are part of this humanity. So I think that's all I want to say to set the frame for practicing some mettā, some compassion, whatever arises. Yeah, simple, simple mettā, compassion for the human condition, ourselves included in it. Ourselves included in it. So okay, well, let's practice together. Let's begin.

Guided Meditation

So, landing. Landing in our bodies. Landing here.

Here.

Letting go of any tightness, tension, holding.

Being here with whatever is arising.

Whatever discomfort in the body. Whatever is in the body, softening, relaxing.

Releasing. Releasing thoughts, releasing preoccupations, ruminations. We don't have to be anywhere else than right here.

Opening completely, embracing what is here. Not as wrong, not as a problem, not as something we need to fix or make better. No. So if you're opening the door of your experience and completely, wholeheartedly entering your experience, whatever it is.

Fully embracing your experience in this moment. Not avoiding, pushing away. And by fully embracing, by fully entering it, ah, this experience of being human in this moment. However it's showing up for you. However it's showing up, it's part of the human experience. You are not separate. This is part of being human. It looks like this. If it's messy, confusing, not clean, not concentrated, it's okay. This is what it's like to be human. Ah, what if you didn't try to fix it, change it, entered it and just relaxed?

Relaxed. Opening your arms wide, hugging, embracing it all.

Even if you don't like it, love it. It passes too quickly, it ends too soon. This is it. This is it.

What if you didn't resist, hoping for a better moment, a better day, better this, better that. Completely, fully embraced ah, this moment of being human. It's like this. Okay. Hello. Hi.

Does your heart relax? Does your body relax? Something release?

This wanting, this greed for a better present. This desire to fix it. Enjoy, embrace, even if it's a crowd of sorrows, pain in the body. Part of the human condition. This mystery of being alive.

Let there be the ocean of the breath. With its waves in and out waves.

May not be perfect conditions. They rarely ever are. That's okay, that's perfectly okay. Embracing, loving the imperfection that is this human experience.

And if the mind wanders, don't make it into a problem. Part of the human condition too, for minds to wander. It's okay. No need to judge.

Can you have ease with this mind that wanders? Make your heart a safe place, safe loving place. A patient place, and the mind will wander back taking refuge in the heart. Making your heart, your mind, your body a safe place. A place of refuge. For all the ups and downs and challenges of this human condition.

All the beauty too, all the goodness that is your life. That is manifested in this moment.

All these comings and goings in this heart and mind. This manifestation of the human condition. Can we hold it with care, with goodwill? Have a sense of perspective, maybe a smile. Especially what's happening in this moment, whatever it is.

Noticing if there's any resistance to what's happening right now. Can we loosen the resistance just a little bit, soften it? And if needed, re-enter our experience completely.

Blessings of all these experiences in this moment. The breath, the body awareness. Even challenging experiences that might be showing up.

Oh to be human, oh to be human, to be alive. To experience this moment of this passing show called our life. This moment fully completely. Like a comet passing through the sky. Daringly, brightly. Burning up in the night sky. Loving it fully. We don't have to like it, like every aspect of it, but we can love it. By fully opening to it.

This opening can feel quite radical. Let it feel like a radical opening, embracing. The doors of the heart so wide, so wide, wider than usual. Lean into a wider opening, more than usual. That's what I'd like to invite you to feel into. Opening more wide, wider to this human condition in this moment.

Perhaps the same way that sometimes a cold shower, at first there's resistance. Ah, unpleasant. But then when we actually embrace it fully, open to it, take the cold shower, feel the coolness on our skin, really embrace it, it feels refreshing. We feel enlivened by the energy of life. The fullness of it, even if the water is really cold. Freezing really.

That kind of openness. Opening wide to the human condition in this moment.

Maybe even pain, if there is any in the body, can feel electrifying. I'm alive. This body is alive, it can feel. Wow. Or pain in the heart, I'm alive, I feel. This is being alive, being fully embraced. Fully embracing the human condition. No part left out.

It's also empowering, so empowering. And shift our relationship to challenges, to difficulties. See for yourself.

This full embrace is an act of love. It is loving what is. It's a radical mettā.

It's loving what is with abandon. It's not perfect, it's not as I want it to be. Maybe thoughts come up. Love it fully, open your heart. I'm loving what is, this human condition in this moment.

Loving the impermanence. Love it all. So fragile, so tender.

And as you feel the body, feel the heart. Kicking down the barn doors, opening your heart wide, wide, embracing fully, completely. Arms wide open. To the human condition that's arising in this heart, in this mind, body, in this moment. As best as you're able. Opening the heart wide to the human condition in the world.

I'm going to make some invitations that may not make sense to their cognitive thinking mind, but see if you can follow them with your heart as best as you're able. Maybe something will open up. So here we go.

Opening. Opening your heart, embracing this moment, whatever is arising in the body and the mind and the heart. And opening wide, spaciously opening wide, embracing the human condition for all beings on this planet. All humans, all beings, all sentient beings. So much goodness, so much beauty, so much strife, so much pain. When your heart might feel the pain, it might be weeping, and yet can we open the heart to love it all? Even the pain, the weeping. To love it all fiercely. Even the pain, the sorrow.

Even as our heart weeps, open wider with love for this tender human condition. This tender condition on this planet, to all its beings. Letting the love be so wide, so all-encompassing. Right, it's bigger, it's wider than the grief. Privilege of being human, knowing, being cognizant. Loving. Loving fiercely, not turning away.

Even if your heart feels and meets the injustices of the world. Loving all the sides. The humans, the beings that are hurt and those who hurt, all of them. Completely. The ignorance of hatred. Your heart feels so open. Loving this tender human condition, this planet. Ten thousand joys, ten thousand sorrows.

May we all, all of us, all humans and all beings, wake up to love. The love so radical, so brilliant. That it is enlivening, all-encompassing. And it's who we really are. May we all wake up to who we really are. And love completely.

Thank you all. Thank you for your practice.

Reflections and Q&A

We have some time for reflections, questions, or reports from the field, especially if you haven't spoken recently. I invite you first, you can type in chat, you can raise your Zoom hand. What did you discover? What was this like for you? Offering your insights to serve, to support others. Your questions too.

Gina says, "Was hard to really welcome the pain but I kept trying." Yeah. Yeah, sometimes what helps is to relax. Because if we tightened and tried to welcome pain as if trying is a fist, trying so hard, sometimes it helps to just relax and welcome that way. And I appreciate, Gina, that you stayed. It can transform back. As I was leading the practice tonight, I have a lot of pain in my body, and just opening up to it, the relationship gets quite transformed to challenges, pain, difficulty. This amazing human condition, pain included.

Fred, please.

Fred: I'm wondering how to open up to fatigue without just falling down the hole and falling asleep or being just completely scattered in the fatigue thought process.

Nikki Mirghafori: Yeah, good question. So, there's a difference between opening up to it and falling into it. Let me try to describe what I mean. When I talk about opening up to it, it's more of a spacious perspective. So there's fatigue. Ah, there's fatigue in the mind. There's heaviness, there's dullness in the mind and the body, like, "Ah, can I open up and be bigger than it instead of being reduced to it?" Because falling into it is kind of being reduced to it, like, "Oh, so heavy, so heavy." Whereas not being reduced to it, there's a sense of opening to it. It's like holding it. There's much more here. The fatigue is there, but there's a lot else happening too. Does that pointer help, Fred, what I mean?

Fred: Yeah, I think I understand. I'll try. It's hard but I'll give it a try. Thank you.

Nikki Mirghafori: You're welcome. And one other thing that can also help is to let your breath be supportive. A few deeper breaths to make space because the breath can get a little tight and tinny sometimes in fatigue and falling into it, whereas let the breath be more spacious, picking up, opening space a little bit.

One of you sent a reflection privately: "Randy Newman describes this in a song titled, 'It's the rest of your life so live it well.'" Yes, that was one of the aspects I was bringing into this practice. One aspect of it. There was a lot more in the practice but yeah, that was definitely one aspect of it.

Thank you, another reflection. "Thank you for this meditation. Yes, there can be openness until I come into the picture." Yeah, that's right. That's right, there can be a lot of openness and it's okay, the self, it's fine to bring the self into the picture actually. I want to say that, not to deny your humanity, your particularities, and I think that's really important. I want to make that distinction. So the idea here is not to deny that we have a personhood. In fact, this practice really works to open up to our particularities. We are human beings, we have sufferings, of course we do. And it's okay for the self to bring, please bring the self into the picture, bring the 'I' into the picture with this practice so that it can be loved. There's this expression, you need to love the self before you let go of the self. So really fully loving it.

Jerry says, "The preciousness of the life left for all of us was emphasized." Yes, indeed.

So if there are any other reflections... and if not, let's turn... I'm going to make the practice rooms. But if there are any other reflections feel free to raise your hand. We have time.

And you know what? Tell you what, let's make some time for when we come back from the room. So I'll ask you what your relationship was when you opened up to loving the whole of humanity with all... maybe I'll ask you now if anybody has a reflection about that, with all of its joys and sorrows and the heartbreaks, anything arose for you you'd like to share?

Maybe what I'll share is, with this practice again, it may or may not work, or maybe might just work for one split second, something might open up. There's this tenderness of loving it all, loving both the... all sides of conflicts, everyone. It's a sense of loving and grieving at the same time that can be so precious with this complete opening up to humanity. Loving and grieving, but love feels bigger, can hold the grief, it can hold the...

So I see two hands. Now it's Jerry and Mary, and then we'll go into the groups quickly. Jerry?

Jerry: Thanks, and thanks for correcting my grammar when I'm just typing it, it feeds in. What I felt was actually following up on what you just said, was this enormity of what's left, how precious it is for every one of us and who knows what's coming. And so there was a sort of excitement about both ends about, "Wow, who knows? This is just today." So, enough.

Nikki Mirghafori: Thank you. And today, this is exciting, this is enough. Exactly. This is lovely, thank you Jerry. And Mary, please.

Mary: I would say just a thank you, and I've been dealing with a lot of grief and a lot of physical pain and all this stuff, and it is such a relief to be reminded it's part of the human condition. That for me is an incredible gift to just know it's not my suffering all by myself, it's part of the human condition, and to be present to that into myself but with others, which is what is being required right now for me. So thank you so much.

Nikki Mirghafori: Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that, Mary. So appreciate your reflection, beautiful. Yeah, to be reminded of that, so helpful.

Yeah. So, dear ones, let's turn to hold each other in small groups, roughly sizes of three, and an invitation: what is it like when you open your heart to fully love, embrace this human condition for the particularities here and for everyone? What arises? You can offer one nugget, or you can also offer just space, say pass, or offer your silence, your holy presence, and the next person, then the next person. They'll come back to you. And let's go reverse alphabetical order according to your first name. Be kind. Just share from your own experience, not coordinating, organizing, directing other people's shares, but just offering your own humanity, your common humanity. Letting others share their common humanity, make space for each other. Okay, here we go.

[Break for breakout rooms]

We have just about a minute. If there are any reflections that have come up from your conversation together, especially if you haven't shared tonight or recently, I'd like to make space. Any questions, comments?

Oh, I see one of you got kicked out of a group and I didn't see it early enough to put you back in. But usually you can go back in yourself if this happens again. I... there's nothing on my end that I can do if you get kicked out, so you can put yourself back. Anyway, I'm sorry you got kicked out. Any other reflections besides that, which I didn't see earlier?

Oh well, it's time. As Car Talk—those of you who are familiar with Car Talk, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers^[3] on NPR—"You have wasted a perfectly good hour" [Laughter] cultivating compassion and lovingkindness. Just kidding. Anyway, thank you all. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for being here and cultivating your heart for the benefit of yourself and all beings in this short brief flash of lightning of our lives. May all beings be well, may all beings be happy. Thanks everyone.