Happy Hour: Celebrating Our Goodness

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

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 23, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Happy Hour: Celebrating Our Goodness

Introduction

Great, so hello and welcome everyone. Just happy having heard your voices and your hellos from different parts of the world. Just happy making this sense of connection. Knowing that there are other practitioners in the world joining us, we're all practicing together.

So let's just start, and I'll start the guided meditation, and the theme will reveal itself to all of us during the meditation. Let's begin.

Guided Meditation

Landing, arriving in our bodies in this moment. Landing with our breath, letting go of whatever has come before. This moment, the experience of this moment, is all we truly know. Can we befriend this moment? Sensations in the body, the breath, your heart-mind.

Collecting and gathering ourselves peacefully with the breath. Make it a lullaby, especially if we need calming, soothing, and nourishing. As if we're being rocked back and forth in the arms of the breath, gently rocked back and forth with the breath. Taking refuge^[1].

Letting go of wanting things to be any other way than they actually are right now. Just for a moment, you can always go back later to wanting it to be different, and right now, what if we relax and soften?

Thoughts will come—reflections, contemplations, memories—some of them helpful, some of them not. What if we just turn away, take refuge in the simplicity of just being here? Being brave and saying, "Not now, thank you," even if they're helpful thoughts. Reflections later.

Just enjoying being. Not doing, not planning, not becoming. Not all of that, just being. As if you were throwing out cold tea in your cup^[2]. Emptying your cup of stale tea. Letting the breath cleanse you, calm you, stabilize you. An act of love to let yourself be soothed. This heart to be held in the simplicity of not doing one thing, just being. It's an act of love, of care, to release.

Loving and accepting this being who is you, just as they show up in this moment: tired, cranky, sad, excited. Relax, soften. Let yourself be held lovingly by the breath.

Fall in love with the silence. Silence, the rhythm of the breath. Silence within—can we fall in love with it? Enjoy it. Not seeking something else: entertainment, planning, distraction. Just be content with the amazing gift of the breath.

Bring to mind a being for whom you have mettā^[3]—care, kindness—with whom you have an uncomplicated relationship, ideally. Children or pets are fine. Bring them to your mind's eye, your heart, as if they were in front of you. And for this practice, we're invited to see their goodness, their good qualities. Of course, everyone's a mixed bag and has areas to grow. All of that, yes, of course, but see their goodness. See their strength, see their goodness. Tune into that.

Stay with the breath, stay embodied, and with each breath, let your heart love, let your heart see and feel into the goodness of this being with appreciation. Let it serve as a source of joy that this being with these qualities is in your life.

Let yourself really relish them. Maybe they're a really good cook, appreciating that they've cooked for you. Just the delight of their goodness, their skills, their generosity. Let yourself relish their light, the light of their being. Recognizing their Buddha nature^[4], their goodness, relishing that, basking in their light. Their strength, their capacities, or good heart. It feels so good to recollect the Buddha nature, the goodness of another. Bask in it with delight, with vicarious joy.

Now, as if you're removing yourself so that you're not seeing this being in how they benefit you per se, but just the way they are. Shifting the lens slightly, still seeing their goodness more objectively. Seeing them as a hard worker—they work hard. Or they're dedicated to their friends and their family. See their goodness more generally, making space.

As a beloved other, see yourself just as you are seeing this dear being. See yourself as a third person. See your own goodness, strengths, capacities, as if you're seeing your own Buddha nature. Basking in the goodness the same way.

Tuning into your own goodness. Maybe see yourself from the perspective of this dear being. Feeling the love: "I love you, I admire you." Tuning into your own goodness, your own Buddha nature, divine nature, divinity.

Being together, let your heart be filled. Bask, enjoy, take delight in the vastness of this being who is you, whom you barely know. Of this earth, an earthling, and so much beyond. So much beyond in ways you don't know and understand, not reducing yourself to a two-dimensional version.

Letting the goodness of our practice, whatever arose or did not arise^[5], dedicating with generosity this goodness together to each other, to ourselves, to all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere know their own goodness. May all beings everywhere be free, including ourselves.

Thanks everyone, thank you for your practice.

Small Group Instructions

Joyous to see faces on the screen. Your light shining, all of you with your own beauty, goodness, capacities, light. Each of us in our own unique way shining our light.

So as I set up the small groups, if there are any quick reflections you're welcome to share them. There will be more time at the end. But now I'd like to invite you all to see—you know, this is an engagement of the rubber meeting the road as we engage in small groups together. And the sense of letting your goodness shine. Not focusing on your challenges, your difficulties, what's going wrong, but actually letting your light shine and speaking about this person who is you as if you're a representative.

Like, "Oh yes, this person who is me actually loves to practice," or "They are dedicated to honesty," or "They're dedicated to their friends," or "They like to be generous," or "They're a good cook, they love to cook for their friends." Just something about the goodness of you, as if you're sitting on your own shoulder, being your own representative: "Okay, let me tell you about this person, they're great in this." Just sharing that. And if you feel too shy, it's not you, it's your representative that's sharing something.

But it's nice to actually say something about that like, "Oh yes, this person who is me likes to be generous." It's true! And don't shy away like, "Oh I don't want to own it." What if you actually showed up with your goodness? We show up with all our problems and difficulties in the world, but what if you actually let your goodness shine? Again, not from a place of ego, but from a place of goodness. It's very different. And see if you can navigate and see that difference.

If you're speaking from a place of ego, it's okay to say pass. "I'm going to just pass and sit with this, and maybe the next time it comes to me maybe I'll say something," or you can just say pass if it's a little uncomfortable. It's totally fine to say, "Pass, I'm just going to hold silence and I'm not quite ready to talk yet." Perfectly fine. Hold other people's beauties and goodness with muditā^[6], with vicarious joy. But it's lovely to celebrate that with each other. It's unusual; we usually don't celebrate goodness. We get together and complain about what's not going well. Celebrate goodness! Just try something a little different. Why not? Let's experiment.

So let's go in alphabetical order, and again you can say pass, it's perfectly fine. But share one thing that you realized about this being: "This person is a hard worker, they work really hard," etc. Just share one nugget, one thing. The next person, the next person, comes back to you, maybe one other thing or not. But make sure everybody gets the chance to share something and to be celebrated. Celebrate each other! Yay, how fun, how fun.

So I'm going to open the rooms. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Let me recreate the rooms... hold on, here we go. Okay, creating rooms. All right, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Here we go.

Reflections and Q&A

Okay, the rooms are back, the rooms are closed. Everybody's back. Welcome back everyone. We have time for a few reflections. You're welcome to type them in chat either to me privately or to everyone, or you can also raise your Zoom hand. If it's your physical hand I may not see you.

How was this practice? Seeing someone else's goodness, and then seeing and celebrating your own goodness, and also in the group? Kim, please.

Kim: I just have to apologize because I was put into a room, and then I was trying to press "enlarge" and I was pressing the "X", and so I was kicked out. And then I was invited to another room. Same thing went for "enlarge", hit the "X", but I was successful in the third room. So my apologies to those of you I came in and jumped out.

Nikki: Ah, but that's sweet, you visited lots of different rooms, Kim. You spread your light. Anything else besides an apology or sharing what happened with the group? Any observations you want to share again, while you have the floor? You don't have to speak on the spot.

Kim: It was a good meditation. I enjoyed it. I was able to follow through with it. And at one point, you know, I was visualizing my lovable being and it kind of came into me, and then you said, "Give yourself some space, move them back out." And then I was able to see myself from their point of view. And then also think of some memories of me, of when I was showing some good qualities.

Nikki: Sweet. Thank you, thanks for sharing that Kim. Lovely, beautiful. Yeah, Ellie please.

Ellie: Hello. Yeah, I was... very interesting because I'm just so close to the inner critic for so long. I mean, it was just a hard stretch for me to do it. And then I said, "Why not?" And the first one that came on was a little hard, but then it kept rolling and it just... like I started enjoying it, kind of like befriending myself for the first time. Because the other part I know so well, but this is very, very new. So thank you very much Nikki.

Nikki: Oh, thank you Ellie. Thank you so much, wonderful. And I'm so happy to hear, delighted to hear that you stuck with it even though it just seemed a little unfamiliar and difficult. We usually don't quite go here, but "I'm just going to try it out," and then, "Oh wow, it gets easier." Yes, of course it does, beautiful. I so appreciate you sharing that for the benefit of everyone who might also be in the same spaces you shared. Thank you Ellie, lovely. Thank you. Fred, please.

Fred: Thanks Nikki. Kim, we were happy to see you come in for a second, sorry to see you disappear another time. [Laughter] I would have found this impossible to do if I were speaking from the first person. And if I was doing it correctly, referring to myself in the third person made it possible. And still not easy, but feasible in a way that, you know, using the "I" would just have been out of the question.

Nikki: Nice. Thank you Fred. I so appreciate you sharing that actually having the third-person perspective made it easier. It just created a little bit of space. Beautiful, thanks for sharing that insight. It just makes it a little easier. Beautiful.

Neil says, "We use the term damn weird." [Laughter] Funny. And Chloe, thank you for sharing that you've been recovering from a mysterious bike accident and it's wonderful that you're able to join us now. Hope you feel better soon.

Yeah, on the other hand, maybe I'll just pause for one moment, given that this is such a quote-unquote "damn weird" practice. But just you know, it is possible. It's possible to see the goodness of this person. Yeah, they are good in these ways. How wonderful to celebrate that.

Well, I'm glad that you were able to celebrate some of your own goodness and the goodness of each other in this practice, in this moment. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for showing up for cultivating your own goodness, letting your light shine. You have so much goodness, every single one of you. Oh my heavens, so much. So thank you for sharing that. Take good care, may you all be well. May we all be well, may we all be free.

Take care everyone. I'll see you on Monday, we have a guest.