Moon PointingHappy Hour: Radiating Metta with Each Breath
- Date:
- 2020-05-16
- Speakers:
- Nikki Mirghafori [Talks] [@AudioDharma]
- Location:
- Insight Meditation Center [Talks] [@YouTube]
- Generation:
- 2026-10-21 (gemini-3.1-pro-preview) [Prompt Template] [Raw Markdown] [YouTube Video]
- Keywords:
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: Radiating Metta with Each Breath
Introduction
Wonderful happy Saturday morning, or afternoon, or evening, whatever your timezone might be that you're calling in from right now. I'd like to welcome you to Happy Hour. For our practice this morning, what I'd like to guide us in is a mettā[1]—a loving-kindness practice, a well-wishing for everyone, for all beings.
Something that's beautiful about the practice of loving-kindness, about mettā practice, is that this practice of cultivating and ruminating about friendliness—really bringing about a sense of friendliness and goodwill for the world—is a practice of gladdening our own hearts. It makes our own hearts and our own minds happy. It is also a practice of creating safety in our own space, in our own hearts, and in our own minds. Especially nowadays, when we turn each and every corner and it seems like there is bad news and challenges here and challenges there, a practice like this—a practice of wishing mettā and goodness for the world—can actually bring a sense of living in a friendly universe. This can be very, very helpful for our own functioning and for our own well-being, to feel that we are living in a friendly universe versus an unfriendly universe.
So I'd like to offer this practice. I've been doing it myself, especially the past day, and realizing, "Ah, it just feels so good to be landing, to be resting in this space of goodness." It feels like there is goodness all around. There is a sense of well-being all around, which is just from the warmth that's created in my own mind. So without further ado, I'd like to start guiding us in this meditation.
I invite you to make yourself comfortable wherever you're sitting. If you need to move, this is a great time to make yourself comfortable and arrive in your own body.
Guided Meditation
Show meditation
Hide meditation
Guided Meditation
Landing in this moment. Letting your body relax and soften. Let it land as if you're landing in a warm bath for this morning. The same sense of ease and welcoming relaxation of being in a warm bath.
And if the invocation of the feeling or image of a warm bath does not work for you, maybe invoke the sense that you are sitting or lying on the grass outside on a sunny day, watching the sky on the weekend, just relaxing, feeling safe. Feeling the sun on your face, the warmth. Allowing yourself to feel your body relaxing, softening, opening up. Offering up any tension your body might be holding.
And letting your breath move as it does, in and out of the body on its own. It's not so much that you are breathing; the breath is breathing itself. Let it fill you up. Let the breath visit every nook and cranny of the body, filling up the areas that are tight or tense, or that don't have any awareness in them. Fill them up with the breath, with awareness. Your whole body.
And with each in-breath, letting there be more filling out, more filling up of your body. Starting with your toes—these extremities. Feeling as if you were an inflatable doll, letting your toes be filled up, inflated with awareness, with the breath. The sensations of contact, warmth, or coolness in your toes, your feet. A sense of interest and curiosity: what does it feel like if your toes and your feet feel more full of awareness and sensations?
Moving up, filling your lower legs and upper legs with more awareness, as if the breath awakens this part of your body to sensations. And naturally, if there is any tension or holding, it melts away.
Moving up and filling the area of your sit bones, your bottom, and the groin area with the breath, with awareness. The sensations of contact, being grounded, touching the chair or the cushion.
Moving up to your abdomen, your chest. Letting your trunk be filled with sensations of breathing. The curiosity, the interest, the joy of the dance and movement in your belly, in your rib cage.
Letting your shoulders and your neck relax. Be filled with breath and awareness. Your arms, your hands, and your entire face and forehead be soft. Your eyes resting in their sockets. Then your jaw relaxed. Maybe even letting your mouth fall open for a moment as you experiment with what it feels like for the jaw to be relaxed, not in its usual position.
Touching from the inside your whole face with the breath and the movement. Feeling out as if the wrinkles on your forehead, on your face, get smoothed out as they get filled out with more breath sensation naturally.
Now letting your whole body have a sense of being full. Full of the breath, full of awareness. With each in-breath, more aliveness, more wakefulness. And with each out-breath, landing more deeply, letting go of any tightness or holding.
If there are any thoughts, emotions, mind states, or feelings in the body arising, letting there be an expansiveness to the breath that includes them. This breath of awareness filling out your body that also touches, holds, soothes, and calms any agitation in the body or in the mind. Spending a few more minutes tilling the soil of calm abiding, settling, before we return to the practice of mettā.
Now, as you continue to receive the breath—the breath imbuing the body with awareness—consider the breath as a life-giving breath, a sense of goodness. Let the breath fill your body with a sense of goodness, or perhaps the goodwill of the universe filling your lungs, filling your whole body. Letting yourself feel nourished, supported, filled with the goodness that's offered to you freely, and you don't even have to work for it.
Can there be a sense of delight in receiving this goodness, this gift of goodness? As if the universe, the world, is wishing you well, nurturing and nourishing this body. May there be a sense of appreciation, gladness. Maybe a smile shows up. In fact, trying on a smile as you receive this gift of each and every breath.
And then, in turn, turning this goodwill onto the world. As if you were beaming your smile, as if you were lighting up the world with the gesture, offering love and friendliness. In the same way that as you pass a passerby you would offer a smile perhaps, or say hello, good morning—offering goodwill and friendliness to the world.
And as the world is offering goodwill to you, filling your whole body with air, with kindness, with goodness of the breath, letting your whole body radiate that recycled goodness. Goodness received, goodness radiated out. Just a sense of friendliness. Friendliness with the air around you. Friendliness with the sounds around you. Friendliness with all the beings in your home, in your neighborhood.
Feeling that the source of your friendliness is endless. Every breath filling your body, resonating, brings in goodness and friendliness, and you simply beam it out. And it's not so much work. You're not pushing it out; it's certainly being beamed out. You're just the conduit for this friendliness, for the goodwill, for the mettā.
And as we come to an end of our practice together, letting the sense of mettā fill your body. Letting it fill all the beings with you practicing together in this Zoom room, on YouTube. All practitioners everywhere, all non-practitioners everywhere, non-discriminant. And imagining perhaps that as this radiating of goodwill touches people, it brings them happiness, it brings them goodness. Bringing a few people to mind, a few beings, a few animals, birds, fish.
May all beings everywhere, may all beings including yourself, be safe. May all beings everywhere be happy. May all beings everywhere be healthy. And may all beings everywhere have peace and ease, and take care of themselves happily.
Reflections
So the practice of mettā, especially in this way—this different way of getting into it with the breath, with our own bodies—you have a feeling of it radiating naturally from our breath, and it can feel effortless if we allow this invitation of just being a conduit. The breath is filling us with goodness and goodwill from the universe, and it's being radiated out. It brings a sense of safety all around.
I'd like to invite you, if you want, to share a word in chat about what is coming up for you in this moment. Sharing a reflection. I feel a lot more settled and calm, and I just want to smile right now. Actually, a smile is coming up for me. I just want to smile. So you're welcome to share any reflections if you would.
"Deep rest." Thank you, Elizabeth. "Lovely," Drake. "Tingly," Beverly. "Calm," "Centering of myself," Shannon. Thank you. "Allergies. Is it possible to smile at the allergies?" Oh, I'm sorry, Nancy. "Calming," Stewart. Thank you.
As Nancy is sharing allergies, I also want to share that everything is welcome, whatever is arising. And the practice of mettā, a part of it, is to meet with friendliness whatever is arising, to see if there can be a non-conflict. Allergies are happening right now; it's like this. "Hello, allergies. Hello, old friend." Because they're going to be here, so if our relationship to them is non-conflictual, one of friendliness, could it support our heart in less suffering?
A couple of offerings and reflections from Faith and from YouTube, which is a little delayed: "Alignment," "warmed and at ease," "thankful and peaceful." Lovely. Thank you all for practicing this morning, not just for yourself but for the whole world.
Deep Listening in Community
So this is the time during Happy Hour that we transition to a few minutes of deep listening and sharing with a small group of three people. It's a time to see how this practice can actually feel interactive. When we open our eyes and go about in the world, how we can actually practice deeply with a few other people in the sandbox? Can we hold them with care and with kindness, in the same way that we are radiating? Can we radiate this sense of goodwill and kindness in a Zoom room? Just radiate kindness as if they can do no wrong, and be held with a sense of kindness, and see what that feels like just to be listened to without being interrupted.
For people who are on YouTube, you are welcome to join us on Zoom right now if you want to. The room is still open. Basically, the prompt is: How are you right now? There is no right or wrong. How are you right now?
The process is one of deep listening. Each person will have a couple of minutes—I will broadcast the time in the meeting rooms—just to speak. Others will be doing deep listening, not interrupting, not asking questions. It's a practice of mettā in community. Can you radiate mettā and goodwill? Listen to someone with goodwill, maybe with a smile, try it on, and also see what it feels like to be listened to in that way.
So I'm going to create the breakout rooms here. Here we go.
[Breakout rooms session occurs]
It would be lovely to hear any reflections that you may have, if you'd like to share, or any questions from either the first part or the second part of the practice. The first part being the silent meditation, and the second part being the interactive practice in community radiating mettā. You're welcome to raise your hand and I will unmute you, you can unmute yourself now, or you can type it in chat.
"So very grateful for this new paradigm of connecting with other folks, thank you." Thank you, Paula. Thank you, lovely. Yeah, do you want to say your word?
Paula: I just love this new way of connecting with people. It just thrills me. I love it. People all over. I do Gil's morning meditation every weekday, and to see all the people checking in from all over the world, I just love it. So thank you everyone. I appreciate you.
Nikki: Yeah, thank you for being here, being part of the community. Like you, I also take delight in seeing all the places from which people come in and practice together. It's a worldwide sangha[2]. And also, the interaction in these small groups is just so beautiful, from all over the place. Heartwarming. Great, thank you, Paula. Trudy, please?
Trudy: Yeah, connection is a natural thing. It's the way things are. We just didn't know, or I didn't know. And also, I want to thank you for adding this Saturday. It's a nice surprise and a nice treat, so thank you.
Nikki: Thank you, Trudy. Yeah, thank you for that. It's sweet. I have to admit publicly, I'm not a morning person, so this is definitely a stretch for me! [Laughter] And it's quite lovely. It's easier for me to get up and listen to Gil than to be prepared to teach myself at 7:00 a.m.
Any other last-minute reflections or questions? We have just a minute left. Yes, please, William. Let's see, I just unmuted you, there you go.
William: A reflection for me. In the middle of the meditation, there were what I used to label—and I still probably do label—"earth noises" in my area. And then something was probably said, and my mind started deciding that they were "sounds" instead of "noises." I just wanted to share that it was very interesting, you know?
Nikki: I love it! Thank you so much for sharing that. Isn't it amazing how our perception really decides whether, "Oh, there are noises, they're awful, I'm suffering, I don't like them," or "They're just sounds." So the stimulus out there is the exact same sound, the exact same waveform being produced, right? Molecules moving in the air is the same thing, but how it affects us is really inside. Thank you so much for sharing how that shifted. And mettā is actually the way things can shift, and we suffer less.
Great. Beautiful. Well, it's 8:00, and I wish you a wonderful morning, day, night, whatever your timezone may be. Thank you so much for joining us, and dedicating the merit of our practice together to all beings everywhere. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Take good care. Be well.