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Happy Hour: Cultivating Kindness through Play and Levity

Introduction

Hello and welcome, everyone. Lovely to be with you. Lovely to see you. That's one delightful aspect of happy hour, because I actually get to see you, or at 7:00 AM, I feel people's presence through YouTube. It's just on YouTube, not on Zoom, but anyway, lovely to be with you. It delights me to see your faces and feel your presence.

The theme I'd like to invite us to explore in happy hour today is the theme of mettā^[1] combined with a sense of playfulness. Actually, this whole week for the 7:00 AM, bringing some playfulness and some improvising to our life is the theme. So bringing in the sense of practicing mettā for ourselves and for others, this sense of lightness, this playfulness, this light touch—having fun with the practice.

Not as a grim duty of, "Okay, I need to be kind. It's important to be kind." No. "Wow, let's try this on for size," kind of fun. It's like a game, like a play. What happens in this heart when we play it like a musical instrument? "Oh, what happens when you play the strings like this? Oh, wow, that's kind of fun. What if I do it like that? What sounds come out of these heartstrings if I play mettā songs?" Just a sense of creativity and playfulness with the practice.

That's all I need to say to set the stage, and I'll offer invitations during the guided meditation. So with that, let's begin. Let's arrive. Let's land in our seat.

Guided Meditation

In this moment in time. Let there be lightness, a sense of ease, playfulness as you arrive, as you release and relax your body.

As if this period of practice is a treat. It's a sweet treat, this fun activity called meditation practice. How fun we get to explore our minds, we get to explore our heart. We get to play in the sandbox.

It's not just the same old, same old. Every moment is fresh. This breath and this body in this moment, fresh like the spring.

Imagining you were opening a big window to the fresh air outside. Opening this window to allow fresh air to come in. A fresh breeze. Spring breeze. Meeting this moment, this breath, as if it's the fresh breeze in a fully opened window. A fully open window of sense doors. Sensations opened with freshness.

Savoring the breaths in the body with delight. How fun, this body knows how to breathe. I don't have to do anything. There's no doing that needs to be done. It's just receiving. Relax, receive.

This sense of curiosity, childlike interest, curiosity, a sense of wonder. What will happen to our heart, to our state of mind, if we wish well for ourselves and others? Let's try it on for size. What happens? Let's play.

Through the lenses of childlike curiosity, bring to mind a childhood friend. And maybe in your mind's eye, you're the same age as they are right now. A friend you remember talking with, playing with, going to school with. Whatever age is fine. Pick a friend where there is a sense of goodwill, kindness, sweetness. Oh, childhood friend, sweet.

Bring them to your mind's eye. This childlike simplicity from the world you inhabited once together with them. Perhaps even see both of you as children. And playing with good wishes for both of you. Playing around with goodwill, light touch. Seeing your friend through your young eyes, wishing them happiness. You want them to be happy, to be well. You want, from this perspective, for the two of you to happily play together, happily laugh together, giggle together. Ride your bike, or play with dolls, or whatever it might be.

Let yourself inhabit the simple childlike world, the simplicity of kindness. Liking our friend, wanting them to be happy. Wanting both of us to be happy. Very simple, light touch. Play around with this. See what's supportive for you in this exploration. Play in the sandbox of mettā.

See where your heart leads. Maybe your attention turns to a younger version of yourself, wishing them well. Seeing the sweetness of this young person who's you. Let your heart be filled with the goodness of yourself as a young one, and your friend. Bringing to mind your beautiful qualities. Maybe you were kind, or curious, or adventurous. Maybe you were playful. Let your heart have lightness, the spirit of play, as you explore the sandbox of kindness for yourself, for your friend.

You can be creative. It's okay to be creative. Maybe at the time you and your friend played with Legos, for example. It's okay to imagine you and your friend playing with Legos, having fun. You wish these two kids well in their joy in your imagination.

Now, for the fun of it, imagine yourself the age you are, with your childhood friend at your current age. Imagine yourself playing, or talking, or doing homework, or riding your bikes, playing with your dolls, just having fun. A little silly, but why not? Why not?

Drawing, playing with Legos. Imagine yourself as an adult playing with your friend. Laughing, being silly. Maybe the adult versions of you have water guns, squirting each other with delight. Or whatever else you like to imagine, joyous, ridiculous, and fun. Let there be lightness, levity, goodwill, laughter. Goodwill, kindness in your play.

Jumping rope, playing hopscotch, singing songs. You see yourself as an adult playing with your friends with goodwill, lightness, silliness. Images might be ludicrous; that's exactly the point. Let there be lightness, levity. Kindness for everyone, yourself, your friend or friends.

Wish well for every single person. With lightness, levity. Wherever your friends are, may they be well. Wishing well for them, for yourself. May their hearts be light, full of joy, levity, play. May your heart be filled with laughter and joy, levity and play.

Bringing each of your friends and yourself to mind, to heart, with lightness, with a smile, wishing them well. Maybe their younger version, their older version. One by one.

And as we bring this guided meditation sit to a close together, appreciating yourself for having showed up. Having showed up as best as you're able to, planting wholesome seeds of lightness, kindness, levity, delight, laughter.

May they flower into ease, more kindness, freedom for yourself, and for the benefit of all beings. All beings your life touches directly, indirectly, and beyond.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be well. May all beings everywhere, including this being who is me, know joy, know goodness, and be free.

Post-Meditation Reflections

Thanks, everyone. Thank you for your practice.

What I invited you to try on for size is this sense of curiosity, lightness, and play, which we often lose when we become adults. We become so serious. Everything is so important, and there is such a sense of gravity. That can also impact the way we see everyone and see ourselves in the world. It can impact our practice as a grim duty, this heaviness of it. This was an invitation to try—in whatever way it worked for you—to try on a sense of lightness.

The invitation was to see yourself playing, really feeling into the sense of levity and play that we knew as children, and then to have these preposterous images of us playing as adults, doing the same games. It was an invitation to feel into the lightness. Mettā can flow so easily out of that lightness, this goodwill for ourselves and our friends. Lightness and play as a bridge to kindness. You want your friends to be happy, you want to be happy, you want to play happily together. So, using that as a bridge. It may have worked for some of you and not for others. That's perfectly fine. It's not the only way; it's just one exploration.

As we turn to small group practice, the invitation is to feel into the sense of lightness, levity, and play. If you want to share one aspect of how the practice worked for you, or didn't, it's perfectly fine. Or you can offer your silence and just say pass.

I'll offer an example. For me, as I was guiding, I was imagining us as adults. I had this memory of when my cousins used to visit, and we were roughly the same age. There were maybe five or six of us, and we would have this fake marching band. We would make a lot of noise going from room to room to room, one after another. I just imagined us banging on pots and pans as adults, and walking around. How ludicrous! There's a sense of play. "Oh yeah, we don't play, but I can imagine ourselves laughing as adults. How silly that would be. We actually did that! Why not?"

I also invite you to respect each other's privacy. Whatever is said in the sacred space of the small groups stays in the sacred space of the small groups; it's not repeated elsewhere. Take care of yourselves, take care of others. No questioning, no leading. Just offer one short reflection, then the next person can share a reflection or say pass. Make the reflections really short, maybe just 30 seconds or a minute, so other people will have a chance. Then it will come back to you, and maybe you'll share another story, or another way that your heart found its way into lightness and mettā. Like, "There's more lightness about my body and my mind, my heart. I can have this childlike lightness about me as I go about my adult practice and adult ways of being."

Let's go in alphabetical order. Again, you can always just say pass. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and have fun. See this as a sandbox. Don't all of a sudden get so serious with your practice mates. Here we go.

Q&A and Group Reflections

Welcome back, everyone. We have some time for reflections and reports. How was the practice for you? How were the groups? You can either raise your hand and bring your voice in, or you can type in chat. The chat is now open to everyone. If you just want to send a private message to me, you're welcome to do that as well; it'll be an anonymous reflection. What came up? What did you notice in this practice, either for yourself individually or in the group?

Sujan: When we talk about a childhood friend, I thought of one friend where I visited their family and had fun together. But in my life, I'm very playful now. I realized when I grew up in Korea, our family was very strict, and I was not allowed to have really fun as a kid. When I wanted to have really fun, my mom didn't like it. All those things remind me of how I had not had fun for so long. Finally, when I grew up—since 20 years ago when I came here from Korea—I learned so much fun in life.

Nikki: Thank you for sharing that. What I'm hearing is that bringing back memories of childhood friendship and fun didn't work so well for you. I bet there are others for whom that is true. I know for others—someone sent me a chat—it doesn't quite work because childhood wasn't a happy or playful time. Absolutely, so that's not a very helpful way in. These are just invitations. Yet, what I'm hearing for you, Sujan, is that as you've become an adult, you've reparented yourself in playfulness and lightheartedness.

Basically, the point of these invitations was for us to find a way to bring lightheartedness. If it's not in childhood, where do you find lightheartedness? Can you bring that in? It sounds like you found that in your adult life, bringing a sense of that into your life and practice so it doesn't become heavy. It's an invitation to see the fullness in emptiness^[2], because emptiness is the mark of existence. Nothing exists independent of other things. There is a sense of freedom and lightness of emptiness, and yet there is this fullness. There is the joy of possibility. I'm trying to invite us not to be fixed into, "It's only this way, it's very heavy and tight," but to open up. Each of you might have your own way. It may not be in childhood, but in other ways. Thank you for bringing that in. I really appreciate it.

Any other realizations or "Aha!" moments?

Neil: [Unintelligible] There, it worked the first time. Oh, I did? Okay. This was a lot of fun. I imagined myself as an adult playing with a little kid on a seesaw, and it was hysterical. Something right out of Looney Tunes! One of the things I noticed was when you think about little kids, it's hard not to wish them well. Even the ones who were really difficult for me and made my life miserable, it was obvious they were having a freaking hard time back then. They grow up into adults who maybe are still having a hard time. It really felt just warm and compassionate to people I probably would have grown up not knowing, because, you know... It was nice.

Nikki: Beautiful. Thank you, Neil. Beautiful, I couldn't say it better. How can you not wish well for these kids? You put it so well that that was the intention and the hope of the practice. Thank you for your practice report. I'm glad it worked! Your practice report makes me happy.

Neil: I'm glad you're happy. I'm happier! [Laughter]

Irma: It was really fun. I got to play with my childhood friend, and then it kind of transformed into my 5-year-old and 10-year-old parts of myself. The 5-year-old is the part that I see in myself today: the jovial, the playful, the brat. It was really nice. It lifted my heart. I love that word you used—levity. I could feel the levity in my heart connecting to those parts of myself. And the 10-year-old... there was some sadness there, and it was like comforting that part of myself. It was transformational for me. It was wonderful to get in touch and have so much fun. I've been in this place of serious decisions, and I got to get out and just play. It was so fun. Thank you, Nikki.

Nikki: Thank you, Irma. That's lovely. I'm so moved to hear this movement of your heart towards compassion and kindness for the 10-year-old and 5-year-old versions of yourself. And to get out of this fixation of seriousness that we get into as adults. Beautiful.

I'll go to the chat. Someone said, "My group and I agree we need to find a deck of cards or board games at home and use them as an accessible form of play, as long as we don't fall into feeling competitive." And Kitty says publicly, "Lightness is okay, but the permission to be happy without expecting the other shoe to drop, not so. That meditation made me realize my automatic thinking in that way." Thank you so much for sharing that insight, Kitty.^[3] Yeah, so interesting to see that. Beautiful. Ali?

Ali: Hi, Nikki, thank you for this. It dovetails with the beautiful talk in the morning. What we did—the four of us in the room—is that we just brought it into the present moment and started laughing in the 10 minutes we were together. Just creating a sandbox and playing within the limitations of Zoom. It was wonderful, and it was interesting for me how ready I was to jump into that play mode, like back in childhood, being in a sandbox and playing. It was bursting to come up.

Nikki: Thank you! It just makes me happy to know that in your small group, you jumped in to play together in real time. Laughter and levity. We lose that, and it's so important in our lives. Life is practice! To bring that lightheartedness when we're so hard on ourselves: "Okay, concentrate! Oh, you missed a breath..." Oh, sweetheart, it's okay. It's alright. Just being a little lighthearted, a little silly with ourselves. It's a really empowered way to practice. Thank you, Ali, for bringing that in.

And thanks to all of you for your practice, for hanging in there and exploring this interesting and perhaps unusual invitation. We've come to 6:59. I see your hand, David, but we've come to the end of our time unless it's really quick... okay, your hand disappeared. I'd like to thank you all. Thank you for your practice. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be safe. May you have levity. May we all be of service with a little lightness of heart. Thanks, everyone. Take good care. Be well.