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Happy Hour: Gladdening the Heart through Appreciation of Kindness and Sharing Metta

Introduction

Hello and welcome, everyone. Welcome to this rendition of Happy Hour. It makes me happy to be with you, to see you, and to practice together.

For today's practice, I'd like to invite us to engage in simple mettā^[1]. There are a few different themes I want to bring in tonight. I think I'll reverse the usual order; we'll do the meditation together first, and afterwards, I'll say a few things about it. Let's shake things up, why not, just for the fun of it.

Guided Meditation

Let's land together. Let's arrive together in our bodies. Arriving wholeheartedly. If you need to shift and move to be comfortable, this is a good time to do that, to be kind to your body.

Letting go. Letting go of what has come before—whatever thoughts, engagements, occupations, or preoccupations. Also, letting go of planning what's yet to come afterwards. Carving this time out, this moment in time, just to take refuge, to be simple. Letting go. It's like Moses parting the Red Sea: thoughts from the past, thoughts of the future, hold on for a second. Paving a path of safety in this moment, to gently walk down. It's peaceful here. It's peaceful.

Letting your awareness turn to the body. Hello, body, how are you? With kindness, turning to the body: dear body, sweetheart, are you tired? Are you anxious? Are you relaxed? Are you hurting? However you are, you can be just as you are. Welcome. You are welcome to be just as you are, dear body. I appreciate you. I appreciate this amazing body just the same. This incredible work of nature. Thank you, body.

I let the breath be breathed. Let there be appreciation for this breath, this good breath. There may be comings and goings of thought, of sounds, of sensations. It's okay, it's all okay. Connecting with the breath. The breath soothing, calming, comforting like a lullaby. Whatever is happening in the body, the heart, and the mind, let the breath, the sensations of the breath in the body, be harbingers of peace. Here, here. Here, dear heart, just here. Simply here, breathing.

If you like, you can add the phrases of mettā for this body, for yourself, sitting quietly.

May I be safe from inner and outer harm. May I be happy and joyful. May I be healthy and strong. And may my life unfold with ease.

Simply dropping these gifts, these blessings, these wishes, as a gift not attached to the outcome. Who knows? We can't always ensure safety, happiness, health, or ease. Conditions are changeable. And yet, we offer this to ourselves to cultivate our heart and kindness towards ourselves with our good wishes.

May I be safe. Let the goodness, the kindness of this wish land for you in your heart.

May I be happy. Taste the deliciousness of this wish. A sense of happiness, even imagining yourself happy, smiling. May I be happy.

May I be healthy. Receiving the kindness, the goodwill. Imagining yourself healthy, strong, as much as possible.

May my life unfold with ease. May I have ease. Feeling yourself with ease. Ease of well-being, how nice.

May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I have ease. Safe. Happy. Healthy. Ease.

And now, if you would, bringing to your heart, to your mind, someone who has been kind to you. Maybe they've supported you, they've been there for you, thoughtful, caring. Someone for whom you feel a sense of gratitude in this moment. It could be someone recent or from your past, it doesn't matter. The first person who comes up. This feeling of appreciation, just appreciating this being. Let your heart light up appreciating this being and their goodness. This aspect of goodness that they've shared with you. This aspect of their generosity that has impacted you. Let your heart light up feeling this goodness, their goodness, their care.

Maybe the words "thank you" bubble up in your heart, or a smile shows up. Or maybe you just feel happier, lighter bringing them to your heart. Let yourself rejoice, really enjoy this goodness, this bright light. Relish it, relish them. As if you were basking in sunlight, let yourself bask. "I feel nourished by this kindness, this goodness." Soaking it in.

And just in case you get in your own way, feeling undeserving or a shameful word like, "Oh, too much kindness," don't get in your own way. Who are you to get in the way of goodness? This person offering their kindness, their light shining brightly. Give your heart to praise, to praise their goodness. Don't get in the way of goodness being appreciated, being recognized. Celebrate it.

From this place of joy, celebration, and appreciation, letting there be the mettā phrases for this being. May you be safe. Not attached to the outcome, just offering out of generosity, utter appreciation, and kindness. Your own mettā, your gift of mettā.

May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you have ease.

Appreciate how good it can feel for you, for your heart, to be offering these wishes to someone else. To offer mettā, how happy-making it is for you. Uplifting, uplifting to be kind to another. Inner thoughts. If you find your mind wandering, reconnect. Connect with this being, their kindness, their goodness, sharing mettā. May you be safe, happy, healthy, and have ease, dear one.

And if you like, turn back to yourself, mettā for yourself, or mettā for both of us. May both of us be safe, happy, healthy, and have ease. You are welcome to do either. Let it be nourishing, this practice. Not a grim duty, but nourishing, joyful, soothing, uplifting.

And as we bring this practice period to a close, opening all the doors and windows of our heart and shining our mettā, our goodwill, our good wishes, offering it freely to everyone, to all beings.

May all beings everywhere be safe, happy, healthy, at ease. May all beings everywhere be well, know goodness, know their own goodness, and the goodness of others. May all beings everywhere be free, including ourselves.

Thank you all. Thanks for your practice.

Reflections

We started five minutes earlier today, and since I didn't give a dharma talk^[2], I stopped five minutes early too. Thirty minutes sitting together went by quickly, at least for me.

A couple of themes that I brought in for our practice today: we first started, as always, with grounding with the breath and the body, settling, and having a sense of kindness towards this body. Acceptance of this amazing body. Then we turned to mettā for ourselves, simply with the four phrases of mettā or whatever your phrases might be. And then we turned to appreciate goodness, someone's kindness to us recently or in the past, and we invited our hearts to rejoice, to celebrate. To really feel the beauty and goodness of the kind act as a way of uplifting and appreciating kindness.

I do wonder whether you felt an uplift in your heart. I know that I was smiling just feeling this kindness and goodness from a person—a young person, in fact. Just relishing, "Wow, goodness in the world," goodness shining from this person. And then from there, turning to share kindness and goodwill for this being as our gift of generosity. Finally, at the end, turning again to ourselves or to both of us, and then opening to all beings.

All these turns are helpful. Many times, we might start practicing, and maybe practice feels heavy or like a thud. Then we turn to appreciating this body, and maybe something opens up. Or we turn to appreciating someone's goodness, and wow, the heart just lights up. There's a sense of brightness in the heart, and that lights up the rest of our practice for them, for ourselves, and for others. There are lots of helpful skillful means that we can use in this practice to cultivate kindness and goodwill, to keep turning our heart to kindness towards others and ourselves.

Q&A and Discussion

We have a few minutes for reflections, questions, or comments. What came up for you? If you'd like to share for the benefit of the Sangha^[3], maybe there was an aha moment that helps others too. If there's something challenging, you can bring it up: "How do I work with this?" Because if you have this question, chances are other people have the same question. There's no wrong question here; treat it all with kindness. You can type in the chat. If it's typed to me privately, I won't read your name. If it's to everyone, I'll read your name. You can also raise your Zoom hand. Your physical hands I may not see, so I'll take a pause as I sip my tea.

Pat says on YouTube, "Thank you, Nikki. Very quiet tonight. Nice for the evening." Yes, until tomorrow morning! I'll see you tomorrow morning. "Very grateful for this work. Radiant." Thank you, Pat. Grateful for your practice. Radiant. Catherine?

Catherine: Hi, thank you for the practice. I'm in a moment where I can feel like I'm triggered into old habits, old patterns that are really deep ones, and I kind of called the situation in because I want to work with them and heal them. But I'm seeing that part of that pattern or habit is to really feel like the door is shut on self-mettā. The way that is shut is through disconnection. I think it's easier for me when I'm feeling a big fear or anger or sadness to turn love towards that feeling, but this is kind of like a dissociation that makes it very hard to even stay focused enough to remember to come to, or even remember what self-kindness feels like. So I'm just naming that because it helps bring it back, because I can feel emotion coming up now. But I just wanted to name that in case other people have that experience too, and ask how to work with that.

Nikki: Thank you, Catherine. Don't mute yourself just yet. Thank you for bringing that up. To reflect back what I heard you say: there was some challenge with another person, and you intentionally brought that in to work with it, to bring some mettā to it—to yourself, to them. And then it became perhaps a little overwhelming, and the old habit patterns of your mind came in like, "Wow, overwhelmed. Okay, I've lost contact with myself because I'm hurting right now." And yet this is so hard; you're angry and afraid, and wondering, "Wait, how do I connect here?"

Actually naming that and sharing that has brought some connection. Saying, "Yes, it's like this, and it's okay." It's not as overwhelming when you actually say it out loud. It's not as overwhelming as it seemed silently in your mind a moment ago. Isn't that amazing? Yes, the overwhelm comes down a notch, and you realize, "Oh yeah, I can connect with myself. I'm here."

There's an appreciation for the sense of uprightness that has spoken up and shared this out loud. Another thing I would suggest, as you may know, is to bow to what you've brought in to work with. When it becomes a little unstable and disconnected, just bow to it: "Thank you. I will come back to you. I respect you. And now let me put you aside for a moment and stabilize." With your hands, with your feet, just loving the connection. It doesn't have to be any more than that. Just like, "I'm here. I'm here."

Imagine yourself as the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, touching the earth. You just touch the earth: "The earth is my witness. I'm here. Yes, I'm here." That connection to the earth can bring a sense of connection to yourself, and a way back into mettā. How does that sound?

Catherine: Yeah, it feels good. And it's helping me with the piece that I think was making it so hard, which is to actually offer compassion and love to the part of me that shut down out of such care, right? That overwhelm turned into dissociation and even self-criticism. I can see again how it's like, "Oh, sweetheart, you're really doing your best to protect this tender heart from this overwhelm." And that feels like the way back in.

Nikki: Beautiful, beautifully said, beautifully felt exactly. "Oh, sweetheart." Thank you. And sweetheart, you can relax, it's okay. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you, Catherine.

So, the reflections for today... I see there's a private question coming in about something I taught yesterday morning on YouTube, when I talked about not breathing into the nostrils. I mentioned that if you're noticing your breath here at the Ānāpānasati^[4] spot, the mindfulness spot, notice it outside, not inside your nose. The question asks for a little more explanation about that.

The problem is, if you just practice a little bit here and there, you wouldn't notice if you're doing deep sinus breathing. But if you keep practicing more and more, there will be a sense of constriction in the nose. It will become so prominent that inside the nose it will feel like bricks, and one will not be able to breathe. One will just feel hardness, what's called the Earth Element^[5]—a sense of hardness in the face and the back of the nose happens. So that is the problem with deep sinus breathing as a practitioner. It's a bad habit.

Small Groups

The time has come to turn to practicing in small groups together. The invitation is to share kindness with each other. This small group is an opportunity. If you've been sharing kindness in your mind to yourself and to others, now you have the opportunity to be kind, to show up with kindness. To turn your heart and your mind towards kindness.

The prompt I'd like to give you is: as you are showing up with kindness, if you'd like to share something about an act of kindness that has been shared with you recently, maybe what came up for you in your meditation tonight, or anything else. Or you can also share silence and space with others. Let's go in reverse alphabetical order based on your first name. One person will say maybe just one nugget—not a long monologue, maybe just a minute. The other person will take a minute, and then the next person. Then they'll come back to you, and you'll go round and round until the time is up. Just speak from your own experience, not managing or trying to control other people's experience. Let them be as they are, even if they are with you in silence. Let it be just as it is.

I'm going to create the rooms here. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Be kind, be kind, be kind. I cannot emphasize being kind enough. Here we go, opening the rooms.

Closing

Okay, welcome back, everyone. We've got a couple of minutes left, and I would love to hear if there are any reflections, comments, or something that maybe came up in the groups. Any aha moments, anything else about sharing kindness? You can raise your hand or type in the chat.

It seems like Jennifer is waving. I don't see your physical hand on the screen, but I see you now. Let me ask you to unmute.

Jennifer: Mine is really fast. I just had a really nice group tonight, and it felt so good in my heart. So I'm grateful for that.

Nikki: Oh, that is so sweet. Thank you for bringing that in. It uplifts my heart always to hear how lovely, connecting, warm, and supportive the groups can be. It's so lovely. Thank you for bringing that into the space, Jennifer.

So dear ones, it is 7:00 p.m., the end of Happy Hour. Thank you for coming, for practicing, for cultivating your heart for the benefit of yourself and all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free. Thanks, all. Take good care. Be well.