May you be well. May you be happy.

Today, I learnt that it is useless to try to cover a feeling with a new one, to try to paste an affirmation on top of something you don’t believe in. Don’t try to convince yourself that you are beautiful if you do not think you are.

Today, I learnt a new kind of Buddhist meditation called “Metta Bhavana” which means “Loving Kindnesss” in Sanscrit and I would like to share it with you. It takes fifteen minutes.

Sit down comfortably. Start breathing peacefully and feel your body as it is. Feel the environment, the temperature of the room, sounds, people around you, then feel the temperature of your body, your position, your comfort or discomfort. Just feel without judging. You become progressively aware of your whole body, from your toes to your hair, noticing gently where you feel pain, where you feel good, where you feel nothing. After a while, you can focus your attention on you heart and around your heart. It might be warm, it might be cold, it might be nothing. It’s ok. You can now try to visualize yourself in a situation you were at one moment of the day (or just stay focused on your heart, it’s ok as well) and kindly tell yourself: “May you be well. May you be happy. May you be free of suffering. May you make progress.” You can repeat this mantra a few times. Slowly. Kindly.
May you be well.
May you be happy.

You can extend that meditation a bit longer if you have more time (the complete session takes half an hour) and bring a friend to your mind. And kindly, you can tell him or her: “May you be well. May you be happy.”
Then, you can think of someone you don’t know but that you see quite often without really noticing him, he may be a cashier, a guardian, a colleague, whoever. And kindly tell him or her: “May you be well. May you be happy.”
Then, you can think of someone you don’t like and, again, kindly tell him or her: “May you be well. May you be happy.”
You can now bring all these four people together: you, your friend, the neutral person and someone you don’t like and wish them well. Then you can extend that loving kindness to the people in the same room, people in the same building, then, outside, in the street, in the town, in the country and further. You can wish to all the people living on the Earth to be well.
May you be well.
May you be happy.

I naively wondered aloud: “Can we love all the time?”
I was wisely answered: “Someone asked Buddha the same question and Buddha replied: “I can’t”.
What a relief for me! My aim has suddenly become a bit more reachable: I cannot love all the time but I can try. Life is a journey. A long and challenging journey that gives us every second the opportunity to make progress. A short and wonderful journey that gives us every second the chance to feel beauty.

Today, I learnt that you can kindly receive anything that comes to you. But you can also choose not to do it. This freedom is our human condition. My meditation teacher just gave us this piece of advice as one of the thousands ways to live our life:

“Let yourself feel what is happening, relax into experience, good or bad. Whatever feelings come to you, say kindly to them: “You are welcome.”