Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation,
The message of which is one of encouragement.
You are today's gift to the world.
You don't have to think of being the best you can be for a lifetime,
For a year,
A week or even a day.
Just be kind to the next person you meet and the next and the next.
So let us begin.
It would be good if you can establish a regular place and a regular time for your meditation.
If you have a room or a corner of a room that's great.
Try for a place where you will most of the time be undisturbed.
But don't let the thought of noise or possible interruptions stop you from beginning.
It's hard to escape noise and as for interruptions don't anticipate trouble.
It may not happen.
And you don't have to meditate for long.
Even five minutes is a start.
Like learning to play an instrument it's more useful to practice for five minutes every day than for one hour once a week.
So we begin by making sure that you are comfortable.
Give yourself an invitation to relax.
For these few minutes leave to one side the cares of the day.
There'll be enough time later on for attending to your to-do list.
For the next little while just relax,
Rest and be still.
And if you happen to lose concentration just return to the place of rest.
No pressure,
No pressure at all.
That's why we call this a practice.
An opening thought.
This comes from the Buddha.
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself.
And that person is not to be found anywhere.
You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserves your love and affection.
Our life is made up of minutes.
It comes to us one second at a time.
Our heartbeats come one at a time.
In the average lifetime the heart beats nearly three and a half billion times.
But these beats come just one at a time.
Second by second a constant trickle.
In the same way our lives can become a constant trickle of kindness.
Being kind in the next second may not seem a great deal but just imagine looking back at three billion seconds of kindness.
That would be something really special.
When we consider a year ahead of us the idea of maintaining a resolution can look daunting,
Quite a challenge.
But yet when you look back at your last year you can see how quickly it has passed.
Every day of that year has offered an opportunity for doing some good.
So let's spend a little while now in quiet reflection on time.
What we might do with our time in future in light of the use we've made of our time so far.
Welcome back.
Mary Oliver tells us this.
Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
When it's over I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
She goes on,
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention,
Be astonished,
Tell about it.
To pay attention this is our endless and proper work.
And she concludes I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Words of the late great Mary Oliver.
Let's pause for a time of gratitude,
Simply gratitude for her being.
Welcome back.
So now that you are in your chair relaxing think of the people you are likely to encounter today.
Remember to face this day with newness.
Most of the time most of us approach the day on autopilot.
When we are on autopilot we don't notice the benefits that inundate us from all sides and we react sometimes badly when things go against us.
We lose our temper in traffic.
We fail to respect our work colleagues.
We take family members for granted.
This period of reflection gives us an opportunity to turn off our tendency to operate on autopilot.
It gives us a chance to think ahead.
We prepare ourselves to deal with life's inevitable challenges in a constructive way.
We set out at the start of the day prepared to do a good deed,
Looking to do good where we can.
Creating opportunities to put kindness into effect and to put our best foot forward.
Let's have another pause for reflection.
Welcome back again.
Never underestimate the value of positive action.
Proceeding from one person kindness and generosity are infectious.
Someone is kind to us and then in our gratitude we want to be kind to someone else and so it goes round and round.
One good deed can lift person after person until everyone experiences an uplift.
In the same way,
Irritability and ill will can bring us all down in ways that we can hardly begin to imagine.
We're all human of course and it is inevitable that on some occasions we'll be in an irritable frame of mind.
But if so we must strive to show little trace of it because nothing is more infectious than bad humour.
There's the wise advice to count to ten when you find yourself in bad form.
Better still,
Get out of the way if you can.
Take a few minutes to reflect and to settle yourself.
When we are annoyed with someone it helps if we can stop and consider where will we all be in 10,
20,
30 or more years.
We can't be bothered to think about what we're going to do when we're done.
We can't be bothered to think about what we're going to do when we're done.
We will all be in 10,
20,
30 or more years.
Almost certainly none of us will be looking as good as we look today.
We might even be resting under the clay.
How significant will this difference of opinion be in the story of our lives?
10,
20,
30 years from now.
It will be nothing at all.
It helps if we can somehow,
In the heat of the moment,
Take a breath.
Pause before response.
This pause before responding helps us to manage our differences.
Let's enjoy another pause for reflection before the closing thought.
Welcome back.
Our closing words today come from Calidasa.
Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today,
Well lived,
Makes yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day.
Such is the salutation to the ever new dawn.
Namaste.
Thank you.
