Metta walk:

It’s great if you have a bit of distance to walk or to spend time on public transport for this practice.  Its helpful if your destination is a place where people tend to gather like a city square, shops or market.

However, any place works and it doesn’t have to be pretty. I have given out Buddhas in hospitals and shopping malls.

As you start the walk firstly tune in to how you are.

The aim is to connect with grounded presence.

Is there anything in your experience that needs turning toward with kindness?  Just be present with that.

Then slowly start to take in each person that you pass on your walk or that see around you on public transport etc

Really be curious and open. People walking past or traveling alongside you, waiting in waiting rooms,  carrying hopes, joys, dreams, unsatisfactoriness and disappointments.

We don’t know them, but we can be sure they strive to be happy. Our shared human longing-this wish to be happy.

Notice the subtle and sometimes not so subtle views and judgments that arise as we take others into our awareness. With time you can really sense into the emptiness and invalidity of those views and at least momentarily let them drop away.

Enjoy the expansiveness of this flow of metta connection as these lives become woven even momentarily into your tapestry of experience.

You with your imperfectness and vast potential and them with theirs.

Handing on a Buddha.  

I am happy to send some of my 100 buddhas to you to give this a try or you may find a few of your own.

When you arrive at your destination ( anywhere where people tend to gather) with your Buddhas in your pocket or bag just sit.

Don’t think. Just be. Sense into that particular collection of humanity, acknowledging our shared human condition, acknowledging the wisdom of sameness and diversity.

Allow the possibility that you won’t hand out a Buddha. That’s perfectly okay. This helps to relax into just sitting and being.

And with the gift of time just see what happens. You have already done your practice in just arriving here.

After a while notice if your focus settles on a particular person.

Allow your field of kindness to extend out to them. At anytime, if you notice uncomfortableness within yourself, send yourself kindness and understanding. It can be uncomfortable dropping away our protective barriers of ‘self’ but the rewards are immense.

What force propels us move towards another human being?

The outcome is unknown, you have to have the courage to be misunderstood or possibly rejected but I find that never happens.

Sometimes I just start a conversation by moving closer to someone and telling them friends have given me gifts to give away and asking would they like to choose one.

Other times a conversation starts with something mundane like a comment about the weather. Sometimes I tell them my Buddhist background sometimes I don’t. It all relies on sensing into and being present with the person as fully as possible. After talking for a while I might open the bag of Buddhas but not always.  I have found everyone I have given a Buddha to has been happy to have a photo taken of it in their hand ( no names are put on the blog or identifying features shown).

If appropriate I give them the web address so they can see what I write.

If you decide to give it a try please do share your stories with me at