Resting in this moment of now, I remember to smile. Eyes lifting, glancing right and then left in playful lightening dance. Air touching nostrils and lips. Front teeth cooling, opening to a sparkling grin. The body twinkles through and through. A rush of warmth and goodness shapes a path of deepening breath.

The Cycle of Samatha begins in the most simple way.

We smile!

After you've read these words, look away from the screen and allow your face to soften into a smile. How does it feel?

To really appreciate something we often need to contrast it with something else, so after you have smiled, try frowning. Recall how it feels to be more sombre or serious. Check the overall quality of body and mind that's happening now. Is it different than when you were smiling? Go back and forth between these two states, smiling and sombre, until you clearly recognise the differences between them. Intellectually we all know that there probably is a difference but how does it actually feel in your body? Check it out - right now. How does smiling affect your perception? What does it do to your overall sense of aliveness? A simple smile can lighten up our whole way of being and immediately change our appreciation of the present moment.

If you are already involved with a practice of meditation, you might like to try a mini experiment. Take a few minutes to remind yourself how it feels to be intensely or seriously meditating. Recall the sensations of being deeply engaged in your practice. Perhaps you are already smiling but if you are not, allow a smile to lighten your face and continue with your meditation. Do you notice any difference?

When we smile to begin this cycle of samatha, we are not trying to look like a toothpaste commercial. More important than the lips curling up is the feeling of smiling eyes. Smile again and become aware of the sensations in and around your eyes. How would you describe them? Many people discover a kind of lightness or sparkle, an increased degree of mobility that often feels quite playful. One person who was visiting us in New Zealand and with a rolling "rrrr" called himself "a dour Scotsman", and said that he wasn't quite comfortable with all this smiling. However he admitted that his eyes softened and that the softening gradually suffused throughout his whole being. As our looking softens and twinkles, our vision becomes unfrozen and a wonderful mystery reveals itself. It seems that a lightness of looking brings a thawing of the heart.

Even when we remember to smile, it sometimes feels artificial, as if the smile were made of cardboard and pasted on the outside of our face. A smiling mouth without smiling eyes is often just a grimace, a facade we present to the world. A real smile is a moment of transforming magic. It can change our experience of everything.

When our smile is not present, especially when we are trying to concentrate, there is frequently a dulling of vision. It is as if through making a special effort to focus on one thing, we end up ignoring everything else. The tone of our experience can become flattened and somewhat grey, if not completely narrowed down. We can even fall into a kind of tunnel vision. In the midst of this effort to concentrate, it can sometimes seem that we've lost our smile altogether. Does your meditation ever feel like that?

How can we find our smile when it seems to have vanished away? We might end up looking for it in our pocket, in our wallet, in the telephone book. Perhaps we misplaced it on the hard drive. The more we worry over its loss, the more our eyes freeze up or glaze over.

There is a simple way we can regain our smile that sometimes works even when we don't feel like smiling. I call it the Bali eye dance. Are you familiar with the Indonesian dancing of Bali where the performers move their eyes in the most expressive ways, often accompanied with intricate hand gestures? When you have finished reading this paragraph, try raising your eyes a little, so that you are looking slightly above the horizontal. Then, without moving your head, glance to the right and then glance to the left. Do these movements gently back and forth a few times. Now roll your eyes in a large circle, clockwise, then counter clockwise. Become the mischievous child in a wonderful moment of showing off and let it be playful. Many people find that very quickly, they are smiling if not actually laughing.

In this first step of the cycle of samatha, we simply pause wherever we are and smile. If it helps, we can do the Bali eye dance. After a few playful eye movements, many people find a smiling warmth softens into their body and the breathing begins to spontaneously deepen. Please don't think of this as a meditation technique. It is something that anyone can do, at almost any time and almost any place. Smiling not only lightens our experience but it uplifts everyone we meet.

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