Nicolas Boulenger

I still go often to the SACD Writers' House.

To write, to work, for meetings, for screenings. (Authors can rent offices there for free.)

The Writers' House, like the SACD offices for that matter, are places where you feel welcome.

The people who work there are kind, attentive, available.

You can tell that things have been designed to be simple, accessible, welcoming. People are at the heart of it, not just an appendage to a system organized for machines.

It's rare enough to be worth noting.

And worth emulating.

My technique for creating my blog posts or daily videos is as follows:

Either an idea comes to me. Then, if I can, I take out my phone and record it right away.

Or, especially for blog posts, it's the right time to write—because I won't have time later, for example. Often in the morning with coffee.

So I pause and look for what's deep down.

In other words: if I stop all activity, stop thinking, stop planning, is there something stirring deep inside me? Is there a problem, an idea, or a new way of seeing that came during meditation that I could share here?

I always find something.

But recently, I may be reaching the end of a cycle.

My videos about life and meditation have done very well. I'm happy with my posts here, too. But I think I want to move on to something else. When I look deep down, I don't find the same excitement for these topics.

Let me be clear: I'm going to keep posting one video and one note per day. But I mustn't let myself get trapped by what has worked. The source is the inner excitement.

I have to follow my thread—even if everyone unsubscribes.

To understand leverage in finance, imagine that one day you receive a machine with the following property:

When you insert €100 on one side, a year later, €130 comes out the other.

If you're rational (and greedy), your first instinct should be to try to insert as much money as possible.

To the point where it would even be profitable to go borrow from your friends, from the bank, wherever you can, and put everything into the machine...

On one condition (and it's an important condition): that the borrowing rate is lower than the rate of return. In other words, it's only worthwhile if the bank charges you less than €30 in interest.

This simplified model represents how financiers view companies.

They don't care about the internal workings, only the financial return. And if the latter is higher than the borrowing rate, then it's worth borrowing to invest.

And for me... it's the same thing with meditation.

I realized one day that the rate of return of meditation on my well-being was much higher than expected.

So, it was worth borrowing time from my other activities (which had a lower return) to invest it in presence and clarity.

It was quite a radical decision at the time.

I don't regret it.

All the notes and videos I'm posting right now are about presence.

How to find peace in the moment without creating artificial goals or attachments; how to reach a pure joy that doesn't depend on satisfying a manufactured need; how not to stake everything on the future; etc.

And meanwhile...

We ask children to write a letter to Santa Claus to list the new acquisitions they'll make in a month. We create excitement from a completely fabricated anticipation. We turn the present into a waiting period rooted in consumption.

Like so many traditions that have become so natural today, I find it hard not to see our lowest commercial instincts at work. It's become an unquestioned consumption reflex, supporting a growth that destroys everything.

Once upon a time, Christmas was the festival of lights.

In the middle of winter and perpetual night, people hung lights to celebrate the gradual return of the sun.

Then capitalism came along.

Generally, we do everything to avoid it.

When we feel anxiety rising, we associate it with a problem, a fear, a goal, so we act.

What action will make it go away?

When action isn't enough, we try something else. Or we take it personally. Another failure. "Someone more capable than me would have known what to do," we tell ourselves.

Except there's nothing to do.

Anxiety must be experienced. All the way through.

No action will chase it away or diminish it. No solution will resolve it.

Especially since by trying to act too soon, we don't let anxiety deliver its message. A part of you is worried about something. Let it express itself fully. Don't immediately go to war against something else.

Then, once the emotion has passed, return to your activities.

An inner transformation has occurred.

This transformation will contribute more to your well-being than any action devised in panic.

--

Related:

• Rain
• All in the Body

I'm currently doing a series on meditation in my daily videos.

From the start, I've been using these videos to reinforce concepts I've understood intellectually but don't apply enough in daily life. And instead of making a note for personal use, I express it in a post for collective use.

Big advantage: it forces me to put into clear words, for people who aren't necessarily well-versed in this, concepts I've been immersed in for several years. I have to articulate the context, the goal, the method.

It clarifies many ideas, even for myself.

Faith is essential to presence.

Presence means being fully immersed in what you are doing.

It means being steeped in the present, in sensations, in the activity, without passing judgment or hatching plans. You simply do the best you can, without thinking about the rest.

It is a way of operating that can be unsettling at times.

If we plan nothing, what happens next?

Shouldn't I also anticipate the future a little, prepare for what follows? Otherwise, don't I run the risk of being left high and dry?

This is where faith steps in. It says this:

The best way for the next activity to emerge is to perform the current one well. If I am entirely present in the moment, the next step will take shape on its own as a consequence. There is nothing to predict.

If I start anticipating, however, it means I am no longer fully focused on what I am doing. A part of me does not trust and prefers to build plans. Intellect takes the reins from action. We are no longer in the flow.

To be yourself, you must have faith that the future will arise as a natural consequence of the present fully lived.

Lost in life? Not sure anymore where to go, what to do, what goal to pursue?

Place your attention on the present.

Tired? Not feeling yourself? The sense that you're not where you should be, that you're wasting your day?

Place your attention on the present.

The present is the draft of air. The tension in your neck. The car light blinking. The green of the plants swaying in the wind. The light in the sky. The smell of coffee.

In this immediate and ever-changing present, there's no room for the story you're telling yourself.

It's the one putting you in this state.

And yet I meditated this morning. It's a quieter day—well, not quieter, lots of things to do, but not too much work.

But there it is: bad mood.

Maybe the flight back. Maybe the food. Nerves unwinding.

Here's at least one mistake I don't make anymore: thinking that whatever triggered the irritation is the source. Ha! Not falling for that one anymore. Proof: I moved on to something else and that second thing pissed me off too.

So there you go.

I could have put off writing this note until later. When things felt better. Write yet another piece of bullshit about meditation. "Oh, you just have to place your attention on blah blah blah..."

But no, that's the whole secret now: I'm not waiting anymore for things to be okay.

In fact, I'm not even hoping for things to be okay.

I do it now. With what's here. I accept.

Damnit.

Woke up in the middle of the night with this very clear recipe idea in my head:

Splinter Rice Recipe
(20 minutes, easy level)
Mix a bowl of rice with a large quantity of splinters that will flavor the dish but that you absolutely, absolutely must not swallow.

What exactly is my brain trying to tell me?

My mom lives in Morocco, so it's not easy to avoid flying.

But here I am at the airport for work.

And honestly, I could have organized things differently, but everything happened so fast.

The success of an offer I put together kind of accelerated my life. And since the situation was new, I didn't have the right reflexes to find an alternative.

Goes to show you have to think about it ahead of time.

But before you can think about it, you have to decide to think about it. In other words: notice it when it happens and make a mental note for the next time the situation comes up. That's the real beginning: noticing and taking note.

So there you have it: I'm taking note. Literally.

When people used to ask me "what do you do?", I'd always say:

"I make films."

I never dared say "I'm a filmmaker" because that would've implied I made a living from it, which has never quite been the case. (I've made money, sometimes good money, but not enough to live off it consistently.)

And it also felt more honest: I'm not just a filmmaker. I write, I produce, I edit... I make things.

Recently, I've changed my answer. Now it's:

"I make films and work in communications."

Because with ChezFilms, I help experts and innovative companies tell their story to take off. It's starting to work really well.

So when I give that answer, people can choose which direction they want to take: they ask me a question about films, or a question about communications, and either way, I've got stories to tell.

Or they don't ask any questions and the conversation moves on.

That works too.

Something my son said yesterday while we were out walking:

"Nobody wants problems.
But some people have problems."

What could I do but agree? It reminded me a bit of Chevalier and Laspalès' "some tried, they had problems" sketch.

I'm blown away by the relevance of my posts 😎.

For me, only.

I realize two days after posting a video, or three days after adding a note right here, that the content in question answers exactly the question I'm asking myself right now.

But like... exactly.

So much so that it's mind-blowing that I don't realize it while writing or filming it.

No: I'm convinced I'm talking about something else. Something personal, yes, but at no point do I feel like I'm providing a solution to my dilemma.

And yet, when I connect the dots, it's impossible to doubt that I was indeed talking about that.

It doesn't surprise me. I know full well that art works this way: whatever the subject, as long as you create in the moment, you express what's deep down.

But I wasn't expecting such a masterful and daily demonstration of it.

When it rains hard on the house, I feel a little stress.

A few years ago, the roof had problems and there were regular leaks inside.

That's fixed, but recently we discovered there was water seeping into a shared wall.

Rain is the anxiety of repairs we can't afford to make.

(This reminds me of that cartoon: a guy is woken up at night by a noise and finds a ghost in his living room. He's relieved it's a ghost and not repairs to do.)

When stress arises, I use meditation to place my attention on it. I make the knot in my stomach or the tension in my body the focus of my attention.

Usually, it goes away quickly. To pass, emotions—like ghosts—need to be lived, felt.

But this time, it took longer than expected.

As if I had stumbled upon a "pocket" of anxiety that had accumulated over years and needed to be drained.

A stress that seems superficial ("eh, it's nothing") but keeps coming back often has a deeper cause. On the surface, it looks like just another puddle, we don't pay attention to it. Except that you only need to step in it to realize you could easily sink.

The work to be done (on the house) will be all the easier to undertake once we've done the inner work to manage the anxiety.

Deal with the emotion before the action, always.

Many subscribers have asked if I had reading recommendations or content to go deeper into what I discuss in my videos.

Answer: yes, plenty!

My personal journey – officially started 7 years ago with meditation – has been accompanied by a great deal of reading, listening, videos, podcasts (...) that were essential in giving structure to what I was discovering.

Problem: the majority of my sources are in English... and haven't been translated into French.

Worse: I found that the few French sources I came across were... how to put it? Less rigorous. Mixing everything together: spirituality, wellness, alternative medicine, astrology...

What I appreciate in most of the sources I recommend here is a certain rigor. Not always, not everywhere, but generally: they don't use pseudoscience to justify what is spiritual; they remain very conservative in everyday advice; they rely above all on personal practice and reflection rather than devotion to anyone; they encourage free and independent thinking rather than belonging to a sect.

Another problem: some of the sources I recommend here are paid. Nothing outrageous, but these are books or recordings I haven't found freely available.

If you're not discouraged, here they are in order of preference 👇

Alan Watts' Recordings 🇬🇧

What has been most important to me.

Alan Watts is an English author and philosopher who greatly contributed to introducing Eastern philosophy (Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen) to the USA.

But above all: he's an exceptional speaker.

He's funny, intelligent, pedagogical, highly cultured (in both philosophy and science), and we have hundreds of hours of his recorded lectures.

I started by listening to dozens of hours of Alan Watts on the street, in waiting lines, on the subway...

But there are three problems...

First problem: the sound of his voice is inseparable from what he's saying. You need to listen to him. So I'd avoid dubbing, or worse, AI recreations. With subtitles, it can be very good.

Second problem: his family commercially exploits his recordings, so they're not freely accessible.

Third problem: these are audio recordings. So when you find clips on YouTube, they're often accompanied by images... not necessarily good ones.

So essential for me... but paid and difficult to access if you don't understand English.

Yes, he wrote books that have been translated into French, but they had less impact on me than his recordings.

Acharya Prashant's Books 🇬🇧

Acharya Prashant is an Indian guru in all his splendor (i.e.: a teacher).

The first book I read by him was one of the most important for me: Advait in Everyday Life.

If you get past the very kitschy cover (in the Indian style), don't worry about the word Advait in the title (it's non-duality, but that's not important), and skip the first chapter they recently added to the digital version (surely for marketing reasons), it's a profoundly transformative book on Eastern philosophy.

So much so that it's what pushed me to read...

The Bhagavad Gita 🇬🇧🇫🇷

The Bhagavad Gita (the "Song of God") is a very small part of the famous Mahabharata, the Indian sacred poem.

In this story, Krishna (avatar of the god Vishnu) drives King Arjuna to battle. Along the way, he explains to him... life.

The precepts he shares are the foundations of a well-lived life—therefore peaceful, yes, but without withdrawing from the world, on the contrary. It was one of Gandhi's favorite books.

However, you'll probably have difficulty tackling this text alone. It's very ancient, very Indian, and packed with references you don't have.

That's why most people—like me—read exegeses or commentaries, meaning books that contain the entire poem with, after each song, an explanation, examples, advice.

I've read several books like this, but the best, in my view, was Acharya Prashant's version—whom I mentioned just above. BUT: it's paid, in several volumes, and only in English.

However, I have no doubt you'll find plenty of French authors who've written very good books on the subject, or even many excellent translations. But you'll have to search a bit, that's part of the game.

The "Waking Up" App 🇬🇧

No, I've never tried the "Petit Bambou" app. I have nothing to say about it... except perhaps that I get the impression, through several friends who've used it, that it's... how to say... a bit "romanticized"? Many things that are supposed to be guided meditations are more like narratives, contemplations. Why not, the stories are surely very instructive, but then... is it meditation?

An app I used for a long time is "Waking Up," by Sam Harris—which is paid and in English only.

But it's interesting for two reasons:

It offers a series of guided meditations for beginners. With a certain rigor, precisely. It allows you to truly understand what meditation can be used for—which is what we need at the start.

But also: it offers dozens of hours of recordings from great masters... including Alan Watts! (Whom I mentioned above). Or Rupert Spira (whom I mention below). Or James Low (still below)!

So a wonderful way to discover other sources... but all in English.

James Low's Recordings 🇬🇧

James Low is a still-living Scotsman who, for me, followed in Alan Watts' footsteps.

I discovered his recordings in the Waking Up app, and he too possesses breathtaking intelligence and clarity.

He explains the basics of dzogchen, the principle of emptiness in Buddhism, meditation, balance in daily life (...) with such simplicity that you feel transformed just by listening to him.

But he too... only in English.

Krishnamurti's Videos and Books 🇬🇧🇫🇷

Jiddu Krishnamurti is an Indian thinker who refused to belong to any movement.

In fact, he believes there is no collective solution, and that you shouldn't trust any group or any guru. Only yourself.

As it happens, there are loads of video recordings of his talks, some of which are (sometimes poorly) subtitled. As with Alan Watts, you need to see him in the flesh. His face, his voice, his intonation.

He also has books that have been translated into French but are sometimes a bit difficult to access.

Osho's Books and Videos 🇬🇧🇫🇷

But yes, you know Osho (aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)! He's the scandalous guru from the documentary Wild Wild Country!

But he's also one of the sharpest thinkers and authors on Hinduism, Eastern philosophy, and living well. And most of his books are translated!

I'm currently reading "The Book of Secrets" (for which there's a French version) and it's a revelation with every chapter. But I might not start with this if I weren't at all familiar with Eastern philosophy.

"Seeing That Frees" by Robert Burbea 🇬🇧

Speaking of fascinating books you maybe shouldn't start with, the book Seeing That Frees by Rob Burbea was very important to me.

It presents advanced meditation methods, builds a fascinating discourse on emptiness, and shows us the importance it can have for living better.

The Present with Eckhart Tolle 🇫🇷🇬🇧

However, in the "excellent introductory books that also exist in French" category, there's of course The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

Eckhart Tolle, with his books, his seminars, his appearance, his demeanor, has become an essential figure in spiritual development through presence.

I didn't start with him, but when I read him I found it very interesting. He also has many videos... but in English, rarely subtitled.

Rupert Spira's Books and Videos 🇫🇷🇬🇧

Rupert Spira writes books and organizes retreats in England.

His approach is based on consciousness, non-duality, and the teachings of Ramana Maharshi (like many!).

His guided meditations are always interesting (but in English). His books are also very interesting and are now translated into French.

Ramana Maharshi 🇫🇷🇬🇧

He's the source for many of the people above—including Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, etc.

As a young man, Ramana Maharshi was terrified of death. So he began to meditate... and it lasted his entire life.

He's the proverbial hermit who went to meditate alone in the mountains. Gradually, people joined him. He found himself at the center of a collective he never sought to control.

He didn't write anything himself, but many have written about him or transcribed his teachings, sometimes word for word. So you'll find many different books about him.

And Also 🇫🇷🇬🇧

Without any particular category and in the order I discovered them, these (fairly well-known) books have also helped me greatly and are often available in French:

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, The Gateless Gate by Wumen Huikai, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (haven't read it all but interesting), Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (great! absolutely must-read), The Way of Liberation by Adyashanti (not bad, a former cyclist turned spiritual master), Journey from Many to One by Swami Bhaskarananda, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche (very well-known and very good book), The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (not to be read in one go, but a paragraph from time to time).

And Finally 🇫🇷🇬🇧

If you're interested, you can also real my entries in the journal.

Participate!

If you find any links, translations, or interesting or freely available recordings of the content above, feel free to share them and I'll update this. Thanks!

Meditation is about bringing your attention to the present moment.

The arm. That tension in the neck. The bird singing. A thought arising. A sudden feeling of sadness. That shifts and disappears. The foot against the ground. The breath. The bird, again. The head moving.

(To start, it's sometimes recommended to focus your attention solely on the breath. See what works for you.)

This is called the flow: perceptions, thoughts, and emotions arise, transform, then fade away. Everything passes.

But regularly, we get stuck on a thought.

We wake up as if from a dream, realizing we've been ruminating on something for several minutes. This fixation that blocks the flow is called (quite fittingly) "an attachment."

It's normal, it's part of the process: we notice it and come back to the present.

Some even say that this back-and-forth between thought and the present is the heart of meditation, like a muscle you work through the repetition of a back-and-forth motion.

Then, you carry a bit of this flow into your daily life.

And everything becomes easier.

I've discovered that I work like ChatGPT.

And you probably do too.

Meaning that my next action is essentially determined by whatever context elements I happen to have in my head at that moment.

And, like ChatGPT, that context is minimal.

We don't carry our entire lives with us at every instant. Depending on the day or time, we focus on this future problem, that current difficulty, this trendy goal.

The resulting decisions are based on a tiny, anecdotal sliver of our cognitive heritage—and most importantly: one we don't consciously choose.

So lately, I've decided to change all that.

Every morning, I read the same note containing the context elements that seem relevant for my day. That I've consciously chosen.

I no longer let social media, TV, or impromptu calls fill my head. I fill it myself, every morning, with hand-picked thoughts: positive, strong, and organic.

In this fertile ground, the right action grows effortlessly.

Three people recognized me on the street in Paris because they follow me on Instagram.

One the night before last, and two this afternoon.

All very kind, each time.

So what do I do, quit everything? 😅

I realize there's a very temporal aspect to professional jealousy.

In rivalry with peers, we want to do it before the other.

The hardest moments to go through are when those we admire or envy reach a summit before us. We feel left behind—even if it's not exactly the summit we were aiming for.

So we want to enter the race, to hurry to do it now.

Sometimes losing sight of what we really want to do.

Because, at the end of a career or a life, does it really matter when we did things? Doesn't fulfillment come rather from having done exactly what we wanted to do, regardless of timing?

So it's easy to lose sight of what matters.

Verbal thought is just commentary. (We've talked about it.)

It's not what chooses the action. No: it observes and comments.

A bit like a babushka sitting all day at the foot of a building:

"Did you see that? They chose to raise their right arm again. What kind of world are we living in, I tell you."

Sometimes, she uses her memory to interpret the body's manifestations:

"You feel that knot in your stomach? It's the same one we felt during the divorce. They have regrets, for sure!"

Except most of the time, the babushka is wrong. Because her world revolves around two or three obsessions that loop endlessly and that she thinks she sees everywhere.

So, rather than listening to the interpreter, you need to return to the source: the physical sensation, the body's manifestation.

By inspecting the present, by simply observing what arises, you'll start to learn the language.

Soon, you'll be fluent.

And believe me: it's a more important language than English or Spanish since it's the one you'll use your whole life to dialogue with yourself.

Personally, I've reached 12K followers on Instagram.

I remember a time when I wanted to create discussion groups with friends: virtual salons where I could find conversation and company 24/7. It never worked out. Now I have something like that with the channel's messages and comments: at any hour, conversations with people interested in the same topics as me.

It creates a lot of opportunities. I say yes to many things. Projects, meetings. Not everything.

Professionally, the channels I've created for ChezFilms are taking off too. (Insta, TikTok, Youtube and Linkedin.)

The numbers aren't astronomical but it's working for what matters most: I'm getting client inquiries.

This week, I have five phone meetings with qualified prospects: people who are interested in exactly what I offer. (The hardest part was defining that offering precisely.)

We'll see how it all works out. It's exciting. But we're not letting up.

Everything is so clear when I'm present.

When I'm curious about the moment, when I inspect the colors, sounds, and sensations that come to me... The world is no longer mysterious. It's no longer frightening. Stories of success and failure seem far away.

Action becomes easier, too.

Every gesture feels obvious and problems seem to solve themselves.

Yet I spend most of my time elsewhere.

Even though I meditate in the morning and return to presence several times a day, I regularly let myself get caught up in urgency and fabrication. Less than before, perhaps.

In those moments, though, it feels like going back to square one. Everything becomes serious again. The past and future are threatening again. We're back to trying to solve problems that didn't exist two minutes earlier.

Apparently this is normal: we move in and out of presence.

The goal is to stabilize, to truly change our operating system.

I'm going to work on that.

Hit ten thousand followers on Instagram.

Does that officially make me an influencer?

The best part: the messages and comments.

It's helped me find a whole bunch of people who are interested in the same things I am.

And I also get tons of messages from people my videos seem to be helping.

And for now, the videos are quite easy to make.

So that's good.

Yet another abandoned project (for now).

Animated science fiction short film about the life of the first human on Mars... who happens to be a 7-year-old child.

When technology became advanced enough to reach Mars, every government on the planet wondered... "Who should we send?"

"I know!" someone answered. "What if we sent a child?"

And everyone thought it was a brilliant idea.

But if you ask me...

It was a crackpot idea.

Race car drivers want to drive race cars at 300 km/h on tracks. To win.

To achieve this, they need to know how to do other things: prepare physically, be mechanically savvy, build a network of partners, etc.

But a driver who only prepared physically, day after day, wouldn't become a driver: they'd become an athlete.

Another who was interested solely in mechanics would become a designer or mechanic.

As for the one who invests all their time in networking, they'll end up an agent or manager.

You must never lose sight of the source.

What you do now is what you'll do later. Preparation can become your entire life.

The whole game is finding a way to do it now, even when conditions don't seem right.

I couldn't find the original source (even though I searched for at least 30 seconds), so I'm telling you from memory.

It was a music critic who was talking about a new track:

"Anyone eating alphabet soup would shit better lyrics to a better tune."

Which begs the question: how many people eat alphabet soup and shit out works of art without ever knowing it?

In the "everyone knew except me" series, subsection "pretty song about birds but actually not," I give you Barbara's L'Aigle Noir, which is actually about the incest she experienced as a child.

A friend mentioned it in passing, so I went to check.

The lyrics take on a whole different meaning.

My god.

A music video I absolutely love shot by Camille Tardieu in a single take during this year's Off Courts festival:

The musician is Édouard Pons (who composed the music for my film Migrul, also shot at Off Courts this year). And the video is directed and animated by Camille Tardieu, who makes amazing stuff.

When I wake up in the morning, I don't know.

I have things to do ("what"), like everyone else, but I have no idea how I'm going to go about it.

And I think that's the secret.

Obligations are like contracts made with the outside world: we commit to a result.

But we're entirely free on the manner and form.

So every morning, I take stock. What emotions are present? What desires? What's the weather like outside? What is this day telling us? What occurrences spontaneously manifest?

We identify these disparate ingredients and then invent a recipe that didn't exist the day before.

Ignorance is key to the process.

Without a pre-established plan, we have no choice but to open our eyes, improvise, dance with what arises.

Otherwise, why get up? Isn't that what life is all about?

"If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the point of doing it?" – Pablo Picasso