Sunday, January 4, 2026

Via Tricycle \\\ Meditation Month Day 4

 

Day 4
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PRACTICE PROMPT

Look at the world with childlike wonder.
 
Look at the world with childlike wonder. Try to see people and things as if for the very first time, like a one-year-old who has not yet learned the names of anything. When memory, judgment, and language loosen their grip, what is left?

Can you sense a vivid, immediate, undivided reality right before your eyes? Does everything feel closer and more intimate? Spend some time today resting in this open space of wonder.
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Revisit a practice in this week’s video to recall how you perceived the world at different times in your life and regain a sense of wonder.

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I Can Only Imagine

In an excerpt from her book Smile: The Story of a Face, playwright Sarah Ruhl recalls the concept of the original face as she navigates her relationship to herself, her old face, and the face she’s always had.
 
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Via Daily Dharma: A Helping Hand

 

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A Helping Hand

Some things just hurt. And no matter what, we are not alone. Take one small step to allow whatever helping hands are coming toward you to reach you or to extend a helping hand to someone else in some way.

Sharon Salzberg, “Forever Connected”


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The Earth Element
By Ajahn Sona
Try this samadhi meditation for grounding yourself.
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Are We One
Directed by Dónal Ó Céilleachair
This month's Film Club pick traces the transmission of Zen meditation through the life’s work of 90-year-old Irish-American Jesuit Zen Master Robert Kennedy, highlighting key historical moments in the ever-evolving story of the coming of Zen to the West. 
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and the Second Jhāna

 

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RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling
A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: "Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content." (SN 47.10)
 
When feeling a painful feeling, one is aware: "Feeling a painful feeling . .. . one is just aware, just mindful: 'There is feeling.'" And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
The second ground on which mindfulness is established is the realm of feeling tones. This includes both physical and mental feeling tones, and this week the unpleasant or painful feeling tones are singled out. Physical pain is self-evident, but mental pain is often subtler, as is the transition point between an unpleasant feeling tone and an unhealthy emotion. 
Daily Practice
See if you can break the reflexive bond between feeling pain and immediately resenting it or hating it or wishing it would go away. Try instead to examine with interest and curiosity the texture of the pain: for instance, is it sharp or dull, throbbing or constant? Pain is an inevitable aspect of human experience, and all but the most intense pain is bearable. There is more to learn from facing pain than from attempting to run from it. So let’s look at it and see what we can learn.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)
With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of absorption, which brings inner clarity and singleness of mind, without applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of concentration. (MN 4)
Reflection
The mind is capable, through training, of becoming more concentrated than is usual in ordinary daily experience. The Buddha describes this as a natural process, unfolding as the body and mind become gradually happier and more tranquil while the mind is focusing on a single object. In the second phase of this process, discursive thinking gradually fades away as the feeling of pleasure and well-being grows stronger and deepens.
Daily Practice
As you sit quietly and focus on your breathing, the thoughts and memories and plans that so habitually inhabit the mind begin to settle, and the mind becomes calmer. At a certain point thoughts may cease altogether. Awareness of sensory experience remains strong, but it is no longer mediated by words, images, or concepts. The need to re-engage the mind with an object and hold it there is no longer needed, so these functions drop away.
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna


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Via FB \\\ ✨ PLAN FOR 2026: A QUIET, STRONG, MEANINGFUL LIFE ✨


 

Buddhism

✨ PLAN FOR 2026: A QUIET, STRONG, MEANINGFUL LIFE ✨
2026 is not about proving anything to anyone.
It’s about becoming someone you respect, in peace and in silence.
🌱 Stay Private
Not everyone deserves access to your thoughts, plans, pain, or progress.
Privacy protects your energy. Growth happens faster when it’s not constantly exposed to opinions, jealousy, or noise.
🧠 Work Smart
Hard work matters, but clarity matters more.
Choose effort with direction. Learn skills. Improve focus. Stop burning yourself just to look busy.
🥗 Eat Healthy
Food is not just fuel for the body — it shapes the mind.
What you eat affects your mood, discipline, clarity, and long-term health. Respect your body; it carries you through life.
🤫 Talk Less
Silence builds power.
Not every thought needs expression. Not every plan needs announcement. Let results speak. Listen more than you respond.
⬆️ Do Better
Not perfect — better.
Better habits. Better boundaries. Better choices.
Compare yourself only to who you were yesterday.
🌍 Live Life
Stop postponing joy.
Life isn’t a rehearsal. Be present. Laugh. Walk. Breathe deeply. Appreciate small moments — they are the real wealth.
💛 Be Kind
Kindness is strength, not weakness.
Be gentle with others, but also with yourself. Compassion creates peace where ego creates conflict.
🙏 Stay Humble
Success without humility creates emptiness.
Stay grounded. Stay teachable. Remember: titles fade, character remains.
🚫 Avoid Drama
Drama drains life-force.
Not every invitation deserves your presence. Choose calm over chaos. Distance is sometimes the healthiest response.
🩹 Heal
Unhealed wounds repeat themselves.
Face what hurts. Sit with discomfort. Let go of old pain instead of carrying it into the future.
🌳 Grow
Growth is quiet, slow, and deeply personal.
You won’t hear it happening — like a tree, it just grows. One day, you look back and realize you’re stronger, calmer, wiser.
✨ 2026 is about peace, discipline, and self-respect.
Not loud success.
Not validation.
Just a life that feels right — inside.
Walk gently.
Grow steadily.
Live fully.

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