Meditation Month Day 11

 

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PRACTICE PROMPT Sense an open, timeless presence   Notice that anything you know is already in the past. We cannot know the present moment. If you doubt this, try to know the present directly. The instant you say you know it, it is already gone. And whatever you “know” is only a fragment, never the full immediacy of what is happening. We also never experience the past or future directly. Can you ever experience them? It is impossible. If all we ever experience is the present, then time has never existed as a line from past to future. What we call a “moment” is not a slice of time but an open, timeless presence.  Rest in it. Feel its depth. Sense the quiet eternity that is always here.

Related Content When Am I? In an excerpt from his book Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-hearted Awareness, meditation teacher Loch Kelly explains that we can never be in the present moment. Read more » Beyond Time His Eminence the Seventh Dzogchen Rinpoche offers a teaching on experiencing nondual pure awareness, which is always there, outside of time.   Read more » Follow Us

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \\ Words of Wisdom - January 11, 2026 ⛄

 

“Only when you are honoring the plane on which it is all totally perfect just the way it is, can you assume on the other plane the responsibility to change it; recognizing that the desire in you to change it is part of the perfection of it all.”   Source: Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 76 – Predicaments on the Path

Via The Tricycle Community \\ What was I before my parents gave birth to me?

 

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January 10, 2026 Meditative Inquiry In Zen koan practice, one focuses on a single question aimed at breaking down ordinary understanding and developing experiential wisdom. According to Korean Zen monk Haemin Sunim, who is leading our annual Meditation Month challenge this month, koans offer a pathway to realizing our true nature—one that is already boundless and luminous. “The koan ‘What was I before my parents gave birth to me?’ is a call back to the innocent time,” says Haemin Sunim. “It’s a call back to our fundamental, undefined, free, true nature. Whatever the identity that you claim, that identity becomes a prison. What if you are more than those identities? What if you are undefined freedom?” Access the full teaching from week 1 of Meditation Month here, and if you haven’t already, sign up for the challenge to receive meditation prompts, supporting articles, and more. Join Meditation Month » Also this week: Are We One, a film that traces the transmission of Zen meditation through the life’s work of 90-year-old Irish-American Jesuit Zen Master Robert Kennedy, is available to subscribers now through the end of the month. Stream it today!   Check out the latest winning poems from Tricycle’s haiku challenge. If you’re inspired, submit your own haiku for a chance to be featured online and in print! This month’s season words are “The Old Year.” Submit your haiku here.   The global Buddhist philanthropist Robert H. N. Ho has died at 93. Read more about his contributions to the fields of Buddhist studies and Chinese cultural education.

Via Alison Marshall \\ Cosmic Conversations Blog

 

Cosmic Conversations Blog Tracing Baha'u'llah's voice across the architecture of thought

A Guide to the Phelps Inventory of Baha’i Writings Author: Alison Marshall Categories: Blog, Library, Translations Making a vast new resource less daunting Introduction Baha’i scholar Stephen Phelps has in recent years undertaken a major cataloguing project that brings together publicly accessible works of the Bab, Baha’u’llah, and Abdu’l‑Baha. The work is titled A Partial Inventory of the Works of the Central Figures of the Baha’i Faith. It currently lists over 11,900 items attributed to Baha’u’llah, alongside thousands of works by the other two Central Figures. In addition to the Inventory, Phelps has used artificial intelligence to generate partial or full translations of all the catalogued works. For readers, this means that they can now approach the Baha'i Revelation with a structured map.

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and the Third Jhāna

 

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RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Mind 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 the mind is devoid of desire, one is aware: "The mind is devoid of desire." One is just aware, just mindful: "There is mind." And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection The mind is merely aware of an object, either a sensory or mental object, much like a mirror reflecting accurately whatever comes before it. Emotional states, such as desire, co-arise every moment and flood the mind, often distorting or coloring what is seen, heard, felt, or cognized. Sometimes desire is present, sometimes it is not. Here we are being encouraged to notice when it is not.  Daily Practice Our emotional life flickers moment by moment as quickly as our mental life does, and the stream of consciousness is permeated by a stream of attitudes, intentions, and views. By noticing when desire is present and absent, we learn to recognize that it is just a passing state that sometimes occurs and sometimes does not. Practice "not clinging to anything in the world," including the presence or absence of sensory desire. RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Third Phase of Absorption (3rd Jhāna) With the fading away of joy, one abides in equanimity; mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, one enters upon and abides in the third phase of absorption, on account of which noble ones announce: "One has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful." (MN 4) Reflection Remember that jhāna practice is not something that can be undertaken lightly or sporadically and usually requires the protected conditions of a retreat center and the guidance of an experienced teacher. The jhānas are mentioned a lot in the early texts and form the core discussion of right concentration. But mostly we just hear the standard formula repeated in various contexts without much detail on how to practice. Daily Practice The transition from the second to the third phase of absorption has to do with the mellowing of joy, which is an almost effervescent energetic upwelling of pleasant bodily sensation into an experience of mental and emotional equanimity. The body still experiences pleasure, but the mind settles into an even and balanced awareness of the pleasant feeling tone that is not attached to it in any way. Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.

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Via Daily Dharma: Be Good to Others

 

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Be Good to Others Goodwill is not a Pollyanna kind of wish, thinking that everybody’s going to be good, therefore I’ll be good to them. It’s because people are not going to be good many times that you’ve got to be good to them. Thānissaro Bhikkhu, “A Heart Bigger Than the World” CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

To go, to Move, to Lie Down By Clark Strand The winning poem from the Tricycle Haiku Challenge uses the season word “blanket” as a powerful symbol of dislocation. Read more » Tricycle Meditation Month 2026 Awakening with Zen Koans with Haemin Sunim Start the new year exploring your true nature through Zen koan meditation with Tricycle’s free 31-day Meditation Month. When you sign up, you’ll get weekly video teachings, daily meditation prompts, and access to an online sangha for community support. Join today to start from day one.  Join now » Follow Us Forward today's wisdom to a friend »

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