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  • Tricycle Community 12 comments

    A Glob of Tar Paid Member

    By Upasika Kee Nanayon
    EVEN THOUGH WE PRACTICE, we continue to fall for pleasant feelings. Feelings are illusory on many levels. We don't realize that they're changeable and unreliable. Instead of offering pleasure, they offer us nothing but stress—yet we're still addicted to them. This business of feeling is a very subtle matter. Please try to contemplate it carefully, this latching onto feelings of pleasure, pain, or equanimity. And you have to experiment with pain more than you may want to. When there are feelings of physical pain or mental distress, the mind will struggle because it doesn't like pain. But when pain turns to pleasure the mind likes it and is content with it. So it keeps on playing with feeling even though, as we've already said, feeling is inconstant, stressful, and not really ours. But the mind doesn't see this. More »
  • Tricycle Community 3 comments

    Being Natural Paid Member

    By Master Sheng-Yen
    Let it go and be spontaneous,Experience no going or staying. Accord with your nature, unite with the Way, Wander at ease, without vexation. More »
  • Tricycle Community 2 comments

    Disconnect the Dots Paid Member

    By Cynthia Thatcher
    THE PAINTING WAS GEORGE SEURAT’S Neo-impressionist work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his famous scene of Parisians in a waterside park. As my eye scanned the canvas, jumping from boats to people to clouds, it caught on a tree.Here were no seamless bands of color, no blended patches of tint as in so many other paintings. The tree was made up of countless specks—a smattering of separate orange, yellow, and blue dots. The boats on the water, the people on the lawn, their faces and clothes—all were a sprinkling of motes, as if the canvas had been caught out in a rain of paint. More »
  • Tricycle Community 2 comments

    Basic Insight Meditation Instructions Paid Member

    By Cynthia Thatcher
    Sit on the floor, legs crossed. (If this is uncomfortable you can sit in a chair. Those who are ill may do this exercise lying down.) Close your eyes or leave them open. Focus your attention on a spot on the abdomen along the body’s vertical midline.As the abdomen expands during respiration, watch the movement with your mind, from beginning to end. When it contracts, do the same. Continue watching the abdominal motions, one after another, keeping your attention in the immediate present moment.Rather than focusing on the breath or the abdomen’s shape, observe the motion itself, experienced as a tactile sensation of pressure. Breathe naturally and follow the movements lightly, keeping your mind on the surface of the abdomen. You don’t have to concentrate too hard. If you have difficulty perceiving the movements, put your hands on your stomach. More »
  • Tricycle Community 3 comments

    How Long Is A Moment Paid Member

    By Cynthia Thatcher
    IN THE PRACTICE OF VIPASSANA we try to stay in "the present moment." Everyone knows what the "present" means: Now. But what, precisely, is a "moment"? How long does it last? And when does the present moment become the past?In Vipassana the word "moment" has two definitions. The first could be called the "practice-moment." ("Practice" refers, of course, to meditation practice.) The second is the moment of consciousness itself. More »
  • Tricycle Community 26 comments

    The Aim of Attention Paid Member

    By Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
    Self-awareness . . . is a neutral mode that maintains self-reflectiveness even in the midst of turbulent emotions. —Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence   More »