Tricycle | Awake in the World

"What is this?"

You can ask the question in tune with the breath: breathing in, I am aware I am breathing in; breathing out, I ask: "What is this?"
When you ask "What is this?" you are opening yourself to the whole moment.
You are not asking about anything specific. The questioning is open-ended. This meditation is about questioning—not about answering.
You are not looking for any answers when asking "What is this?"
No analysis, no speculation. You are asking because you do not know.
Try to develop a sensation of questioning.
Try to remain stable and alert.
You are focusing on the question within a wide-open awareness.
Experience the pregnant vibrating sensation that the question evokes.

Open to the moment fully through the question.
In your daily life, try to use the question as a way to re-center yourself so that it becomes a question that brings you back to the full awareness of the moment—body, mind, and heart.

Try to use the question when you feel stuck in a thought. Look at the thought and ask: "What is this thought?" You do not do this to resolve or analyze the thought but to question deeply what you are thinking in this moment. People find that when they question their thoughts in this manner often the thoughts lose intensity and sometimes even disappear.

When you do this meditation, sometimes an answer might appear: if it does, just let it float in your consciousness without grasping at it. If you get something similar to an intense sensation of questioning, just be with that in a stable way; if you feel unsettled by the sensation, stabilize yourself with focusing on the breath again.

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