If you have a Palm handheld, you can download this free software tool:

http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&PartnerREF=&siteid=1&prodID=52303

called “PocketDoan: A Meditation Timer” — it’s a fairly robust timer which includes gong and bell sounds with different timing combinations and more. Worth a look. I love this site — please know that I’ve recommended 43Folders to many people, and will continue to do so. I always find great stuff here. BC

Thanks! I find tools like these necessary if I’m going to have any success at a lenghty time of meditation.

Once my meditation teacher told me that if you start your meditation thinking “I’ll meditate for x minutes”, your body will tell you when the time has passed. There’s an inner clock inside each of us that you can learn to trust. For example, if I say before going to sleep, “I want to wake up at x hour”, usually it happens. Or if I say, I want to work on this for 10mins, I know when the 10 mins. have passed. But as much as I trust my inner clock, I’ll use an alarm clock and a timer.

As for meditating, I think it’s best to meditate at the end of the day, when you know that you’re not expected somewhere else. Just to avoid one more distraction.

This is a very cool thread. It reminds me that I’ve been looking for ringtones that are less obtrusive. Something that rises in volume slowly or that plays a few quiet notes and waits… I’d love something like graduated chimes.

I use an iTunes smart playlist to get a block of time for focused work without having an alarm. This requires a task where the music won’t distract you, but you still need to notice when the music stops (or not really care if you just keep working in silence).

To set up an iTunes playlist that randomly selects one hour of music to play:

1. Create a new smart playlist (select File>New Smart Playlist…)
2. Uncheck “Match the following rule”
3. Check “Limit to” and make the rest say “60” “minutes” selected by “random”
4. Select “Match only checked songs” or “Live updating,” if desired.
5. Click OK

Now you have 60 minutes of music ready to go any time you need an hour of focus. To update the list, simply delete what you’ve already heard and new songs will fill in to round out the hour.

If you have genre maintained properly throughout your music library, you can specify that you only hear, say, “Ambient” music during the hour by checking on “Match the following rule” and selecting “Genre” “contains” “Ambient”.

I saved mine as “60 minutes” and keep it loaded with music I can work to whenever I need it.

I recently found a sound that I use for a meditation “alarm”. It’s from the freesound site: Big Bowl. It is a series of chimes of increasing volume (played on a big salad bowl), and is quite non-disturbing. I have been using it with ‘at’ like so:

bash$ at now + 20 minutes at> aplay bigbowl1.wav at>^D bash$

This should probably go into a script or something, but I’ve been too lazy so far.

You may also want to look at the Invisible Clock. It’s not free, but I spent the money on one, and it makes for a great way to come out of meditation. You can have it beep or vibrate, and select the vibration level as well. I usually meditate while listening to a similar recording to Jason M.’s (Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Meditations), but I like having the earplugs in, so I needed something else to time me. Invisible Clock

I use a rosary. For those not familliar, it’s a string of beads of various sizes — 5 groups of 10 small beads separated by larger beads for the Catholic rosary, 4 groups of 7 for the Anglican — which are basically used for iterative meditation; whether you’re actually praying the rosary or simply doing breathing excercises, you just move your fingers along the beads as you iterate; when you get to the end of the string, you’re done. no jolting alarm, and no counting, you just make the motion of the beads through your fingers part of your meditative practice.

Shannon, about the rosaries, don’t the Tibetan monks have similar “rosaries” - strung beads? I think they use them for meditating as well.

I should also add that I need something to let me know when time’s up not so that I don’t meditate for too long, but so that I don’t stop too early. If I didn’t have a reliable timer at 20 minutes (or whenever), I would be prone to figuring time was up early, or coming up with some random reason to stop, and that would completely ruin my practise —- I’d end up stopping for just any reason.

Yes, Buddhists also use prayer beads, as do some Moslems, and there’s an Eastern Orthodox Christian practice as well, I just don’t know anything about them :)

I downloaded a chime wav onto my phone and set that as my alarm sound. It’s useful for meditation and it’s also good for waking up to. Prayer beads are good too, especially when on the move or in the office, and you can also use a stick of incense - when it burns out, you’re done.

I just made a bunch of audio files, and threw them up on a webpage/podcast page here.

Feel free to snag any/all of the files. There’s white/brown/pink noise files, as well as various brainwave files, all in 10 and 2 minute lengths, made expressly for this hack.

Enjoy!

I’ve made myself a small flash file to play on my pocket pc: press the center button and the bell will sound 3 times to start meditation and 1 time every 10 minutes (total time = 30 minutes) the screen also change color over time like a candle or incense stick you can find the file here http://www.hanabi.be/files/Zen2.swf have fun

Hi there, thanks for the (10+2)*5 hack. In addition to the software you mention, there’s a great app for Palm OS named Pocket Doan. Originally a meditation timer (a good one), it can be used for multiple timer actions. And even better - it’s free!

Ok,

What’s everybody’s favorate PC chime program. I’d love to find a n aplication that chimes at a preset duration (like every 15 min…or per the (10+2)*5 hack. There has got to be a small program that can do this, right?

I really like the TenPlusTwo widget for Konfabulator… if only a program like this were available outside of Konfabulator, it hogs my ram and tempts me to keep unnecessary information cluttered about my desktop!

I have a nice CD called Meditation End Chime: Selectable silence up to 70 minutes followed by three bowl strikes. Works great and the end chime is lovely. You choose the length of your meditation session, from 5 to 70 minutes. Contact Peter Warren at pgwarren@ultranet.com or go to: http://www.dharmacrafts.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?

My FranklinCovey Planning software permits the user to set up numerous silent timers — a window pops open when the time runs out. A sound file also can be selected. FC is not my favorite calendar program (I loved Daytimer), but the timers come in really handy.