Add bookmarks from the pages that you visit frequently. They will appear here, where you can reorder them, and put them into groups.
What's New?
Release 1.4.6May 7, 2024
website updates
New bookmarks feature added to the website. Now facilitators can keep their often-used links within reach, and prepare the daily meditation from a set list of objects. When you first mark a page, a bookmarks bar icon will appear in the top-right corner of the screen, along with a small banner to help you identify what that icon does.
Clicking on the bookmarks bar icon will open your bookmark panel. There you can sort the bookmarks you have added, by clicking on them and dragging them up and down the list. You can remove bookmarks that you no longer use by clicking the “delete bookmark” symbol to the left of each link.
You can also add simple groups to better organize those bookmarks. Type a group name in the field at the top of the list, and hit the enter key or click the plus icon to the right. The new group appears in your list, and you can drag bookmarks into and out of it. You can click on the group names to open or close groups, showing or hiding the contents. The state of your group is remembered between visits to the Falling Rain website.
You can remove groups by clicking the “x” beside them. When you remove a group, the bookmarked pages will be returned to the main grouping.
website updates
New sounds clips - from a longer morning meditation by Chân Thệ Nghiêm, accompanying the Great Bell of the Lower Hamlet - have been added to the page of The Great Bell Chant. There is one clip that opens the morning, inviting the community to awaken and to presence, and a second that closes the call of the Great Bell, and invites all to morning meditation.
We have taken another clip from the same morning session, and added it to the Invocation of the Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas. You may enjoy adding these sounds and words to your day.
We added the sound of The Great Bell itself to our buffet of bells. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to visit one of the Plum Village monasteries will have enjoyed beginning the day with its beautiful, deep call to presence. The keyboard shortcut for the Great Bell is, appropriately, the letter “g”, so we have moved the Gong sound to the letter “x”. All other keyboard shortcuts remain the same:
- Great Bell (g)
- Gong (x)
The Great Bell is not usually “awakened”. Both the small “g” and the capital “G” will invite the Great Bell. Also, as the Great Bell sound is a large file, please allow a few seconds for it to load the first time you invite it.
Enjoy!
community news
Earth Touchings #16 through 21, have been transcribed for facilitators’ use.
website updates
All of the available bells, chimes and other sounds are now available for facilitators and other visitors. In a future release, they will be viewed and invited from a new “Bell Buffet”, a section at the bottom of each web page that can be opened and closed with a click or a touch of the screen. For now, they can viewed in the meditation timer, and accessed using keyboard shortcuts.
Open the Guided Meditations page and click on the clock symbol near the top of the page. From there, choose “Manually select times and bells” from the drop-down list. This opens the bell options. When you click on one of the bell selectors, you will see all of the available types of sounds, along with their keyboard shortcut:
- Small Bell (s)
- Medium Bell (m)
- Large Bell (l)
- Meditation Hall Bell (h)
- Tiny Chime (t)
- Stick Chime (c)
- Double Chime or Tingsha (d)
- Gong (g)
- Wooden Bell or Mokugyo (y)
To enable these sounds, click the “bell buffet” button at the top of the page. The button will light up to show you that those keys are now connected to bells. Remember that they will not ring if Zoom or another application is the active window; you must select the browser. The first time you play a sound, it must be loaded from the internet into the browser; you may wish to play them once to make sure they are the sound you want to play during facilitation, and to pre-load them so there is no perceptible delay when you click the keyboard key.
The small letter will Awaken the bell or chime; type the capital letter (shift-S, for example) to Invite the bell or chime. For the main bells, you can also type control + shift + letter to invite a long sound of the bell (ctrl-shift-L, for example), to end a meditation, perhaps.
These same sounds and actions will be connected to visual images on the Bell Buffet itself. For now, please explore these sounds and help us improve the web site!
website updates
The features of the Timer Bar have been further extended. You are now able to use the tools for personal meditation or other kinds of mindfulness practice.
When you choose “Manually select times and bells”, the panel of settings include the type of sound to be heard, for either interval bells (those heard between segments of a meditation), or for the final bell (which sounds at the end of the meditation). You can choose from awaken, invite, awaken, then invite, and invite, then awaken.
When you select either of the bell sound combinations, you will see an option for the amount of time to wait between the two sounds. For example, if you choose awaken, then invite for the interval bell, and choose 2 sec for the space between the bells, at each interval you will first hear the sound of the chosen bell being awakened, a delay of two seconds from when the sound file finishes playing, then the sound of the bell being invited. This can be useful for silent meditations.
Please know that you can change the bell tone, its action, and the time between sounds while the meditation is in progress. Simply open the manual settings, and change the value you wish; the next sound will reflect your changes.
Manually clicking on the bell icons will still sound only the awaken or invite sound for the bell.
community news
Earth Touching #34, Faith and Right Energy was transcribed for facilitators’ use.
website updates
The Timer Bar for guided meditations has been simplified. Now, there are standard meditation “presets” in a quick selection field. When you select one of the options, it will automatically set the beginning and ending times. It remembers and uses the intermediate and ending bells from your previous meditation session.
If you wish to manually select times or change the bells that you are using, you may select the option “Manually select times and bells”. A small settings panel will open for you to make your choices.
We also have made additional bells available for the guided meditation timer bar. You can choose from small, medium, large, and monastery bells; tiny, stick and double chimes; a medium gong; and a mokugyo wooden bell. If you activate keyboard shortcuts for the timer bar, the small “a” and small “i” keys on your keyboard will awaken and invite the intermediate bell, respectively. The capital “A” and capital “I” keys will awaken and invite the bell that you have selected to end the meditation.
community news
Earth Touchings #15 and #28 have been transcribed for facilitators’ use. Some of those guided meditations work well with one more more repetitions of touching the earth, depending on the day. Where the exercise has not be explicitly set in Plum Village practice, the facilitator can click to change the number of touchings before playing the bell. While we test this feature, it will be available only on Earth Touching #15.
community news
Our first contribution as a Sangha, in support of others’ participation in Plum Village events or support of growth in their practice, has been granted. One of our members received a small subsidy, to be able to attend a Monastic retreat in her region.
website updates
The audio player has been updated, so that we could style it for a more “spacious” experience. Creating our own player also allows us to add features and actions, while keeping them consistent in presentation.
community news
We aspire, as a practice community in the lineage of Master Thích Nhất Hạnh, to use our collective stability and energy to water the seeds of compassion, and to transform suffering in us and in the world. The Sangha has developed a process for receiving and responding to requests for support, both from within and outside of our community. We have a new request form, a budding process for internal review and discussion of requests, and a draft of a letter to detail the result of the gift.
website updates
On the Guided Meditations page, when our timer bar was set to play sounds, the monastery bell was not playing at the end of the meditation. This has been corrected. The process for automatically loading bells and sounds from the internet has also been improved. Finally, the volume of the Small Bell when invited has been increased to match that of the Small Bell when awakened.
In alignment with internet standards, we have made the release number for the website, found at the bottom of each page, into a link that will bring you to the “What’s New” page. The Activities and What’s New menu items are highlighted until the visitor opens that link.
community news
Our Deepening the Practice meeting, each Wednesday at 12:00 noon Paris/Madrid, is embracing some of the Sangha activities on our community Wish List. Stina and Anandi invite the community to practice mindful movement and breath exercises, enjoying their long experience as teachers and practitioners.
website updates
We have separated our Sangha calendar from our web journal, to dedicate space for the Sangha Voice – the creativity of our members and of the Fourfold Sangha. Those who would like to keep up with posted writing and music and artwork can visit this new web journal page. The menu item will be highlighted when there is material you have not seen.
There is a new guided meditation Circle of Nature added, in the Images section of that page.
We have added a section of Ceremonial Earth Touchings from the Plum Village book of practices, Chanting from the Heart. One or several of these regular petitions might be used during our morning or evening practice.