How it works

A private place to read slowly, sit, and write. Seventy-five books arranged as one journey, with a morning and an evening practice around them.

Begin opens Setting Out, the first of eleven paths. Continue takes you back to the last book you were sitting with, on the card you left open. The quote above them changes every day and is drawn from the library.

The library holds eleven paths in order, from Setting Out to The Return. Each path has its own meditation, and each one ends by pointing you to the next. Nothing is locked. You can open any book at any time, but the order is meant to be walked: every path prepares the ground for the one after it.

Every book opens as a grid of cards. Start with How it works, then move through The one thing, The teaching, The frameworks, The practice, Sit and Write. In conversation with and To go further point onward. Each card opens on its own. Move between them with the arrows at the bottom, or go back to the grid. The last card leads to the next book on the path.

Anything on a book page can be kept. What you keep waits for you in Hikidashi.

Any teaching can be read aloud. Heart, the default voice, is a natural voice from the free Kokoro service, so it needs a connection and takes a few seconds to start. If it cannot be reached, the reading carries on in your device’s own voice. Download reading, on a book, voices the whole book ahead of time so it plays without pauses. You can change the voice in Settings below.

The Sit card plays a recorded guided meditation chosen for that book, from UCLA Mindful and Palouse Mindfulness. Below it you can choose the Temple’s own spoken sit instead, timed for five, ten, fifteen or twenty minutes.

Write your pages, as much or as little as comes, then close them. Set one line for how you intend to be today.

A few questions, one at a time, to set the day down. Every seventh night asks what you are noticing across the week.

Everything you have written, by month: mornings, nights, notes from your reading, and the weeks. Choose what to see from the menu on the right. When an entry is open, the menu folds into the small icon beside 日記.

Everything you have kept sits at the top. Below it is every idea in the library, so you can find any of them quickly.

You sign in with your email once on each device. Everything you write, and every book you sit with, is saved to your own Google Drive and follows you between your phone and your computer.

Signed in

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How it works

The way through

A path is a short shelf of books, read in order. Each one opens onto the next, and none of them is meant to be finished in a sitting. Take one book at a time, and give it a day, or a week, before you move on.

The paths are in order too. Together they make one journey: from Setting Out, with a call to leave home and a practice to carry you, inward through the body, the mind and stillness, into discipline and work, out toward other people, down through grief, up into the wider view, and finally to The Return — where you find that what you set out to look for was where you began. Walk them in order the first time. After that, go back to whatever you need.

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Each book, in order

01

The one thing. Read the sentence first. If it is all you take from the book today, that is enough.

02

The teaching. Read it, or listen. Every section can be read aloud: tap listen beside its name, or tap any paragraph to hear from there.

03

The frameworks. Go through the ideas one at a time. Keep the ones that land; what you keep waits for you in Hikidashi 引き出し.

04

The practice. These are for today, not for later. Do one, even a small one.

05

Sit. After the listening, take the guided sit, or the spoken one at the length you have.

06

Write. A few honest lines for each prompt, then save them to your journal.

07

Follow the threads. In conversation with shows the books this one builds on and argues with. To go further points past the library.

When a book has done its work, mark it sat with on the path page and open the next. Come back to any book whenever you like. Returns are counted, and returning is the point.

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Find it quickly

Everything you have kept, then every idea in the library. Keep anything from a book page and it sits at the top.

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One line

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because

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The seventh night

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Everything I have written

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