A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter S

Shamatha

World Religion
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Calm abiding meditation in Buddhist practice, cultivating stable attention and inner peace without distraction.

Detailed Definition
Shamatha in poetry is the breath that does not wander—the mind that rests like water, undisturbed by wind. Poets use it to depict stillness as practice, not escape. It becomes the poem’s quiet center: not the image, but the holding of it—the silence that makes the verse possible.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shamatha is calm abiding—A Buddhist poet writes: “Shamatha: the breath that doesn’t chase thoughts, but holds them like a mother holds a child”; A modern lyric: “In chaos, I return to Shamatha—mind like still pond, no wind, no ripple”; A haiku: “One breath. One focus. / Shamatha: peace in presence”; Another: “Shamatha isn’t emptying the mind—it’s letting thoughts pass like clouds”; A devotional verse: “I chant ‘Om’—not to force peace, but to let Shamatha rise”; A minimalist line: “Still mind. Steady breath. / Shamatha: calm abiding.”
Additional Notes
Shamatha is the foundation of all Buddhist meditative poetry; it is not concentration but stable, effortless awareness, allowing insight (vipashyana) to arise; in Zen and Tibetan verse, shamatha manifests as stillness amid movement—a single leaf falling, a bell’s echo—making poetic form a mirror of undisturbed mind, essential for interpreting minimalist verse where silence is the truest expression of truth.
Also Known As
Calm Abiding Shamatha Meditation Mindfulness Meditation Stable Attention
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