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



Sutta

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

A discourse attributed to the Buddha or his close disciples, forming part of the Pali Canon in Theravada Buddhism.

Detailed Definition
Suttas are foundational texts that preserve the Buddha’s teachings on ethics, meditation, and wisdom. In literary and poetic contexts, suttas provide rich source material—quoted, alluded to, or reimagined—to convey moral insight, existential reflection, or meditative states. Their rhythmic, repetitive style also influences Buddhist poetic forms, especially in early Pali and Southeast Asian verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
A Pali poem: “The sutta is the Buddha’s word—clear, practical, and kind”; In a modern verse, “The Fire Sermon sutta burns away my distractions”; A minimalist lyric: “Sutta: teaching in plain speech”; A meditation reflection: “I don’t need philosophy—give me a sutta and silence.”
Additional Notes
Sutta is the Pali language equivalent of the Sanskrit term "Sutra." It refers to the discourses of the Buddha found in the Pali Canon, the scriptural foundation of Theravada Buddhism. The most famous collection is the Dhammapada, a book of ethical verses. For scholars, distinguishing between "Sutta" (Pali, Theravada) and "Sutra" (Sanskrit, Mahayana) can be helpful for identifying the textual and school origin of a particular teaching, though the concepts are identical.
Also Known As
Buddhist Discourse Sermon
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