Just find a peaceful location, comfortably sit on a couchion, place your iPhone on a stable location and touch the stick in the home screen of the app to be guided into your meditation session introduced by a beatiful chime expressly recorded from a seven metals bowl. In the course of the meditation the passage of time is marked by a bar: should you thereafter turn restless, you may unlock the iPhone and look for how much time is left without the need to stand up or interrupt your meditation. The end of the meditation period is again signaled by three gongs of the bowl, a notification and a vibration, useful in the case the device is in silent mode.
Buy once and use forever, differently of other apps: no renewal fee or subscription. Just please consider offering a voluntary Dana for the developer as a form of gratitude for his work for the support of you practice. A practical button offers this option.
Notwithstanding the app is especially focused on the Theravadin tradition, the default durations being the ones usually followed in the Forest monasteries of this tradition, followers of other traditions, as well beginners, may specifically adjust them to their present skill or interest. So both morning and evening Pujas may have their duration adjusted, free meditations may be set, relaxing music or Dhamma talks from the iTunes library may be played as a support, and intermittent single gongs may be inserted in the course of the meditation.
Moreover meditations may be interrupted in advance by simply nudging the device.
Meditation benefits from repetition and iPuja also assists you in that by both saving your sessions on your iCloud™ Calendar so to allow you to follow your progress and hopefully take encouragment from that, as well as allowing you to share them over the social networks in order to take a wholesome pride in your progress. The application also populates the new Mindfulness section of Health-kit with your meditation periods.
Given meditation is not enough for a stable spiritual progress, iPuja also introduces the meditator to the teachings of the Buddha by displaying a random Dhammapada verse illustrated by a beautiful picture from the Buddhanet portal at the end of the meditation.
Any practice benefits from the presence of others, and iPuja in fact allows to view the location of other meditators on the map with information on their experience and on whether they are presently meditating.
The laziest meditators may also become followers of more expert meditators and so receive a notification each time the guide start a meditation with the possibility of joining it.
The map also reports the monasteries, and soon also Dhamma centers, being entered by the users with information on how to contact them.
Of course Sila, or virtue, is a basic factor for the practice and we encourage you to take the five precepts before starting to seriously meditate, yet iPuja is not yet able to also help you in that too...
iPuja has been developed by an experienced meditator for more than 20 years in the Forest tradition of Luang Por Achaan Chah who is using it himself for his daily practice.
We do our best to provide a most effective and simple experience, but you are welcome to contact us at info@ipuja.net or on the contact form in our web site http://www.ipuja.net if you would like some features to be added or improved, as well as to review the app on the AppStore to report your experience for the benefit of other meditators.
IMPORTANT: the application uses local notifications for playing the timeout gongs even while the device is locked, please check in your settings that they are enabled for the application, should you experience problems. In order to inform other meditators of your location, please also grant the relative authorization.