This isn’t really anything to do with meditation or Buddhism directly, but it’s very cool nonetheless. And it’s not an ad! This is just something I’m enthusiastic about and want to share with you.

The Buddha Machine is a palm-sized plastic box that plays meditative music loops composed by Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian. It looks like a 1970′s transistor radio, and the music is absolutely gorgeous. I have one of the loops playing in the background right now, and it’s luscious, expansive, and relaxing.

The Buddha Machine costs $23, but there’s an iPad app available which is free for the next five days. For some strange reason the iPhone/iPod app is set …

Rolf Hind: It was a rainy October afternoon in Huddersfield two years ago. I was fresh off a silent retreat – 10 days in the countryside being instructed in sitting and watching my thoughts, and I was brimming with epiphanies. I was between gigs at the new music festival, whiling away time with some old friends and new acquaintances, and trying not to bore them with my breathless “insights”.

But in every case, with each new person, I was blindsided or scotched by their response to my enthusiasm. It seemed that I was the last person to have discovered meditation… Read the rest of this article…

Video directed by Matt Marzulo, shot in Sedona, AZ.

I recently made contact with Kellee Maize — a young, blonde, female rapper from small-town, Pennsylvania, who moved to Pittsburgh and started her own guerrilla-marketing company, Näkturnal. She formed her first rap group at age nine, and music has been an important part of her life. Her debut album, Age of Feminine, was released independently in May 2007, and has had over 100,000 downloads on iTunes.

Kellee’s lyrics are often urban and gritty, but spirituality plays a large role in her music, which see sees as a way to transcend the ego. Here she talks about what the “third eye” means to her.

“What is …

Kaki Hunter is no stranger to success. Her background includes a career as a successful film actress, a published author and a recognized guru in sustainable building.

Two years ago, however, despite all of her success, Hunter says she found herself miserable and at what she describes as, “an extremely low point in life emotionally, spiritually and physically.”

After hearing about friends’ experiences with Vipassana, a 2,500-year-old silent meditation technique designed to eradicate human suffering, Hunter decided to enroll in a 10-day retreat.

The program required all participants to abstain from all communication, including talking, eye contact, writing, music, and reading. As Hunter entered into “noble silence” and …

Right off the bat, however, I confess I’m not a music critic. Like everyone, I know what I like, but I don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to describe the music or to articulate what I like or don’t like about a particular piece of music, or the knowledge of music that allows me to make sensible comparisons with other musicians you might have heard of. And Dhamma Gita is very, very varied, representing genres from Hip Hop to jazz to contemporary classical, to soul.

Fortunately, the website for the CD (which is also available as a download) has samples you can listen to if you’re none the wiser after reading my review.

Ed Gabrielsen has spent his life trying to marry the body and the mind, first as a singer and later as an instructor of yoga and meditation. He has worked with people touched by cancer at the Dempsey Center, teaching a class titled “Music and Meditation.”

He currently teaches at Healthy for Life Wellness Center in Norway, where his wife, pediatric doctor Jill Gabrielsen, also has a medical practice.

Name: Ed Gabrielsen

Age: 47

Hometown: Norway

Single, relationship or married? Married

Children? We have two children.

You’ve been a musician for a long time. What does music do for you? Music is an art that expresses thoughts and emotions in a way that goes beyond words. I feel very fortunate to be a musician because my life …

Although this CD was suggested to me as yoga or meditation music, I don’t do yoga and don’t hold with the notion that meditation is (just) about relaxing, and so I would never have music on in the background while I’m sitting. Nevertheless, I loved the music.

Kitarō, a Grammy and Golden Globe award-winning Japanese musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist, composes luscious sound-scapes incorporating the sounds of both western and traditional Japanese (and sometimes middle-eastern) instruments, along with natural sounds, such as birdsong.

“Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai, Vol. 4″ is the latest in a series of a collection of albums inspired by the Buddhist monk Kukai’s classic pilgrimage to …

Every time Sunada watches Bobby McFerrin or Yo-Yo Ma perform, she’s left in awe. It’s not just their amazing musicianship, she says. What uniquely comes through in their music is their generosity of spirit and totally engaging way of expressing their individuality. As a musician herself, she muses on what it takes to cultivate that kind of open-hearted spontaneity and creativity.

I recently read an interesting discussion that’s given shape to my thinking on this subject. It was about the difference between spontaneity and impulsivity. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, there are some subtle but important differences.

Vajradaka looks back on a meeting in a smoky Jazz club and explores the mystery of empathetic communication between artist and audience.

I once had a chance encounter with a jazz musician that had a big effect on me and characterized some of the important qualities of living a creative life. At the time I was living up in the hills of Wales and coming down to London periodically. During one such visit I went to a jazz gig at the old Vortex in Stoke Newington, as part of the London Jazz Festival. It was smoky and dark with only a dozen people in the audience. We did not need much empathy to …

When life pulls the rug out from under us, we have a choice. We can either look backward at it as a disaster, or look forward through it as an opening toward something new. Sunada tells her own story of how she woke up in the midst of a personal crisis.

This week, I closed a major chapter of my life. I watched as my beloved Bösendorfer grand piano, which I had just sold, was wrapped up and carted off to its new home. This piano had once represented my dreams. It was no ordinary grand piano. It was a top of the line, artist’s instrument. Beautiful to the eyes as well as the ears. But …