The Meimei Guide is the official how-to guide for the Meimei meditation app. Across 49 scrolls, it gently walks you through spinning the prayer wheel, choosing your meditation time on the moon dial, the six temple sounds with binaural ASMR, the nine breathing visions, and reading your meditation records.
This book will teach you nothing. Each scroll is a single question, and the answer is always outside the book — inside the vessel. When a scroll catches your eye, close the book and go find out with your fingers.
The disc at the center turns under your finger. At first it will clatter and lurch, turning like a piece of junk. That very turning is a portrait of your mind as it is now.
There is not a single ornament on this screen. Whatever survived the Zen subtraction has a role to play. Stuck? Press whatever looks pressable — the door is always right in front of you.
The twelve moons around the prayer wheel are also the face of a clock. Five minutes per moon; thirty at the six-o'clock full moon; the new moon at the summit is a full round of sixty. Which moon to choose — ask tonight's capacity of your own vessel.
Touch the mark at the wheel's center, and a small moon slips out toward the western sky. When that moon has fully set, your meditation begins. The hush before it sets is your run-up: settle your posture, settle your breath.
When the hour arrives, the vessel will not make you stand. Only its tone sounds — and the moon quietly keeps on waxing. When you feel like returning, stop and choose "record and finish." That day becomes a footprint.
This guide is only the first of five gates. Learn at the Foundation, deepen with the Books, prepare with the Tools, continue with the Films — the gates are linked in order of cause and effect. Getting lost is no shame. Whenever you do, return to this gate.
On the Tibetan highlands it has long been said: turn a wheel filled with sutras, and you earn the same merit as reciting them. Even if you cannot read, even if you cannot speak — prayer can begin at the fingertips. That is the wisdom. Meimei's prayer wheel stands at the end of that lineage.
Mani means the jewel that grants wishes. Inside the wheel rests the mantra "Om mani padme hum" — O jewel in the lotus. Each time you turn it, those words are released somewhere into the world.
To turn it more, and more — Meimei answered that wish with Japanese precision engineering. Inside this prayer wheel sits a ball bearing of the highest grade, aimed at world-record smoothness. Whether you can draw out its true worth, however, is another story.
Turn it and you'll see — it coughs, it catches, it soon stops. It isn't broken. That is your thinking at the start of meditation, in its exact shape. Don't laugh at the junk. Everyone's mind begins this way.
Close your eyes and think of nothing, just for ten seconds. You will notice thought starting up on its own, without your permission. A monkey springing from branch to branch — the ancients named it the monkey mind, and saw in it the root of our troubles.
There is no need to kill the monkey. Notice you have drifted, gently return — that is all. Notice, return. Repeat that round trip, and on the far shore lies a quiet beach called mindfulness. Your daily habit of testing the wheel becomes the ferry.
The prayer wheel is watching your days of practice, from somewhere. Only under a practiced finger does its spin grow finer, faster, longer. What waits beyond — the Book of Growth records a little of it.
The wheel's clicking can change its dress in Settings. Pawl, rain, bonfire, waves, keys, bubbles — six melodies, each suited to a different night. Choose the sound that keeps tonight's you company.
Listen through earphones and you will notice: these sounds are binaural. The slight difference reaching each ear makes the sound stand "there" — not inside your head. That difference is why it can be enjoyed as ASMR.
Each of the six melodies has a natural speed at which it rings most beautifully. Placed at exactly that speed, the sound shows another face. All except one — the pawl alone keeps the same face at any speed. Why might that be?
As the spin nears a melody's natural speed, the twelve moons begin to flush copper-red. The blood moon is no gauge and no number — only a taciturn sign that says "you are close." If you meet the fully ripened red, hold your hand just as it is.
The speed of resonance differs utterly from melody to melody. Rain runs swift; the waves are slow as sleep. Fast is not superior — the slower, the deeper.
The resonance of the waves is almost too slow. An ordinary prayer wheel stops before it can be laid at that speed. Only one who holds the "supreme samsara" — a spin that seems about to stop yet never does — can stand at the water's edge.
The fine control to match the speed is beyond you at the start. Sit ten minutes daily and the vessel matures, until the wheel answers your fingertip exactly. Don't rush. The frequency is not going anywhere.
When meditation begins, the moon quietly starts to wax from new. It is bound for the shape of the moon you chose. Even while your eyes are closed, the moon carries your time in silence.
At the appointed time, the vessel sounds a single voice. But the moon does not stop — it stays with you all the way to full. The hour is a promise, not a limit.
If you wish, a gong will mark the milestones of the way. A quarter in, halfway, three minutes left, one minute left — the choices wait in Settings. Choose nothing, and the gong keeps its silence. That is the default.
Some nights the monkey carries you off, and you cannot find your way back. One strike of the orin bell at fixed intervals — a rope that pulls the stolen mind back to "now." From every minute to every ten. When you no longer need it, simply take it off.
Two vessels hold the sound of your in-breath and your out-breath. There are nine views to rest your eyes on — some circle the same path forever, others take your whole session to come round once. Those five complete their round just as your journey ends.
Inhale, hold, exhale — each length can be adjusted in Settings, one breath at a time. The vessel's suggestion: in for four, hold for four, out for eight. But the right answer is not a number; it lives in your lungs.
During meditation, the screen will not dim on its own. While the prayer wheel keeps turning, the vessel keeps its eyes open. Let it be your thinking that sleeps, not the screen.
The wheel's smoothness is decided by the time you sit today. Yesterday's savings do not carry over: what turns today is today's mind. So, a little every day. The vessel misses nothing.
Five minutes. That is the threshold at which the bearing wakes. Cross it, and friction falls away — the wheel begins to turn as if drawn to your finger. Sixty minutes fills the measure — beyond that lies a world without the yoke.
The vessel's growth follows a hidden ladder. Junk; the monkey's yoke; awakening; and the awakening of the new moon. Which rung you stand on — spin, and your finger will tell you.
For one who kept ten minutes of meditation alive through a full round of the moon — twenty-nine nights. The twelve moons turn to gold and take the form called the moon ring. Do not count the nights in haste. The ring appears above the head of the one who didn't.
One crowned with the golden ring sits ten minutes today as well, drives the wheel to its highest speed, and lets go. If the speed holds for twelve breaths — the moon becomes a sun. No more will be written here. Legends belong to those who verify them.
The moon is lit; the sun gives light. Friction vanishes; the wheel turns forever on dream-like energy and can join with every melody. Immense power, and a softness that answers anything — both were budding in you long before you became a sun.
Lay the sun-wheel gently at a melody's natural speed. The sun goes dark, and only a golden ring remains. In that moment the sound spreads beyond your head — the innermost chamber of blissful ASMR.
In the calendar of records, each day is a moon. The moon fills by the length you sat: full at thirty minutes, and a day past sixty wears a ring of gold. Never scold the blank days. From the new moon, simply fill again.
Three months stand side by side in the calendar: last, this, and next. One flick carries you to the neighboring month. And if you long to travel farther — turn to the next leaf.
Touch the calendar's year or month name, and the solar system opens. Swing the Earth once around for a year; swing the Moon once around for a month. Here, time is moved by hand, as the motion of heavenly bodies.
Beside the solar system hangs a scroll of three words. "Now, here, myself" — touch it and the calendar returns to the present, and a journey begins. Where it goes — that is a pleasure saved for after you touch it.
The voyage grazes the sun, overtakes the earth, and swings around the far side of the moon. From the lunar horizon, the blue earth rises — a sight once reserved for astronauts. In the sky where the voyage ends, you will find yourself looking up at the moon.
The moon you look up at, at journey's end, is no picture. It is the moon's shape at this very moment, derived by physics from the positions of sun, earth, and moon. If you live outside Japan, set your standard time in Settings — it becomes the moon of your own sky.
Records can also be viewed as a list. Add the day you forgot, mend the day you got wrong, swipe aside the day you would rather erase. Footprints are less like stone monuments, more like sand on a beach.
In the room of Settings, nine lamps stand in a row. From changing the robes of sound, to adjusting time zones, to tidying the star charts. There is no need to light them all. Only the lamps your night requires.
Dharma drum, wooden fish, temple bell, singing bowl, orin, gong. Each of the six wears five robes: pitch, brightness, afterglow, waver, and volume. Touch a name and it sounds once — choose with your ears.
The solar-system calendar carries guiding lines — orbital planes, tilted axes. Lamps for learning, shadows for gazing — if that is how it feels, put them out one by one in Settings. A night of nothing but stars is a fine thing too.
Under Standard Time in Settings, sixteen national flags stand in a row. Touch one flag, and time difference and observing site fall into place together. Under foreign skies, Meimei's moon still waxes and wanes correctly.
Meimei's door has no password to memorize. Six digits arriving by email — that alone is the key, and only for that moment. The room of Settings lies beyond this door.
Meimei can take up residence on your home screen. Once settled in, it turns, rings, and waxes even in a mountain temple beyond the signal's reach. From your browser: "Add to Home Screen."
With this, the forty-nine scrolls are done. And yet you still know nothing — for to know is to verify with your fingers. Now close the book. First turn the wheel; in time, sit.
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