Araya: Buddhist Meditation

About this app

There are many meditation apps. But Buddhism explained why meditation works a very long time ago. Araya is an app for learning, sitting with, and growing into the two great ideas of Mahayana Buddhism: emptiness and consciousness-only (Yogacara). ■ Sit — contemplations that meditate on the teaching itself - Four contemplations on emptiness: Observing the Five Aggregates / Contemplating Dependent Origination / Analyzing the Absence of Own-Being / The Form-and-Emptiness Breath - Four Yogacara contemplations: Labeling the Eight Consciousnesses / Watching the Manas / Turning the Three Natures / The Dream Contemplation - Three minutes each, with a spoken guide. Choose the voice, its pitch and its speed. - 4-7-8 breathing, with the longest out-breath. Follow in, hold and out by ear with one of four sounds: Zen temple (singing bowl, wooden fish, temple bell), shakuhachi, waves, or a voice. - Keeps playing with the screen off, so you can sit with your eyes closed. ■ Garden — build a temple of your own - Yogacara teaches that every act is sown as a seed in the depths of the mind, and sprouts in time. - The more you meditate and study, the more a ruined chapel grows into a great temple. - Raise the seven halls one by one: main hall, mountain gate, bell tower, garden, purification pavilion, kuri and lecture hall. - Move buildings freely on the grid, and adorn the grounds with paving stones, stone lanterns, Jizo statues, pines and a pond. - Pilgrims walk from the gate to the alms box, and offerings gather over time. - Clear the wilderness to widen the grounds, all the way to a five-storied pagoda. - Every sitting or lesson advances construction. Your practice is the temple's strength. ■ Monk — raise a monk - Your monk climbs a real path of practice, the path to arhatship: from ordinary being, through the Three Worthies and the Four Roots of Merit, to stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, and arhat. - Promotion depends on the wholesome seeds stored in the alaya-vijnana. - Six stages of growth, from a rough novice to the face of a sage. - Attributes are the six paramitas: generosity, discipline, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. - A broken streak is fine. Coming back counts as patience. ■ Study — a real course in Mahayana Buddhism - From the Four Truths and dependent origination to the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, Yogacara and Buddha-nature. - Five-minute lessons with the original verse, a quiz, and Sanskrit terms alongside the Japanese. ■ Japanese, English and Hindi - Switch any time in Settings. Every lesson, contemplation and hall description is translated. Free, with no ads. All data stays on your device; no account needed. Optional offerings (in-app purchases) support development and do not affect the game. Playing the game is itself a textbook of Yogacara. One seed today, for your alaya-vijnana.

Araya is now free. To everyone who bought it before: thank you. Your support carried it this far. Offering book You will find an "Offering book" in the Build sheet and in Settings. One roof tile, one pillar, a share of the temple bell, the pagoda's foundation stone: just as temples of old were rebuilt on offerings, we welcome donations that keep this app growing. Offerings have no effect on the game. No seeds or alms are added; they are simply recorded in the book. Please give only what is comfortable, in the spirit of dana.

Momentum comes from crawler snapshots for the tracked storefront. “Viral growth signal” means unusually fast recent rating gains; it is an indicator, not download data.

1. First observed Sep 6, 2026 · 7:45 PM Free