Measureless Mind SoundCloud Audios
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Introducing Measureless Mind: A Field Guide to the Buddha’s Early Teachings—Now on SoundCloud

SoundCloud playlist: https://soundcloud.com/soh-wei-yu/sets/measureless-mind
Also see: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2012/09/great-resource-of-buddha-teachings.html

Link to the PDF File: https://app.box.com/s/nxby5606lbaei9oudiz6xsyrdasacqph / https://www.scribd.com/document/274168728/Measureless-Mind

If you’ve ever wished for one, reliable, sutta-grounded companion to walk you through the Buddha’s path from ethics to meditative composure to discernment and release, Geoff Shatz’s Measureless Mind is it. It is practical without being simplistic, scholarly without being dry, and relentlessly faithful to the earliest strata of the Pāli Nikāyas. We’ve now made a full audio reading available on SoundCloud so you can study by ear—on commutes, walks, or before practice.

When I first ran into Measureless Mind years ago, my reaction was the same as what I later wrote publicly: “Wow—what a great resource of Buddha’s teachings!” I called it “very valuable… well formatted, well presented, all-rounded,” and recommended it to practitioners at every level. (Awakening to Reality) Thusness/John Tan agreed and encouraged featuring selections on the blog: “Both the articles are very well written… that site is a great resource.” (Awakening to Reality)

What makes Measureless Mind special

  • Back to the sources. The book leans on the four Nikāyas (and the oldest Khuddaka material) and checks definitions against early exegetical works when helpful. 

  • Practice-first structure. Chapters are organized the way a practitioner actually grows: from ethical conduct (sīla) to meditative composure (samādhi) to discernment (paññā) and liberation (vimutti). It’s not an abstract map; it’s a working manual.

  • Clarity on pivotal topics. From jhāna factors to the seven factors of awakening, from sense restraint to the God-like abidings, from anicca/dukkha/anattā to the twelve links, the book shows how these teachings cohere—not as isolated techniques but as a unified training.

A taste of the tone we value at ATR: John Tan often emphasizes that seeing through the background construct of “a knower apart from the known” is key—not nihilism, but the effortless clarity where “the seen is merely the seen; the heard, merely the heard.” (Awakening to Reality) Measureless Mind resonates with that same sensibility: close to the suttas, uncompromisingly experiential.

Listen while you learn: the full audio is live

  • Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/soh-wei-yu/sets/measureless-mind

  • How it’s read: steady study pace, accurate Pāli pronunciations where possible, minimal theatrics.

  • Note about tables: when the book presents information as tables/matrices (e.g., jhāna factors by level), the audio necessarily reads them line-by-line. This keeps fidelity to the text, but can sound mechanical. For those sections, please open the PDF and follow along so you can see the columns and relationships at a glance. (This is consistent with accessibility guidance: when audio alone can’t show structure, pair it with the visual.) (Awakening to Reality)

Pro tip: If you’re studying a structured section (like the four jhānas or eighteen dhātus), listen once end-to-end, then replay the table portion with the PDF open.

How this audio edition was produced (and how you can use the tooling)

I built a small pipeline/helper app to prepare the text for Text-to-Speech and to generate SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) where helpful for Pāli words. In brief:

  1. PDF → text extraction (page-wise)

  2. Clean-up & normalization: remove headers/footers, unwrap line-breaks, de-hyphenate, lightly normalize punctuation

  3. Tables: optional CSV extraction (for manual polishing later)

  4. SSML build: paragraph structure, optional <phoneme> entries for tricky Pāli terms

This produces:

  • A single 00_MASTER_clean.txt and .ssml (feed either into your TTS)

  • Per-chapter .txt / .ssml files (easy to regenerate individual MP3s)

  • An optional tables appendix for reference

For fellow tinkerers: I’ve uploaded the helper app that I vibe coded so you can run it yourself on other sutta/text resources. (It uses a modern .NET stack; reads PDFs, cleans structure, and emits ready-to-speak SSML.) If you prefer not to tinker, you can simply enjoy the SoundCloud playlist and the original PDF.

Link to the application: https://app.box.com/s/k01emf5fgkbojov9to8hir99fispxv6s

Why ATR recommends it (and how it fits our curriculum)

  • It aligns with ATR’s “practice-anchored scholarship.” Geoff stays with the suttas and earliest commentarial strata where they clarify the Nikāya meaning. (Awakening to Reality)

  • It complements the ATR “Must Reads.” Use it alongside posts on stream-entry, non-reification, and twofold emptiness. (For example: stream-entry as the ending of self-view; and how “no awareness” never means nothingness but the collapse of background subjectivity.) (Awakening to Reality)

  • It’s learner-friendly. The structure is navigable; it doesn’t bury you in abstraction; and when you have time, it points you back to the Pāli sources (which you can browse freely via CST4/CSCD). (The Pali Tipitaka)

Thusness/John Tan put it simply years ago, and it still stands: “That site is a great resource.” (Awakening to Reality)

Start listening

May this project support your practice from the very first mindful breath to the complete exhaustion of “I-making” and “mine-making.” As the Nikāyas say, the path is to be “individually experienced” (paccatta veditabba). ✨

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