Welcome to Community Meditation

Community Meditation is non-profit network of meditation groups. We bring mindfulness and wellness into people’s lives through courses, meditation sittings and group discussions, both in-person and online. By sharing the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, we support the evolution of a wise, caring, and healthy world.

Our network has existed for over a decade and although our roots are Buddhist, we draw on many wisdom traditions as well as contemporary wellness, psychology, and neuroscience. Community Meditation is completely volunteer-based and guided by a council of experienced teachers.

Community Meditation is a Canada Revenue Agency Registered Charity No. 73107 5719 RR0001.


SPRING RETREAT: RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
In Person, Owen Sound, April 13/14

Join Debbie McCubbin and Ken Dow at the Harmony Centre in Owen Sound for our second annual Community Meditation spring retreat. Over one and a half days, we'll come together to explore what it means to be present to our own life. What pulls us away from this moment? How can we learn to inhabit our life more fully?
 
Register

 

What We're Up To

All online sessions include a 20-minute silent meditation. New to meditation? Instruction is available.
🧘

Monday, Mar 25 – Living Our Love

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Please join Brenda, Gordon, Jim, and Sharon for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by our continuing discussion of Sharon Salzberg's book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. This week, we take up the final chapter, "Living Our Love". Everyone is welcome, no need to have the book.

The path may lead to many powerful and sublime experiences, but the path begins here with our daily interactions with each other.
— Sharon Salzberg

Tuesday, Mar 26 – Compassion is Courage

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Bob, Kaye-Lee, and Jose after meditation to delve further into Jack Kornfield's book, The Wise Heart. This week, we'll continue with the chapter "Holding the World in Kindness". Everyone is welcome and there's no need to be familiar with the book.

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so do all of the teachings of Buddha have but one taste, the taste of liberation.
― Jack Kornfield

Wednesday, Mar 27 – How We Learn

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

How do we engage with information? How do we learn? Join Jessica to read and discuss "How We Learn", a chapter from Mark Nepo's book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. The chapter tells a story where listening, speaking, and questioning all play vital roles and support each other. There's no need to be familiar with the book and everyone is welcome.

The how of this story–how each person relates to the hidden Wholeness of life and to each other–is a koan about education and truth-seeking; about how we learn and how we teach; about the sacred relationship between teacher and student and the elusive nature of who is teacher and who is student in any given moment.
― Mark Nepo

Thursday, Mar 28 – Anxiety Habits

Click here to visit our Meetup
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND

Join Ken on Thursday for sitting meditation followed by an exploration of anxiety and how habits can kick off and sustain bouts of anxiety. While techniques like breathing slowly offer short-term relief, anxiety-related habits may be keeping us from more sustained relaxation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of reading the same tips over and over about how to calm down and destress.
― Kira M. Newman

Friday, Mar 29 – Looking at the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

After silent meditation on Friday, join Debbie to read and discuss "Why We Resist Seeing Our Storylines", a chapter from her book How to Find Your Way to the Present Moment. This week, working with some actual stories we tell ourselves, we'll explore why it's hard to see the storyline quality of our thoughts, and why we need to create narratives to explain the world.

In a way, it is like the classic line about the fish who says, “What is this water everyone keeps talking about?”  Our stories are so pervasive, so continuous, that it’s hard to see them; we are wrapped in them.
— Debbie McCubbin

Sunday, Mar 31 – The Richness of Being Present

Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET

Join Sunday's session with Debbie to read and discuss a section from the book The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, a book by Jon Bernie. We'll explore how being more present opens us up to our senses and the beauty of the world.

There's no universal formula.  There's just the opportunity to open to each moment, trusting what's showing up and finding out how to surrender to it.
― Jon Bernie

Unfolding

There's a wonderful article titled, "We are verbs, not nouns" by the writer Austin Kleon. In it, he quotes from R. Buckminster Fuller's book, I Seem To Be A Verb:

I live on Earth at present,  
and don't know what I am.  
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing–a noun.  
I seem to be a verb,  
an evolutionary process–  
an integral function of the universe.

How does being a verb square with the practice of letting go, of simply being? Aren't we already too deeply enmeshed in the "doing" of life?

The clue lies in Fuller's phrase "an evolutionary process–an integral function of the universe". We are an unfolding aspect of the universe, neither fixed nor separate. In the Mahánidána Sutta, the Buddha says:

He who sees dependent arising sees the Dhamma, he who sees the Dhamma sees dependent arising.

Thich Nhat Hanh's way of expressing this dependent arising is "interbeing". Ultimately, this isn't about what we do or don't do, it's much deeper than that. We are in constant flux and inescapably wrapped up in it all.

How do we go about "seeing" this dependent arising that is also the dharma? You could substitute "understanding" for "seeing", but this isn't like figuring out how to multiply or tie your shoes–it's direct, immediate, and non-conceptual.

There's a saying that goes something like this: "Awakening is an accident. Meditation makes you accident-prone." 😊 

Sitting.
Breathing.
Being.
Not fixed.
Not separate.
Who or what am I?

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

🙏

Ken & the Community Meditation Team


Our Aspiration

We started this meditation network to help you bring more clarity, balance, caring and joy to your life and your community.

What We Offer

  • Free meditation instruction and one-on-one follow-up sessions
  • Regular online sittings
  • Online wellness courses on Joyfulness, Mindful Leadership, Buddhism, Mindfuless & Anxiety, Compassion, and more

Quotable

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.
― Thomas Merton