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What We're Up To

All online sessions include a 20-minute silent meditation. New to meditation? Instruction is available.
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Monday, Apr 15 – Living Our Love

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 continue reading Chapter 11, "Living Our Love". Everyone is welcome, no need to have the book.

To understand karma does not mean that we become passive about our suffering .... We do not say, "Well, it's just my karma," and sit there while the pain deepens. To understand karma means, rather, that we become connected. We have a sense of the reasonableness of our lives. With this feeling of comprehension, we hold our experience differently somehow, with less resentment, bitterness, or clinging.
— Sharon Salzberg

Tuesday, Apr 16 – Awakening to Pure Consciousness

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Kaye Lee after meditation to delve further into Jack Kornfield's book, The Wise Heart. This week, we'll read and discuss the chapter titled "Awakening to Pure Consciousness: The Sky". Everyone is welcome and there's no need to be familiar with the book.

Develop the mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle, or harm.
― Majjhima Nikaya

Wednesday, Apr 17 – The Practice of Not Knowing

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Adam, Lauren, Sandi, and Jessica after meditation to read and discuss "The Practice of Not Knowing", a chapter from Mark Nepo's Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. The deepest listening is an act of great trust; the trust to open and receive without judgement. All things being impermanent, what feels tense and uncomfortable could prove to be an opportunity for growth (OK, it might just be indigestion 😉 ) The truth is we do not know and that's the wonder of life. There's no need to be familiar with the book.

The deeper truths always take time to reach us, and it is our job to enter a practice of waiting openly—which involves enduring the tensions of not-knowing.
― Mark Nepo

Thursday, Apr 18 – The Circle of All Beings

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

Join Ken on Thursday for sitting and walking meditation, and then to read and discuss "The Circle of All Beings", a chapter from Tara Brock's book, Radical Acceptance. What keeps us from opening our hearts and extending compassion to other humans and the more-than-human world?

If we are in touch with the truth of our mutual belonging, our hearts naturally stir with care.
― Tara Brach

Friday, Apr 19 – Being With What Is

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Debbie this Friday for meditation, followed by a reading and discussion from the work of Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck. Can we find ways to soften our resistance to the present moment?

Every moment is the guru.
― Charlotte Joko Beck

Sunday, Apr 21 – Unbelievable Happiness

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

This Sunday, after meditation, Debbie will host a discussion that draws on Jon Bernie's book, The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is. The possibility of being unbelievably happy can seem remote or even impossible, but Bernie suggests otherwise–and points the way.

When the veil of the knower falls away, the creative force of discovery guides your way–each moment is revealed as new.
— Jon Bernie

Not Forcing

Note: This article was originally published here on December 6, 2021.

I sometimes experience meditation as a gradual shift from the relentless, narrow, and nitpicking mind toward an open, curious, and playful one. You may remember the wave of excitement many years ago about how the left and right sides of the brain worked. It went something like this: the left brain deals with logic, the right brain with art. This led to categorizing people as one or the other ("She's so left-brained!") and gave us books like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer, and thoroughly debunked this view of the brain in his seminal work, The Master and His Emissary. What differs isn't where the brain works its magic, but how these hemispheres see the world. In other words, most of the brain is involved most of the time, but the two sides approach their tasks very differently.

There are parallels between the experience of meditation I described above and how these two parts of the brain address the world. The left engages life in a specific and dissecting way, while the right embraces it through ambiguity and wholeness. We absolutely need both sides, but McGilchrist believes we're at a point in human history that–to our detriment–skews heavily to the narrowing focus of the left brain. He suggests, for example (emphasis mine):

One very practical thing — a recipe for healing for almost every one of my patients — is not forcing things to be the way they would like them to be, but to embrace the way that they’re likely to be and doing those things that will help that forward...mindfulness engages wide networks in the right hemisphere, and the EEG studies show that there is a more balancing of the two hemispheres in those who are meditating. So I think meditation and not doing things, making space in your life and switching off your machines, being present in the moment, and practicing mindfulness would be a way to start.

The video below (~ 12 minutes) adds an entertaining visual dimension to one of McGilchrist's talks on this subject. Enjoy!

Photo by Naro K.

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Ken & the Community Meditation Team

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