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.
Your donations, either one-time or with a monthly subscription, help us to pay rent, insurance and other basic expenses. We are a volunteer organization and all of our costs are covered by donations and course fees. Online Canadian donors will receive an annual tax receipt for the full amount of their donations in each calendar year.
One-Time Donation Monthly Donation
NOTE: For monthly donations, use the Qty button to adjust the amount in units of $5. For example, a Qty of "3" is 3 x 5 = $15.
All online sessions, except our short morning sessions, include a 20-minute silent meditation. New to meditation? Instruction is available.
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Click here to join on Zoom @ 8:45 AM ET
Looking for a mindful start to your day? We're launching silent group meditations from 8:45 to 9 AM ET, Monday to Friday. There is no meditation instruction available in these sessions–if you'd like instruction, email hello@communitymeditation.net.
NOTE
For all the sessions listed below:
Click here to join on Zoom @ 5 PM ET
ONLINE
Mindfulness. Contemplation. Intention. Creativity. Join Kaye-Lee to explore these elements. How do they intermingle? How are they separate? Everyone is welcome.
Although many of us, under the ceaseless bombardment of photographic and electronic imagery that we experience daily, have lost the gift of seeing, we can learn it anew and learn to retrieve again and again the act of seeing things for the first time, each time we look at them.
– Frederick Franck
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Brenda, Jim, and Gordon for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a reading and discussion of Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. This week, we continue reading and discussing Chapter 9, "The RAIN of Compassion: an Applied Meditation for Healing and Freedom".
When another holds our pain with us, the loving itself creates a space for deep healing.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Kaye-Lee, Gloria, and Marian as we continue exploring generosity in Norman Fischer's The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path. The section we will focus on is titled "There's No Me or You". We hope to see you there.
Really understanding that there is no one to help, no one who needs help, and no helping takes the pressure off.
– Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:45 AM ET
NEW DAYTIME SESSION! ONLINE
Please join Sandi and Darina's daytime session, in which we're currently exploring Pema Chodron's book, Another Kind of Freedom. We'll look at the six realms of existence: gods, jealous gods, and humans (upper realms), as well as angry beings, hungry ghosts, and hell beings (lower realms). Self-absorption seems to be the life of the gods, a sense of having it made that we all seek, innocently and naively (think Downton Abbey or Elon Musk). What happens when impermanence bursts this bubble?
They never consider that their great circumstances are not permanent, but all of this could be undone. It doesn't take a stock market crash; life itself will do it.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Sandi, Lauren, and Adam as we listen to some wisdom from an interview with Adyashanti titled "Exploring Connection with the Deeper Self". We'll dive into the perennial question of who we really are.
Most human beings really don’t know who they are…The question isn’t meant so you can find a new answer, a new better version of you…It’s to disassemble the version that you have made up.
— Adyashanti
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
Join Ken to continue reading and discussing "Life is Tough. Here Are Six Ways to Deal With It", an insightful article by Zen teacher Norman Fischer. This week, we'll carry on with the first of six slogans, "Turn All Mishaps Into the Path".
Patience is the capacity to welcome difficulty when it comes, with a spirit of strength, endurance, forbearance, and dignity rather than fear, anxiety, and avoidance.
― Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Hazel as we explore the work of Pema Chodron. In a reading from her book "Welcome the Unwelcome", and in keeping with the title's reference to what is not welcome, we'll read from the section "Begin with a Broken Heart".
Learning how to fail will help us more than anything else in life.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie in watching a video by Sarah Jaquette Ray, who is the author of "A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet".
👉 Friday EcoDharma sessions are designed for those experiencing anxiety or grief relating to environmental issues. The aim is to bring mindfulness and Buddhist practices to our distress, and to build community.
Those inheriting our planet’s environmental problems expect to encounter challenges, but they may not have the skills to grapple with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that may arise when they confront this seemingly intractable situation.
– Sarah Jaquette Ray
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Darina to continue with Pema Chodron's book Living Beautifully. In the section titled "Breathing in Pain, Breathing out Relief," we're introduced to a compassion practice called Tonglen.
The aspiration of [this] commitment–to care for all beings everywhere–is huge. But whether we're making this commitment for the very first time or we're renewing it for the umpteenth time, we start exactly where we are now.
– Pema Chodron
Some words of wisdom from Michael Singer on what the process of transmutation might look like:
The energy is expressing itself because you stored it in there. Every way you think — "I've been this way since I was little" — that's because something happened and you got patterns. Your mind is not your enemy. Your lower heart is not your enemy. They are actually the same as your body, trying to push impurities out. That's why you get a fever, that's why a boil comes up. We don't like it, but it's trying to push impurities out. Your mind is doing the exact same thing, and your heart is doing the exact same thing. They're saying: you stored all this stuff inside of me — stuff you didn't like, stuff you're not comfortable with — and I need to push it out.
So if you can learn to not get pulled down into these energies, but to allow them to be and just let them come up, the natural process of transmutation is going to take place. What does that mean? The energy was lower. It was anger. It was fear. It was embarrassment. That's what got stimulated from inside, from the past.
Read the whole article on Awakin.org.
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Alaric Duan on Unsplash
We started this meditation network to help you bring more clarity, balance, caring and joy to your life and your community.
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
