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.
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For all the sessions listed below:
Click here to join on Zoom @ 5 PM ET
ONLINE
Ray Bradbury once remarked that "Thinking is the enemy of creativity...You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things." Join Kaye-Lee to "simply do things" through a contemplative journey into the elements of mindful creativity, with its limitless forms of expression. Everyone is welcome.
Art is being in the world without thinking too much.
– Sandi
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'll begin reading and discussing Chapter 11, "Recognizing Our Basic Goodness: The Gateway to a Loving and Forgiving Heart."
Basic goodness is the radiance of our Buddha nature-it is our intrinsic wakefulness and love.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Deepening our focus on the Perfection of Ethical Conduct is a necessity for the survival of human life on Earth, according to Norman Fischer. Please join Kaye-Lee, Gloria, and Marian to continue exploring his book, The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path. We will consider evolution and dive further into the practices of the perfection of ethical conduct, as well as the precepts and vows that guide that process.
Bodhisattvas are beyond virtue. They live expansively and lovingly for and with others as their own most excellent life path.
– Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:45 AM ET
NEW DAYTIME SESSION! ONLINE
Please join Sandi, Darina, and Anita for our daytime session, in which we're exploring Pema Chodron's book, Another Kind of Freedom. In a new chapter, sitting meditation is described as having five sections. This week, we look at the 2nd section: simplicity. Chodron points out that simplicity describes your perception of reality when you are completely present.
When you're receptive and not struggling, not filling the space with your interpretations or opinions, even in the midst of chaos and noise, there's a sense of simplicity.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Lauren, Sandi, and Adam in exploring Francis Weller's beautiful book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Waller invites us to gently see the sacred beauty of grief and all its rich, layered poignancy. We often hold grief at a distance, afraid of this challenging emotion, which can leave us feeling detached and disconnected.
What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach...when we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us
- John O'Donohue
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
This week, we continue reading from Rob Nairn's book, Diamond Mind. What does it mean to have a "bad" attitude? What role does reactivity play in our lives? Join Ken to explore these and other questions around the practice of meditation. Everyone is welcome.
NOTE: Harmony Centre has a new door lock, and we can't make sure it stays open, so please use the doorbell to the right of the door.
...if the mind churns up some sort of dark, queasy feeling, we will immediately judge and react to it.
― Rob Nairn
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie to read and discuss "Pay Attention, For Goodness Sake" as an introduction to the work of teacher Sylvia Boorstein.
As our understanding increases, our hearts become more responsive. We become the compassionate people we were meant to be. That's the whole point of practice.
– Sylvia Boorstein
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie to read and discuss an excerpt from Susan Walsh's book, A Fire Runs Through All Things. In it, she explores how we react to the climate crisis, and how to work with our minds.
👉 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.
Impasse is the unavoidable opportunity to see beyond expectations, suppositions, and impossibilities as they crumble before our eyes. Crisis, whether at the vast or intimately personal level, is what reveals that there is no “normal,” despite all strenuous efforts to coax one into being. Not-knowing is relaxing into trusting this.
– Susan Walsh
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Darina and Debbie to continue reading Pema Chodron's Living Beautifully book. In the chapter titled "Nowhere to Hide", Chodron invites us to work on being fully present with what is.
This commitment is about engaging with the simplicity of life, with life just as it comes, without frills.
– Pema Chodron
If you watched The Social Dilemma, a documentary about social media, you're familiar with the effects Instagram, TikTok, and others can have on us. How does this relate to mindfulness? Glad you asked 😉
Social media are designed to be incredibly suggestive, and they make money by nudging us to scroll just one more time–indefinitely. For this to work, we have to be unaware that our attention has been captured. In The Mind Illuminated, John Yates defines mindfulness as an optimal balance of attention and awareness. If we lose awareness of our emotions and mental activity, we can end up paying attention in ways that don't serve us. If we're unable to sustain our attention, we can become distracted and anxious.
One of the people who appears in the film is Tristan Harris, who helped found the Centre for Humane Technology, a non-profit working to address the issues raised in the film. Here's a quote from Harris, taken from a recent podcast:
How much of our experience of reality is reality speaking for itself, versus our beliefs or something about us that's shaping how we see it?
To discern whether or not reality is speaking for itself, we must be aware of what our heart and mind are up to. If that sounds familiar, it should, since meditation practice is partly a process of discovering and strengthening that awareness. Over time, our mental gymnastics become more and more apparent. Eventually, like Dorothy, we might even pull back the curtain to reveal the Wizard madly pulling levers.
Social media have no monopoly on nudging, though. The next time you find yourself pointing the finger at someone or something for knocking you off balance, nudge yourself with this question: How much of my experience is reality speaking for itself? You just might get a peek behind that curtain.
Note: This article was originally published in this newsletter on May 3, 2021.
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Suki Lee
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
