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.
🧘
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
Join Kaye-Lee on Monday for a contemplative journey into the elements of mindful creativity, with its limitless forms of expression. Everyone is welcome.
What if ART is as simple as something created that didn't exist before, and the dharma is pondering it?
- 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 continue reading and discussing Chapter 11, "Forgiving others: Not pushing anyone out of our heart"
We can't will ourselves to forgive - forgiving is a product not of effort but of openness
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Kaye-Lee, Gloria, and Marian to continue exploring Norman Fischer's book, The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path. We continue with the third chapter this week, diving further into the practices of the perfection of ethical conduct. Join us as we explore modern times and the precepts.
I vow to practice clarity, not to intoxicate the mind or body of self or others.
– Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:45 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Sandi, Darina, and Anita for our daytime exploration of Pema Chodron's book, Another Kind of Freedom. Sitting meditation is described as having five sections, and this week we'll look at the fourth one: boredom. Is boredom just a convenient story we tell ourselves to not be with what is?
The practice (of meditation) can be exciting at the beginning, but after the honeymoon period, the excitement wears off...is boredom inevitable?
– 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. In a chapter titled "To and from the Soul's Hall", we recall the importance of creating circles that welcome grief, so we can keep leaning into the world.
...our unexpressed sorrows, the congested stories of loss, that, when left unattended, block our access to the soul. We must clear the way, and this requires finding meaningful ways to speak of sorrow.
– Francis Weller
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
Join Ken this week as we plunge into the "Hidden Reefs" chapter of Rob Nairn's Diamond Mind book. What happens as we start developing a mindful awareness that reveals the recurring patterns in our minds that have gone unnoticed for years? 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.
These are the means by which we keep ourselves in a continual state of unrest, tension, and dissatisfaction.
― Rob Nairn
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Daniel as we are introduced to a new, to-be-determined meditation and mindfulness teacher.
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie to read and discuss End Times Fascism: And The Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. In it, the authors look at current politics, the polycrisis, and its trajectory.
👉 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.
Many of us feel this shift on a visceral level. We sense that we have entered a new paradigm, a world of perpetual upheavals, in which stability is the exception and uncertainty the baseline.
– Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Darina as we continue reading Pema Chodron's book, Living Beautifully. In a section titled "Nowhere to Hide", Chodron suggests we use the material of our lives to become more present.
People often ask me, "How do we know whether to refrain from something or go toward it?" My answer is, just practice what comes naturally at the time
– Pema Chodron
Near the end of the documentary Sound City, Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney are working out a new song in Grohl’s studio. When they finally nail it, Grohl says, "Why can’t it always be this easy?" McCartney replies, "It is." I burst out laughing at that unexpected response. It is. Really?
Thinking about their exchange, it’s practically a koan–a question or story used in Zen to provoke or challenge a student’s understanding. With apologies to both parties, let’s take our illustrious musicians and recast them as 13th century Japanese monks:
Two Buddhist monks, Grohl-san and McCartney-san, were relaxing in the forest by a creek on a tranquil, sunny day. Listening to the idyllic sounds of birdsong and the burbling stream, Grohl-san asked, "Why can’t it always be this easy?" McCartney-san responded, "It is". Hearing this reply, Grohl-san developed unsurpassed wisdom.
Here’s a dictionary definition of "easy" that applies to this story: free from worries or problems. From Grohl-san’s question, we know that he felt, in that moment, at ease*. Instead of expressing that, he asked why life couldn’t always be free from worries or problems. On the surface, McCartney-san’s observation that "it is" seems, if not flat-out wrong, then at least highly improbable. But then why does Grohl-san attain unsurpassed wisdom?
McCartney-san was pointing out that easy/not easy is a thought, a judgement, not something inherent in the conditions we find ourselves in. When a tree sways in gusts of wind, is it easy or hard for the tree? The tree simply responds to the environment as it is. You could say the tree is very much at ease in any kind of weather. Even if it were snapped or uprooted, the tree would still be free from worries or problems because those are features of mind.
Grohl-san felt at ease when the situation at that moment suited him perfectly. The insight underlying McCartney-san’s reply was that instead of needing the perfect conditions, if you stop comparing this moment with past or future, and judging it, you’ll be at ease. As Shakespeare famously put it, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Unlike Grohl-san, learning to notice and let go of judgements isn’t a one-off deal for most of us. Then again, it could be! 🌞
*** To be more precise, Grohl-san felt at ease just before that moment. We know this because in asking "why can’t", he was comparing that moment to less easy moments, past or yet to come.**
Note: This article was originally posted on July 25th, 2022.
--
🙏
Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Mamunur Rashid
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
