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.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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, "Recognizing Our Basic Goodness: The Gateway to a Forgiving and Loving Heart".
Every time we betray ourselves by not seeing our goodness, we break our heart.
– 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, as well as the precepts and vows that guide that process.
Our words matter. They are more powerful than we recognize.
– 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 third one: mindfulness and awareness. What are the qualities of mindfulness and awareness? How do we experience them? How can we cultivate them?
We tame the mind like a horse whisperer would tame a beautiful wild horse—with gentleness, but also precision.
– 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. He suggests that we need grief in order to make sense of a world turned upside down, and to heal traumas. Does grief offer us a way to respond?
We are made real and tangible by the experience of sorrow; as it adds substance and weight to our world...it wears away whatever mask we attempt to present to the world.
– Francis Weller
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
If the notion of having no goals seems odd, you're not alone. Join Ken this week to explore this puzzling suggestion through the lens of Rob Nairn's book Diamond Mind. 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.
As soon as there is a goal, there is a potential problem because it brings with it the idea of success or failure.
― Rob Nairn
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie to watch and discuss an introduction to the work of Dan Harris, the author of 10% Happier and host of a podcast of the same name. Most of us assume we’re stuck with [the inner narrator], but Harris stumbled upon an effective, science-backed way to do just that.
Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.
― Dan Harris
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Daniel McCubbin to watch and discuss an excerpt from Deeper Resources, in which Adam Lobel and Thanissara converse about activism and Buddhist practice.
👉 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.
...activism often overlooks "the need to process how we feel about the sheer mind and heart numbing, devastating shock of what is happening".
– Thanissara
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join us as we continue reading Ethan Nichtern's book Confidence. In a section titled "The Power of Awareness", we're invited to notice how moving further into awareness may bring up shame.
Coming to awareness isn't always pleasant, even if it eventually leads in a helpful direction.
– Ethan Nichtern
In his book Diamond Mind, Buddhist practitioner and psychologist Rob Nairn outlines the path of mindfulness and compassion in three stages:
I'm guessing we can all get on board with the first step. With practice, we develop mindfulness along the lines of this description by Culadasa:
Being present means attention is stable and peripheral awareness is vivid and inclusive.
In mindfulness meditation, we pay attention to the body's breathing, notice when our attention has wandered, and gently bring it back to the breath. Over time, our attention learns to rest on the breath instead of skittering away. At the same time, we are gently and clearly aware of everything other than the breath.
In the second step, we're asked to accept whatever arises, which is largely coming to terms with ourselves. So you could say we're learning to accept whoever arises. No small task! Here's Culadasa again on how we might approach that:
Acknowledging, allowing, and accepting are the antidotes to avoiding, resisting, and rejecting.
Finally, we meet step three: abandoning all goals. Does that sound impossible, or even ridiculous? Understandable. What if we approached this by holding your goals lightly or learning to let go of outcomes?
As I've noted before, it's tempting to view these three steps as a staircase, but they're almost always intermingled. You stumble into a bracing dose of mindfulness that dips into a swoon of acceptance, only to be jolted back into avoidance. Seriously? Yep.
Why then, you might ask, are they listed in order? Because with practice, over time, a positive trend does take shape. Inspired? Great! Drop that 😅
--
🙏
Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Eyüpcan Timur
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
