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.
Click here to join on Zoom @ 5 PM ET
This Monday, join Kaye-Lee to continue delving into our innate creative awareness through discussion, readings, and shares. We'll be reading and exploring Chogyam Trungpa's book True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art, which considers dharma art as a way of approaching creativity from a place of deeper awareness. Everyone is welcome!
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
― Sylvia Plath
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Please join Brenda, Gordon, and Jim for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a reading from Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach. This week, we'll be continuing Chapter 5 with the section "Reacting to Pain with Fear." Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book.
Symptoms of illness or distress, plus your feelings about them, can be viewed as messengers coming to tell you something important about your body or about your mind.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Please join Kaye-Lee, Marian, and Gloria for 20 minutes of silent meditation. Afterward, we'll begin a new chapter in Tracy Chapman's Presence: The Art of Being at Home in Yourself. We'll read together and pause occasionally to share our thoughts about the chapter. There is no need to be familiar with the book. All are welcome.
Very slowly over many years, I learned that consenting to be with what is, body, heart, and mind, without judging or seeking to change anything in any way, allows a new energy or vibration or feeling of life to appear–and this is the truth I was searching for.
– Tracy Cochran
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi as we read Lama Tasha Schumann's article titled "The Clarity Inside Your Anger." Schumann explores anger as a meaningful emotion that can offer insight into our needs, boundaries, and deeper feelings. Rather than viewing anger as something purely negative, she encourages us to approach it with awareness and curiosity. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
You don’t need to do anything but make space for it. Rage is like the red-hot part of the flame—it’s wild, aimless flailing. But if you give it attention and space, it becomes like the center of the flame, where it’s absolutely clear. And there, it becomes power.
– Lama Tasha Schumann
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
What is awareness without concepts? Can we step outside our conceptual thinking? Join Ken to explore how embodied presence, paying attention, and not knowing can support our capacity to rest in pure awareness. Our session will begin with sitting and walking meditation, and everyone is welcome.
Embodied presence is a way of meeting our tensions physically; connecting the dots for the kind of attitudes, mental states, and emotional patterns that keep those tensions going.
– Martin Aylward
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Daniel to watch Adyashanti's "Do Nothing" video. In it, Adyashanti examines our tendency to want to "do something" in meditation. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
...meditation is the art of disengaging from the little self—it’s doing nothing, allowing everything to be as it is, and discovering an incredibly vivid and awake state of being.
– Adyashanti
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie to read and discuss an article by Plastic Pollution Coalition, "Sacred Ground: What World Religions Teach Us About Earth Stewardship." What do the world's religions and spiritual traditions teach about stewardship of the earth? Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to have the book.
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.
Whether rooted in secular philosophy, organized religion, or Indigenous wisdom, all of these various traditions share a common message: we are not separate from nature, we are part of it, and we share responsibility for its care. The Earth is not merely a resource to be exploited; it is sacred ground, our shared home. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves and to all of those who come after us.
– Plastic Pollution Coalition
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie as we continue to read Living Beautifully by Pema Chödrön. In "Laying the Foundation," we consider the uneasiness and lack of awareness underneath our habits and patterns. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
...we make a journey through our resistance, knowing its every nuance, its strategies and exits. In this way, we uncover that awareness.
– Pema Chödrön
Note: This article was originally published on October 10, 2022
The dictionary definition of surrender, with phrases like "stop resisting an enemy’ and "lose to an opponent", isn’t exactly inviting. It runs deeply counter to our typical image of a successful and fulfilling life. But is there another aspect to surrender, one that’s positive and even necessary?
One of the fruits of meditation is learning to notice our habitual stories and ways of thinking. Gradually, we start to question those stories and discover that many have no substance; they’re phantoms, random murmurings that wash up on the shore of our awareness like waves, only to recede and then vanish.
Some stories run much deeper than others, though, and some inevitable realities are harder than others. We are born and cannot avoid pain, illness, loss, and death. While developing a healthy ego is natural and positive, life eventually challenges us to grow beyond a self-centred, egoistic view. We are asked to relinquish some of our individualism, to dial down our drive to control and manipulate, to give ourselves over to the larger process of life. In short, we are asked to surrender. If the very thought of surrender gets your hackles up, consider what Buddhist and psychotherapist Rob Preece has to say in The Solace of Surrender:
It has often surprised me that in the process of surrender what I give up is fear and struggle.
What Preece is pointing out is that we sometimes (often? 🤔 ) make things worse for ourselves through our refusal to surrender. This doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands at every bump in the road; in fact, recognizing when to give ourselves over is a form of wisdom. Here’s Preece again:
A paradox inherent in this process is expressed by the curious Middle Eastern proverb “Trust in God but tether your camel.” While we need to let go and give up on one level, we must be practical and retain a sense of active participation in and responsibility for the process.
What are you resisting? Should you trust or tether? What would happen if you surrendered to it?
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
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
