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
Join Kaye-Lee to continue reading and exploring True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art, by Chogyam Trungpa. Dharma art is a way of approaching creativity from a place of deeper awareness or mindfulness. Together, we'll learn how to move our creativity through awareness, with discussion, readings, and creative shares. Everyone is welcome!
Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist.
― Eileen Miller
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 of Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. This week, we'll continue reading a section of Chapter 3 titled "Pausing in the Face of Mara." Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book.
Until we stop our mental busyness, stop our endless activities, we have no way of knowing our actual experience. But stopping can be terrifying–to sit under the bodhi tree and face the arrows of Mara takes courage and resolve.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join KayeLee, Marian, and Gloria as we continue the "Saturday in New York with Gitanjali" chapter in Tracy Cochran's book, Presence: the Art of Being at Home in Yourself. This week, we'll follow Tracy and Gitanjali's exchange as they explore their respective worlds. There is no need to have read the book.
The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM E T
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi as we watch a Pema Chodron talk titled "Smile at Fear: A Reservoir of Trust." What would it be like to experience the world as a rich and unending source of messages, instead of one filled with threat or promise? Bring your curiosity, and we'll explore this possibility together. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
You can trust that whatever you say or do, you'll get a response from the world. That's the reservoir of trust, not that it's going to work out for you...these messages will never run dry.
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
Join Wayne this Thursday for sitting and walking meditation, followed by a reading and discussion. Everyone is welcome.
Your life is now.
Your life is now.
Your life is now.
– John Mellencamp
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie, Stephanie, and Daniel as we watch an Eckhart Tolle video titled "The Purpose of Life That 99% of People Miss." Life doesn’t stay comfortable for long, and expecting it to do so creates a lot of frustration. In this talk, Tolle explains why challenges are built into life and how they can become a doorway to deeper awareness. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
The world isn't here to make you happy. It's here to awaken you.
– Eckhart Tolle
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie as we explore observations on the climate crisis and our relationship to it through videos by Levi Meeulenberg. We'll look at connecting with nature, confronting our feelings about the climate crisis, adapting to change, and more. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
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.
I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance...We are ready to make the next leap – as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote.
– Elizabeth May
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Join Debbie to read Living Beautifully by Pema Chodron. In a chapter titled "Life without the Story Line," we can look at the urge to have a story rather than be with uncertainty. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
Believing in the storyline–identifying with the interpretations we put on our experience–is deeply ingrained in us.
– Pema Chodron
In a Lion's Roar article titled "This Floating World", Zen teacher Joan Sutherland writes:
In meditation we can fall through the bottom of our individual states into this deep meditation of the universe-as-a-whole, like individual waves sinking back into the ocean for a while.
The "individual state" suggests we are the wave, and that by dropping out of our self-imposed separation, we rediscover the ocean as wholeness.
I've sometimes described meditation practice in terms of a path or ladder, and those can be decent analogies. But, like the yin/yang image above, Sutherland is alluding to something else: the path is not separate from the destination. When you look to meditation practice as an escape hatch from your life, you're pitting the wave against the ocean. Our true nature, as it's sometimes called, isn't separate from spilling the coffee, missing the bus, or falling in love.
During a two-week retreat many years ago, an insight arose, clear and irrefutable: every step is a step away. In other words, we think that what we seek is elsewhere and later, not here and now. Sutherland puts it this way:
Our awakening is made of this world, just as it is. It doesn’t come from some other realm like a bolt from the blue, and you don’t go to someplace else when you awaken.
Every step is a step away. The paradox is that we need to practice and seek to realize that we don't. Looking elsewhere is like trying to make a mirror by rubbing a tile against a stone.
Yin/Yang image by Sam from Pixabay
Ocean image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Tine Ivanič 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
