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 @ 7 PM ET
Please join Brenda, Gordon, and Jim for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a reading of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up by Koshin Paley Ellison. This week, we'll read and discuss Chapter 10, "Clearing away the Fog." Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book
Part of clearing the fog out of the machine: identifying, modulating, and/or perhaps avoiding the toxic intoxicants. The other part is learning to be okay with our own vulnerability and the parts of life that cause us discomfort, which is easy to say but takes a lifetime to practice.
– Koshin Paley Ellison
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join Kaye-Lee, Marian, and Gloria for 20 minutes of silent meditation, followed by a reading & discussion from "Elizabeth." This is a new chapter in Tracy Cochran's book, Presence: The Art of Being at Home with Yourself. You don't have to have read the book. All are welcome..
Great questioning, great awakening;
little questioning, little awakening;
no questioning, no awakening.
– Zen saying
IN-PERSON – MISSISSAUGA
Join us in person on Wednesday as we gather to explore topics such as meditation, mindfulness, compassion, Buddhism, and other related subjects. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of meditation, and there are no prerequisites to participate.
Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness.
― Thomas Merton
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi to read and discuss the final section of Mark Nepo's lovely book, The Power Of Friendship. Once we grow tired of accumulating what we have or pining for what we don't, we may sense that being fully alive centres on the art of timing–when to give and when to receive. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
We find each other by feeling what is ours to feel. Eventually, such thoroughness of heart moves us beyond our personal suffering. Then, we are no longer alone.
– Mark Nepo
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND
Sympathetic joy is the ability to feel genuine happiness in the happiness of others, and can be challenging to cultivate. Are you truly happy for that friend who inherits that family fortune? Wins the Giller Prize? Join Ken this week for 35 minutes of sitting and walking meditation. Afterward, we'll read and discuss Sharon Salzberg's "Your Happiness Is My Happiness" article in Tricycle magazine.
We may also have the idea that happiness is a limited commodity in this world and the more someone else has, the less there is for us.
– Sharon Salzberg
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Daniel and Sandi to watch and discuss David Whyte's "beautiful questions". What are our fierce and beautiful questions below the surface of what we show the world? What questions am I carrying in my own body? Are they actually my own, or are they questions that were fired into my body by my parents? Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation, and all are welcome.
A question is a gravitational path that is leading to the horizon , both outwards and inwards.
– David Whyte
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Daniel McCubbin as we continue to watch the video "Ecodharma: A New Buddhist Path?" by David Loy, in which he talks about how the ecological crisis intersects with the teachings of Buddhism. 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.
The essential teaching of Buddhism is that the life of the Buddha resides in every plant and tree, even in the smallest dust mote: it is a philosophy of the utmost reverence for life.
– Unknown
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
This Sunday, join Debbie and Darina to read and discuss Michael Singer's book, Living Untethered. In the chapter "Waking Dreams", we reflect on whether we can move from demanding the world be as we want to just witnessing it? Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
If you can learn to sit back and simply watch that voice inside your head, you can free yourself.
– Michael Singer
In her book The Mindful Body, Willa Blythe Baker recounts a conference experience at which the participants were informed that a "mindfulness bell" would ring at random intervals, and they were invited to pause whatever they were doing and simply be present for a minute or two. After some initial reluctance, she came to really appreciate the practice.
Baker suggests we can do something similar by finding a random occurrence, like a car horn honking, to act as our personal mindfulness bell. I was pondering her advice when it struck me: the pigeons! Around this time of year, shortly before the evening sets in, the pigeons who roost under a bridge near our house take to the sky in a dazzling, collective performance known as murmuration.
For half an hour or so, the flock moves as if it were a single, shape-shifting entity. They swoop, climb, dive, and corner, all while continuously expanding and collapsing into endless, myriad patterns. As soon as I notice them, I drop whatever I'm doing and watch. My mind begins to settle into silence, my body becomes still, and my centre of gravity drops toward the ground. I smile.
Baker has an apt analogy for what having our own mindfulness bell has to offer, suggesting we "let the forward momentum of [our] doing self just peter out, like a rolling ball comes to a rest." Do you have a random mindfulness bell? If not, give it a try and see where it leads.
PS. If you're curious about the science of murmuration, The Conversation has a great article.
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Alexandra Khudyntseva 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
