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 our explore 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!
All it takes to become an artist is to start doing art.
― Ellen Langer
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 reading the section "I See You Mara: The Practices of Inquiry and Naming". Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book.
As we figuratively sit beside ourselves and inquire, listen and name our experience, we see Mara clearly and open our heart in tenderness for the suffering before us.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join Kaye Lee, Gloria, and Marian for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by the reading and discussion of "The Burning World" in Tracy Cochran's book Presence: The Art of Being at Home in Yourself. You don't need to have read the book to come. All are welcome.
The world is burning, but we can begin to see by that fiery light. Unclenching the fist of desire begins to open us to the ground of our being.
– Tracy Cochran
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM E T
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi to read and discuss Pema Chödrön's "Welcoming the Unwelcome." In the "Does It Matter" chapter, she explores our habitual response patterns. Specifically: how can we lessen or quiet the urge to react in our habitual ways? Let's explore together with curiosity. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
There's nothing we can do to change the past, but the future is unwritten. What we do right now will help create that future–which is not just ours, but one we share with many others.
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
Join Debbie this Thursday to explore the writing of Ethan Nichtern after sitting and walking meditation. In his book Confidence, Nichtern points out that true confidence isn't about avoiding life's fluctuations but about learning to "hold your seat" through them with presence and equanimity. Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
...Pleasure and Pain, Praise and Criticism, Fame and Insignificance, and Success and Failure… if we don’t know how to work with them and hold our seat, they can undercut our confidence.
– Ethan Nichtern
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie, Daniel, and Stephanie as we watch and discuss an Eckhart Tolle video. In it, he explores how thoughts and interpretations–not circumstances–usually cause our unhappiness. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.
– Eckhart Tolle
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie as we read an article by Tony Pham. When we take action against injustice, how can we include mindfulness? 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.
In a time of misinformation, fear, and division, mindfulness anchors us.
– Tony Pham
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Join Debbie in reading Ethan Nichtern's book Confidence. In chapter 3, "Praise and Blame," he explores why we react so strongly to criticism. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
The perception that we're being either praised or criticized can reveal vulnerability–and fragility–more directly than any other human experience.
– Ethan Nichtern
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Note: Originally published in the August 29, 2022 newsletter
In his book, *Training in Compassion*, Norman Fischer looks at the Tibetan lojong from a Zen teacher’s point of view. For example, Fischer phrases the 14th slogan this way:
See confusion as Buddha and practice emptiness.
If you find that statement confusing, we’re off to a great start!
The suggestion here is that we turn our habitual relationship to our problems, disappointments, fear, and bewilderment inside out. Instead of battling with these challenges and trying to rid ourselves of them, we step through and beyond to a deeper truth. We see them as Buddha, by taking the perspective of the universe. What is the nature of Ken’s grief, anger, and longing when seen from the universe’s point of view? Ken could go on and on about these (trust me 🤡 ), but as phenomena in an expansive, sprawling universe, how significant (or even real) are they?
Fischer continues:
...from an absolute perspective, a God’s eye view, if you will, there is no self and other. There’s only Being, and there’s only Love, which is Being sharing itself with itself without impediment and without warmth.
This isn’t about trying to get rid of confusion; it’s about cradling the "full catastrophe" in a cosmic container. For a more down-to-earth take, Oliver Burkeman, author of *Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals*. Burkeman writes:
What you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is.
When our attention is hooked on separation, on suffering, on lack, these become the fabric and boundaries of our lived experience. That other view, of Being and Love, is always available to us, however. Random and fleeting, to be sure, but with practice, it can be cultivated and nourished. Practicing emptiness sounds abstract but in a sense, it’s as simple as taking a different perspective. What seems solid and certain turns out to be a boundless expanse of sharing and loving.
Still confused? No problem, that’s also Love 🧘
Photo by Michelle Tresemer on Unsplash
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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
