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. Oline donors will receive an annual tax receipt for the full amount of their donations in each calendar year.
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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.
Join Debbie McCubbin and Ken Dow on April 5/6 for our annual Community Meditation retreat at Harmony Centre in Owen Sound.
Together, we'll explore practices that can help us find peace in turbulent and confusing times, including silent and guided meditation, breathwork, discussion, VOICE, and tonglen.
Awakening is...a process of relaxing in the middle—the paradoxical, ambiguous middle, full of potential, full of new ways of thinking and seeing.
— Pema Chodron
This event is open to beginners, experienced meditators, and anywhere in between. We'll have all day Saturday (9 AM to 5 PM) and a half-day on Sunday (9 AM to 1 PM). Lunch will be provided on both Saturday and Sunday, so plan to leave early afternoon on Sunday.
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, Jim, and Sharon for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by our ongoing discussion of Pema Chödrön's Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World. Tonight we'll start Chapter 10: "How You Label It Is How It Appears." There's no need to have or be familiar with the book–all are welcome!
If we don't work with our own mind and perceptions, no political or economic revolution will really change the deep habits that keep us caught in our own emotional struggles-which lead to most of our struggles with other people.
– Pema Chödrön
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
On Tuesday, please join Bob, Kaye-Lee, Gloria, and Marian to continue exploring We Were Made for These Times by Kaira Jewel Lingo. We'll be reading and discussing Chapter 4, titled "Weathering the Storm". Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
Most of us walk without chains, yet we aren't free. We're tethered to regret and sorrow from the past. We return to the past and continue to suffer. The past is a prison. But now you have the key to unlock the door and arrive in the present moment. You breathe in, you bring your mind home to your body, you make a step, and you arrive in the here and the now.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Click here for directions
IN-PERSON – MISSISSAUGA
Join Tammy for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a look at making peace with the inevitable uncertainty and change that arises in life. We'll be drawing on Pema Chodron's book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change. We'll begin with 20 minutes of meditation and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.
― Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi to read and discuss Pema Chodron's book Practicing Peace In Times of War. How we work with ourselves today is how a shift away from widespread aggression can arise down the road. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
Instead of avoiding the uncomfortable feeling, "we need to develop an appetite for groundless was; get curious about it and be willing to pause and hang out for a while in that space of insecurity.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to visit our Meetup
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND
This week, join Ken to continue reading and discussing Edward Espe Brown's article "Let's Get Cooking". How we do what we do makes all the difference, if we do it consciously. There's no need to be familiar with Brown's book. Our session will include 35 minutes of sitting and walking meditation.
Finding the space where you can learn and grow, entering the space where you can belong rather than just fit in means that your life can go forward.
— Edward Espe Brown
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
We often subconsciously expect that we can arrange our lives so there aren't any more problems -- and blame ourselves that we don't reach that state. But it's not a realistic aspiration. Join Debbie and Caitlyn this Thursday to explore this as a practice, drawing on Oliver Burkeman's Meditations for Mortals book. There's no need to be familiar with the book and the session is open to all. We'll begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a largely unconscious assumption that at some point -- maybe not soon, but eventually --we'll make it to the phase of life which won't involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with.
― Oliver Burkeman
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
This week, after 20 minutes of silent meditation, join Debbie to discuss how to have, and why to have climate, change conversations with people who may not care about it. This is Part 2 of a series on talking to others about climate change. How do we know if there is even a point, or a benefit, in trying to change someone's mind about climate change?
Friday EcoDharma sessions are for those experiencing anxiety or grief about environmental issues. The aim is to bring mindfulness and Buddhist practices to our distress, and to build community.
Remember: people can’t communicate well when they feel threatened. Direct attacks — whether as arguments, evidence or name-calling — limit capacity for reason, empathy and self-reflection. Find common ground by first making people feel safe and heard.
― David Suzuki
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
How can we be mindful in our communication with others, especially our listening? Join Debbie this Sunday to consider this question by reading and discussing The Road Home by Ethan Nichtern. Our session will start with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
We are generally the most mindful when we approach the process in this order: first, listening, and then, speaking.
– Ethan Nichtern
Last Thursday, in Owen Sound, we started reading an article by Edward Espe Brown titled "You're The Cook". Brown is the author of The Tassajara Bread Book and was ordained as a Zen priest by Shunryu Suzuki. In the article, Brown suggests:
Shift from your head to your heart and hands, your body and being, and you will tend to discover connection.
We spend so much of our days lost in thought. Disembodied, in a sense. Drowning in wave after wave of thinking–about the past, the future, and what's wrong with the present. Shifting from the head to our heart and hands is a trap door through which we can escape the prison of our mind.
Dropping into heart, hands, body, and being is a move from the abstract to the visceral. It's embracing the unthinkable physicality of now. It's emptying the compost. Dancing at a birthday party. Baking bread.
The connection we discover is not a discovery at all; it's a homecoming, a folding into suchness. Life is here, now. The only thing separating us from that truth is the concept of separation. In our heart and our hands, no such concept exists.
...the mind is distracted but the body is not. The body is not thinking or ruminating. It is just feeling and being present, aware, and vibrant. In other words: the body is already mindful. – Willa Blythe Baker
PS. A deep bow and big thanks to Sandi, who helped bring this week's newsletter into being 🙏.
Ken & the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Elina Sazonova
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
