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.
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, Jim, and Sharon for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by our reading of Pema Chödrön's Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World. Today we'll be discussing the chapter titled "Just As It Is". There's no need to have or be familiar with the book and everyone is welcome!
The idea of appreciating things just as they are is simple and accessible, but also very profound. It's the key to feeling warm and loving toward others and toward ourselves.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Please join Kaye-Lee, Marian, and Gloria for 20 minutes of silent meditation. We’ll also explore uncertainty and change by reading and discussing "A Personal Koan", a chapter from Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel's book, The Power of an Open Question. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
How do we live a life we can't hold on to?
– Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel
Click here for directions
IN-PERSON – MISSISSAUGA
Join Debbie for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a look at various ways of bringing ourselves more fully into the present moment.
You can’t go home again, but you can go to the present moment, which is where you’ve always been.
— Ram Dass
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi as we continue reading and discussing Pema Chodron's Practicing Peace In Times of War. Behind any tension is a soft spot we're trying to protect, so we arm ourselves in familiar ways. Through patient and curious self-reflection, we can connect to that soft spot with gentleness and loving-kindness. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or to let go, whether to harden or soften, whether to hold your seat or strike out.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to visit our Meetup
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND
This week, join Wayne for 35 minutes of sitting and walking meditation, followed by a reading and discussion (topic to be determined).
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
— Alan Watts
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Debbie to continue reading and discussing Meditations for Mortals. There's no need to be familiar with the book. This session is open to all and will start with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
What you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is.
― Oliver Burkeman
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
How does mindfulness intersect with the climate crisis? Join Daniel McCubbin to explore how the mind's habitual patterns (individually and collectively) led us here and keep us stuck. We'll be reading and discussing Christine Wamsler's writing in What the Mind Has to Do with the Climate Crisis. The session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
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.
Understanding the intersection between mind and climate change shows that sustainability crises are inherently about how we relate to ourselves, others, and the environment. Changing the way we engage with each of these relationships can help bend our story towards a more sustainable path. This applies not just to individuals, but to all groups and organizations, including governmental and private institutions.
― Christine Wamsler
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
What is it like to be right here? What gets in the way of this? Join Debbie on Sunday for 20 minutes of silent meditation, followed by a discussion of the "Be Right Here" chapter from Jon Bernie's book The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
To truly allow 'what is' to be as it is–to open to what is actually real–is to become open in ways you've never been open before.
— Jon Bernie
I confess that when I hear "equanimity" my mind sometimes slips into "stoic". This is a mistake, of course. To be stoic is to endure hardship without showing it, while equanimity is what Sharon Salzberg refers to as a "balance that is born of wisdom".
It’s only through mindfulness, with its secret component of equanimity, that we have the right relationship to our experience to see more deeply into it, to understand it more fully, and to develop insight.
– Sharon Salzberg
Another term for equanimity is perspective. It's by maintaining perspective that we avoid falling into, or turning away from, things-as-they-are. It enables us to be generous and patient. Without equanimity, we're easily caught up in superficial dramas or snared in mindless attention traps.
The meditative mind sees disagreeable or agreeable things with equanimity, patience, and good-will. Transcendent knowledge is seeing reality in utter simplicity.
— Jean-Yves Leloup
Equanimity plays a key role in our journey to realizing existence as it is: nameless, naked, undivided. In meditation, we move toward sitting and settling into just this; a process that first cultivates equanimity and then relies on it in a gently spiralling updraft.
Ken & the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Samuel Austin 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
