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.
Sunday November 3rd, 7–8:30 PM
We're excited to host a conversation and meditation experience with Craig Mollins, a seasoned mindfulness teacher of over 25 years who lives with Tourette syndrome. Join us on a journey to celebrate the incredible diversity of the human brain! Neurodiversity is all about recognizing and valuing the unique perspectives and experiences that make each of us who we are.
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 @ 8:30 AM ET
NEW! ONLINE
Looking for a mindful start to your day? We're launching silent group meditations from 8:30 to 8:45 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 reading of Bhante Gunaratana's book Mindfulness in Plain English. This week, we'll continue our discussion of dealing with distractions during meditation, with a focus on working with the habit of conceptualization. You don't have to be familiar with the book–everyone is welcome!
Mindfulness grows by the exercise of mindfulness. It is like exercising a muscle. Every time you work it, you pump it up just a little. You make it a little stronger. The very fact that you have felt that wake-up sensation means that you have just improved your mindfulness power. That means you win.
– Bhante Gunaratana
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join hosts Kaye-Lee and Marian as we greet each other, have 20 minutes of silent meditation, and then continue to read & discuss The Storytelling Mind chapter of Jack Kornfield's The Wise Heart. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
Thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it.
– 10th principle of Buddhist Psychology
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join Adam, Lauren, and Sandi to consider how we're all inhabiting a connected fabric. We'll be reading and discussing "The Filament", a chapter in Mark Nepo's book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. Everyone is welcome, and you don't have to be familiar with the book. We'll begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
When touched, we are forced to listen for our lives, though we often need each other to make sense of what we've heard.
― Mark Nepo
Click here to visit our Meetup
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND
We all experience desire and it can generate suffering unless we learn to recognize and engage with it skillfully. Join Ken (who's feeling better after missing last week) in Owen Sound to explore Stephen Levine's writing on the role of love as acceptance and ways to engage with desire. Our session will start with 35 minutes of sitting and walking meditation.
👉 Planning to join this session? Consider joining Meetup and RSVPing to the session. It gives people a better idea of how many are attending and helps us grow.
But desire is not, as rumor would have it, “bad”, it is just painful.
― Stephen Levine
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
NEW! ONLINE
What do we do when the emotional patterns of protecting ourselves no longer serve us? Join Sandi online this Thursday to explore this topic, which draws on Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening. We'll start with 20 minutes of silent meditation and everyone is welcome.
I did not survive to live at a distance from things. I began to realize that letting life in was a deeper way to survive.
― Mark Nepo
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join Debbie this week to consider what we value and how we can live our lives by those values. Drawing on Rhonda McGee's Ethics: Living Our Values, we'll read and discuss how mindfulness practice intersects with "ethics in action". The session will start with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
Why, even in the face of the growth of conflict and aggression right alongside the growth of mindfulness in our world, do we so often hesitate to center on ethics?
― Rhonda McGee
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
Join Bob on Sunday for a look at how mental habits often run our lives while remaining they're invisible to us. We'll read and discuss Ethan Nichtern's book The Road Home for insights into how our awareness practice might include exploring those habits. The session begins with 20 minutes of meditation.
If we are able to take responsibility for our own mind, then we can work with whatever life throws at us without resentment or blame, and with the curiosity and self-care that are necessary for mindfulness to develop in all aspects of life. On this basis, we can also help others.
― Ethan Nichtern
If you've never heard the expression "meta-emotions", that makes two of us. It's a term that describes the feelings we have about our feelings. Let's say you're enjoying a delightful dinner with friends. You're feeling happy and then a thought arises: is this as good as it gets? A vague sense of disappointment bubbles up. Are you truly happy? Should you be happier? In this scenario, "happy" is the emotion, and "disappointment" is the meta-emotion.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
– John Stuart Mill
In the essay How to Stop Overthinking Your Happiness, Iris Mauss and Brett Q. Ford suggest that judgment determines whether or not we experience true happiness. In the example above, the moment you judged the quality of your happiness, the meta-emotion of disappointment began to dissolve it. Accept your happiness as it is, and you remain happy. Judge your experience and happiness begins to evaporate.
When you’re experiencing something positive, don’t judge yourself.
– Iris Mauss, Brett Q. Ford
According to Mauss and Ford, the best approach is to aspire to be happy and appreciate whatever happiness arises. The alternative, which is to be concerned with how happy you are, to judge it, leads to discontent and disappointment.
Here's a summary of four specific steps they offer:
All of these are within our reach, but Mauss and Ford are careful to add that "cultures, systems, and societies play a key role in individual happiness". Everything is connected, including happiness. So, as tennis great Arthur Ashe put it: "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." 🎯
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Ken & the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Camila Cordeiro 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
