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.
NOTE
For all the sessions listed below:
Click here to join on Zoom @ 5 PM ET
ONLINE
How is creativity different when viewed through the experience of mindfulness? Let's explore...!
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
– Sylvia Plath
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Brenda, Gordon, and Jim for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a reading and discussion of Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. This week, we will be continuing with Chapter 7, "Opening Our Heart in the Face of Fear."
...it is easier to face the out-of-control rawness of fear when we don't feel alone. In fact, what perpetuates fear is the horrible pain of isolation.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Kaye-Lee, Gloria, and Marian to continue reading Chapter 1, "Imagination" in Norman Fischer's book The World Could be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path.
Imagination expands our hearts and causes us to understand others as ourselves and ourselves as not belonging to us.
– Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:45 AM ET
NEW DAYTIME SESSION! ONLINE
Please join Sandi and Darina for our freshly-launched daytime session. We're excited to bring you readings from Pema Chodron's new book Another Kind of Freedom. This week, we'll explore the potential for reaction when we are disappointed.
As long as you have the expectation that you can get things to work out your way, we will be disappointed.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi to watch a Pema Chödrön video titled "Living With Tenderness." In it, she explores the true nature of compassion, not as something sweet and comfortable, but as a willingness to feel fully and remain in loving contact with the world.
You are not falling apart, you are becoming more alive
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
This week, we'll explore the power of being curious and how it relates to the "insight" section of the Born to Flourish book. What does it take to be truly curious? Why is it sometimes so challenging to do?
The questions are less important than the willingness to ask.
– Davidson and Dahl
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Hazel as we continue exploring the work of some of the most well-regarded teachers of mindfulness and meditation. This week, we'll be reading from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Coming to Our Senses.
The practice of watching your thoughts from moment to moment can be profoundly liberating.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join us as we watch and discuss a video by Lama Rod Owens titled "Embracing Earth, Embracing Self." In this keynote, he explores the essential connection between our well-being and the health of our planet. As we confront the challenges of climate change, he addresses how systems of violence, such as capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, intersect with environmental crises and impede sustainability efforts.
👉 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.
If we don't do our work, we become work for other people.
– Lama Rod Owens
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Lauren as we carry on with Ethan Nichtern's book Confidence. As part of a series about the "Eight Worldly Winds" (praise/blame, success/failure, pain/pleasure, and fame/insignificance), we'll continue exploring our relationship to success and failure.
One of the greatest lessons that comes from meditation is that a relaxed curiosity about life and sleepwalking through it are two radically different choices.
– Ethan Nichtern
The first song I ever wrote was about my father, who worked underground as an electrician in Elliot Lake's Denison uranium mine. As a direct consequence of that work, he died of lung cancer in 1976, the year I turned sixteen.
Silent Countdown
There’s a mine in my memory
There’s a cage going down
It’s going down
There’s a man inside that cage
The way I remember him at that age
// Chorus
You can’t see when you’re down there
You can’t see what’s in the air
The damage done, oh it takes years
A silent countdown before the tears
Thirty years slugging a lunchbox
Dreaming dreams nobody knows
Nobody knows
Doctor said you better get some rest
We’re going to have to do that test
That test
// Chorus
A rainy grave out in Winnipeg
Year of our lord nineteen hundred
Seventy-six
We look at each other, we look for answers
There ain’t no solution, there ain’t no fix
No fix
// Bridge
Sometimes I dream he’s still here
We’re walking down a sunny gravel road
He checks his watch, gives me a smile
We just walk and talk for miles
// Chorus
I guess I could blame it on the company
I could say the government got it wrong
They got it wrong
But you know, it just don’t matter much
Fact is I’m here and he’s gone
And he’s gone
Thinking of you on Father's Day, Dad.
--
🙏
Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Nothing Ahead
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
