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 continue moving our creativity through awareness, with discussion, readings, and creative 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!
Mindfulness and creativity are critical to wellbeing and development at individual and societal levels.
― Henriksen, Richardson, and Shack
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 continue reading a section of Chapter 3, titled "The Sacred Pause - Fertile Ground for Wise Action." Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book.
We learn Radical Acceptance by practicing pausing again and again...In this pause, we let go of thinking and doing, and we become intimate with what is happening in our body, heart and mind.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Join Gloria, Kay-Lee, and Marian to continue the reading and discussion of Tracy Cochran's book Presence: The Art of Being at Home With Yourself. We'll begin the chapter "You Would Run for Your Life" this week. Everyone is welcome, and you don't have to be familiar with the book. We'll begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
The sun sparkled on the North Sea. I was filled with a sense of the poignancy of life. The relentless way things and people are lost.
– Tracy Cochran
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM E T
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi for a guided viewing and discussion of a Pema Chödrön video titled "What is causing me to suffer right now?", from the Mindful Discoveries series. How do we distinguish fleeting triggers (like a rude comment) from deeper habitual patterns—like recurring anger or self-doubt—that fuel ongoing pain? Bring your curiosity, and we'll explore together. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
Looking deeper, we could say that the root of our suffering is not the object of our anger or sadness, but our clinging to those feelings.
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
This Thursday, after sitting and walking meditation, join Wayne to continue delving into Miguel Ruiz's book, The Four Agreements. What would happen if you were "impeccable with your word" and didn't “take anything personally?” Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
...if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.
– Miguel Ruiz
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie as we read a Diana Bird article titled "How to Stop Being Overwhelmed by Other People's Emotions." What can we learn by noticing our emotions and reactions to other people's emotions? Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
So, how do we learn how to not get intertwined with other people and their emotions? How do we stop having such intense reactions to people having feelings, regardless of what they are about?
–Diana Bird
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie as we continue exploring observations on the climate crisis and our relationship to it through videos by Levi Meeulenberg. We'll look at connecting with nature, confronting our feelings about the climate crisis, adapting to change, and more. 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.
If you’re not alone, if you’re part of a movement, that sense allows you to become vulnerable and to open your heart.
– Jane Fonda
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Join Debbie this week to delve into a practice about seeing our reactions more clearly, taken from the "Pleasure and Pain" chapter in Ethan Nichtern's book Confidence. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
The practice of mindfulness starts with the simplest building blocks of honest attention, which then lead to simple insights that we find in the smallest moments of life.
– Ethan Nichtern
I've been enjoying Oliver Burkeman's book Meditations for Mortals, a treatise on how our persistent belief that there's a proper way to organize your life, and that once you do that, everything will fall into place. Here's a related snippet from an article on his website:
Most of our attempts to become better people, fitter and healthier, more moral/productive/organised, and so forth, make this problem worse – because it's basically impossible to pursue any program of personal change without the thought, somewhere in the back of your mind, that successfully completing the change will catapult you into a new and somehow realer kind of existence.
In "Life-While-You-Wait", the poet Wislawa Symborska captures this persistent uneasiness and our stubborn belief that there's a way to sort this out:
Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
What if this messy, imperfect life is that "realer kind of existence" Burkeman alludes to?
I highly recommend taking 10 minutes out of your day to read What if you never sort your life out?
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Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
Photo by Igor Starkov
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
