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.
🧘
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 begin Chapter 4: "Unconditional Friendliness". Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book.
We practice Radical Acceptance by pausing and then meeting whatever is happening inside us with unconditional friendliness [...] Nothing is wrong—whatever is happening is just 'real life'.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Please join Marian, Kaye-Lee, and Gloria at 7 PM as we greet each other and then meditate. We will continue reading "You would run for your life" from Tracy Cochran's book, Presence: the Art of Being at Home in Yourself. There is no need to be familiar with the book. All are welcome!.
We have within us an enormous capacity to heal and open our lives. There is no time limit.
– Tracy Cochran
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM E T
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi to watch and discuss a Pema Chödrön video, "The Handshake Practice." What is our relationship with holding a grudge? How might we shift from criticism to appreciation? Bring your curiosity, and we'll explore together. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
If something is frozen like ice, warmth is what allows it to melt.
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
Join Debbie this Thursday to explore the writing of Ethan Nichtern after sitting and walking meditation. In his book Confidence, Nichtern points out that true confidence isn't about avoiding life's fluctuations but about learning to "hold your seat" through them with presence and equanimity. Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
...Pleasure and Pain, Praise and Criticism, Fame and Insignificance, and Success and Failure… if we don’t know how to work with them and hold our seat, they can undercut our confidence.
– Ethan Nichtern
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Daniel and Sandi as we read Debbie's "How to Find Your Way to the Present Moment". In the "Why Should I Care?" chapter, we look at why it's helpful to become more familiar with our inner stories. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
If we aspire to a more satisfying level of connection and presence in the world...the first step is developing a deepening awareness of how stories arise and shape our experience of events and people.
– Debbie McCubbin
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie as we continue exploring Willa Blythe Baker's "5 Buddhist Practices to Help Tackle Climate Change." We will explore the final two practices. Willa walks us through Ways we can relate to our fear and grief about the climate with practice. 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.
The loosening of attachment helps us open to the truth that nothing is certain. Nothing can be taken for granted. This is how we learn to love the truth for what it actually is.
– Willa Blythe Baker
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Join Debbie as she gives a talk following up on material from Pema's book, specifically looking more deeply into our inner storylines: what are they, why do we have them, how can we see them -- and why would we want to?
Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to be familiar with the book.
No matter whether we are a beginning meditator or an experienced student of being present, we can always benefit from seeing our inner stories more clearly–and seeing that they ARE stories.
– Debbie McCubbin
In Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself, 51," the poet writes:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Emily Dickinson offers the following lines in "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?":
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
From the 2nd-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, we encounter these verses:
When I see that I am nothing, that is Wisdom;
when I see that I am everything, that is Love;
and between the two my life flows.
Breathing in, you are profusion.
Breathing out, you are nobody.
Breathing in, you are infinite-love.
Breathing out, you are zero-wisdom.
Breathing in, you confute.
Breathing out, you flow.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Photo by Eli DeFaria on Unsplash
--
🙏
Ken, Sandi, and the Community Meditation Team
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
