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 explore our innate creative awareness through discussion, readings, and 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!
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
― C.G. Jung
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 Chapter 5, "Coming Home to Our Body: The Ground of Radical Acceptance." Everyone is welcome, and there's no need to have or be familiar with the book
It is easy to feel that something bad will happen if we don't maintain our habitual vigilance by thinking, judging, planning. Yet this is the very habit that keeps us trapped in resisting life. Only when we realize we can't hold on to anything can we begin to relax our efforts to control our experience.
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
Please join Gloria, Kaye-Lee, and Marian for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by reading Tracy Cochran's book Presence: The Art of Being at Home with Yourself. We will be reading the "Butternut Goddess" chapter. You don't need to have read the book, and all are welcome.
Our body is our original home and a gift from our ancestors, bringing our attention home to the life of the body. Our breath and sensations root us in life, quietly leading on to essential truths and deeper feelings.
– Tracy Cochran
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi as we read Alexis Santos' article titled "Allowing yourself to fall asleep (or not)." Will becoming more aware of the body and mind, and seeing what creates stress or ease, help to cultivate acceptance? Bring your curiosity, and we'll explore this together. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
Whether we fall asleep or not is actually not our business. If sleep happens, it happens. Being awake is nature. Falling asleep is nature. The thought about needing to get to sleep is just a thought. It's also nature. Our job is to simply have the attitude that allows the nature of this moment to be as it is.
– Alexis Santos
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
In "How Slow Can You Go", Alex Tzelnic asks whether a personal mindfulness practice can move the needle on our personal and societal speediness. Join Ken this Thursday to read and discuss Tzelnic's provocative and much-needed perspective. Our session will begin with sitting and walking meditation, and everyone is welcome.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Daniel to read and discuss a Benjamin Fishel article that examines some core beliefs that interfere with moving towards peace of mind. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation.
I realized at that moment that all my worries were tangled up in this thick web of beliefs I had about what I should have been experiencing.
– Benjamin Fishel
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie to read and discuss Britt Wray's writing about how we relate emotionally to the climate crisis. Wray explores how to meet our emotions about climate with understanding, wisdom, and compassion. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation. There's no need to have the book.
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.
When we recognize the climate crisis for what it is–a collective trauma–we can begin to invest in our own mental health and well-being in relation to it.
– Britt Wray
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie and Lauren as we continue to read Ethan Nichtern's book Confidence. In the section titled "Praise and Blame," Nichtern invites us to consider how we might relate mindfully when we are criticized or complimented. Our session will begin with 20 minutes of silent meditation, and there's no need to be familiar with the book.
The irony of feedback is that while we long to be known by others, it's also fundamentally uncomfortable to be 'seen.'
– Ethan Nichtern
Did you know that the phrase "what you resist, persists" is attributed to psychologist Carl Jung? What he actually said was "what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size."
When our children were little, we had a delightful book titled There's No Such Thing as a Dragon. In it, little Billy Bixbee wakes up to discover a small dragon in his room. When he excitedly tells his mother about the dragon, she replies that "there's no such thing as a dragon." Since there's no such thing, Billy determines to pay no attention to the dragon. The dragon responds by...getting bigger.
Billy sat down at the table.
The dragon sat ON the table.
This sort of thing was not usually permitted, but there wasn't much Billy's mother could do about it. She had already said there's no such thing as a dragon. And if there's no such thing, you can't tell it to get down off the table.
The dragon becomes so large that it runs away with their house, and Billy finally forces his parents to admit that it's real. After a gentle pat on the head, the dragon quickly shrinks back down to its original, manageable size. Carl would be proud.
The Buddhist teaching of impermanence states that nothing–not mountains, macaroni, or me–is fixed. Nothing but flux. It's not all that difficult to grasp that impermanence is real out there, although society doesn't encourage that line of thinking because, for one thing, it's bad for the consumer economy. If everything changes and nothing lasts, do I really need a new Mr. Coffee Compact Espresso Maker?
The fact that impermanence is a thing in here (i.e., you, me) is a lot more tempting to resist. I mean, if that's the case, where is this all going? Who or what am I? Like Billy's dragon, however, refusing to accept the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of impermanence doesn't make it go away. Ask your bathroom mirror–impermanence is here to stay 🤔 Not only does denial not make it go away, it means even more suffering down the road.
So, if you find it's getting harder and harder to deny impermanence, try patting it on the head, and see where that leads.
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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
