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.
NOTE
For all the sessions listed below:
Click here to join on Zoom @ 5 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Kaye-Lee to continue dive into the crossroads of mindfulness and creative practices. What emerges when we intentionally slow down? Let's find out!
thinking, what if.......
invites the magic in
(sandi's t-shirt}
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 Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach. This week, we continue discussing Chapter 7, "Opening our Heart in the Face of Fear."
When we come face-to-face with the fear and pain in our psyche, we stand at the gateway to tremendous renewal and freedom
– Tara Brach
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Join Kaye-Lee, Marian, and Gloria as we continue reading and discussing Norman Fischer's The World Could be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path. We'll start by focusing on what the author means by the word "practice." Please join us.
For spiritual practitioners, life is the field of practice...Above all, practice is a transformative activity.
– Norman Fischer
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:45 AM ET
NEW DAYTIME SESSION! ONLINE
Please join Sandi and Darina for our daytime session. We're thrilled to bring you readings from Pema Chodron's new book, Another Kind of Freedom. This week, we continue as Pema spells out the types of suffering. One of these is the pain of pain, or "the pain of all those life situations you do not want."
Resisting pain only increases its intensity...avoidance makes matters worse...the more we struggle, the worse it gets.
– Pema Chodron
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Lauren, Adam, and Sandi in reading an article titled "Gassho (合掌)". It examines breakups through a Buddhist lens, arguing that while pain is real, it's often intensified by clinging, rumination, and resentment. Given that letting go would reduce suffering without erasing grief, why don't we do that?
Buddhism supports a softer kind of strength: the ability to feel heartbreak and still wish well, to set boundaries without hatred, and to rebuild a life that isn’t organized around craving.
– Pema Chodron
OWEN SOUND, IN PERSON
This week, we wrap up our exploration of the book Born to Flourish with a review of the four pillars (Awareness, Connection, Insight, Purpose) and the key steps toward leading a flourishing life: inspiration, intention, action, and repetition.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ONLINE
Please join Hazel for an introduction to the beautiful work of Byron Katie. Her book "Loving What Is" has helped many thousands of people soften into "what is." Let's explore!
You are the teacher you've been waiting for.
- Byron Katie
Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET
ECODHARMA
Join Debbie in reading an article by Catherine McGee titled, "It Is Here We Awaken." In it, McGee explores how being grounded in our bodies helps us connect to the earth–our foundation for caring about the planet.
👉 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.
What would it mean for you to live your life as if you really knew, in the depth of your heart and your cells, that you were not separate from this Earth and all the Earth’s beings?
– Catherine McGee
Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET
ONLINE
Please join Debbie to continue reading Pema Chodron's book "Living Beautifully." This week, we'll explores the idea of committing to benefit others through the section titled "Beyond Our Comfort Zone."
Regardless of what specific action we take, our aspiration is to benefit the other person and wish them well.
– Pema Chodron
I was thinking about liminal states this morning, which span the physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual. To inhabit the liminal is to be in between, as when you're in the process of waking from a dream. You're unmoored; neither absorbed in, nor free from, the dreaming. Perhaps you're leaving a relationship and becoming–but are not yet–single again. Or it could be more mundane, such as riding an elevator between floors.
Liminal states can be disorienting, fertile, or both. The solid becomes malleable. Previously unimagined possibilities emerge out of nowhere. The marvellous Wislawa Symborska touches on the liminal in her poem "A Few Words on the Soul":
We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.
Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
In meditation, I experience liminality when the mind's chattering subsides into a sparse, subtle murmur. It's a distinct state between pure spaciousness and the everyday cognitive flotsam and jetsam, and it could slip in either direction. Unless I'm "trying" to realize pure awareness, it's a pleasant state that's liable to toss a gem or two in my direction.
When do you notice yourself in a liminal state? Do you experience it as positive and generative, or something else?
PS. The full Symborska poem is here.
--
🙏
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
