We have three online meditations a week, on Wednesday morning, Thursday evening, and Saturday morning. The Zoom links for the meetings can be found at the Events Calendar. You’re welcome to join us online for any of the 3 meetings each week.
In addition to our regular online meetings, we are now meeting for in-person meditation sessions every Wednesday and Saturday Morning. Please see the Events Calendar for specific details.
The in-person Wednesday morning meditation for next week, 7/21, will be changed to 8:00 am. This is a one-time schedule change for that day only and only for the in-person meeting.
During the Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday online meetings, we “sit together” for meditation for half an hour. Meditations include guided meditations, meditations with some initial guidance and instruction, and silent meditations. The Wednesday morning meditation starts at 9:30 am, with half an hour of meditation, followed by half an hour of sharing. On Thursday evenings there is a talk or discussion and sharing following meditation. Meditation is from 7:30 until 8:00 pm, with the talk and discussion ending at about 9:00 pm. The Saturday morning meditation starts at 8:00 am, with half an hour of meditation followed by half an hour of sharing.
The Thursday night series of talks are currently focused on engaged spiritual practice, looking at ethical living, intention, compassion, and other qualities that have a profound impact on how we live in the world and how we can try to be a positive influence to reduce the suffering of others as well as our own stress and unease. The talks will all be self-contained, but if you’d like a book to explore this area in your own life, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World by Donald Rothberg is a good resource for the series. For each talk, we’ll give an indication of the chapter(s) that would be most helpful in supplementing the talk and discussion.
After meditation this Thursday, 7/15, the talk will be on anger, which many of us have experienced over the last few years. Anger can arise in socially engaged practice when we’re aware of the stress and suffering in the world caused by inequality and injustice, as well as by the degradation of the environment, and the suffering that has arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll discuss different aspects of anger and how to transform anger so we can use the energy it holds in useful ways. Chapter 8, “Transforming Anger,” in Donald Rothberg’s book The Engaged Spiritual Life would be a helpful resource for this topic. Other resources are highlighted below. The following Thursday, 7/22, we’ll have an expanded discussion of anger and our response to it.
If you can’t or don’t wish to join the online sessions you can just meditate at the same time as we’re meeting and know that there are others from the group who are meditating with you. I’ve had many people contact me to say they were doing that for our meditation sessions recently, and that it can help bring a feeling of connection.