The best time to get into meditation is right now
Although its only February, the New Year might already seem like it’s the distant past. Intentions or resolutions that you set for yourself might be faltering in the face of a return to your routine life and uncertainty around COVID. However, there’s no better time to get into meditation than right now.
While it’s easy to find excuses or distractions to keep you from building a habit of meditation, it can be a powerful support to helping you flourish in the year ahead. If you have an intention to meditate more, or to be more present or mindful in 2022, then we’re here for you. Come along to one of our weekly sessions and explore meditation in a supportive, friendly environment.
Our sangha at Red setting
COVID has proven a real challenge to our sangha (community) over the last two years. Even once lockdowns were lifted there was a noticeable impact on the number of people who were able to attend our sessions. While the change to the Red setting does not introduce any new restrictions for us, it does highlight that the spread of the omicron variant poses challenges that will require continued adaptability and patience.
We’re streaming our sessions live over Zoom in addition to holding sessions in person. It’s been great to see a strong uptake of people attending via Zoom and its also been nice to see people who attended our sangha in the past but now live outside of Wellington taking advantage of the opportunity to attend. We have recently upgraded our technology with a higher quality webcam to improve the experience of those joining us online. The Zoom room number is 919-527-2569 and starts at 7.30pm every Wednesday. We still encourage you to attend our sessions in-person if you’re able to do so.
We require a vaccine passes for all our in-person sessions to support the well-being of our community. You will only have your vaccine pass checked once. Your name will be recorded so you won’t need to provide your pass again for future sessions you attend.
Sessions may be cancelled at relatively short notice. Our Wednesday night session will be cancelled if the session facilitator becomes sick with COVID, and a replacement can’t be found. Ideally we will give as much notice as possible of any cancellation, but to avoid frustration please check the event page on Meetup or on Facebook for any updates before coming along in-person.
Day-long retreat planning is paused - for now we’re putting a pause on planning our popular day-long meditation retreats. This will be reviewed at the end of March.
Coming up in February
One Mindful breath is a community that explores the role of mindfulness in embracing the difficulties of life, letting go of the dictates of reactivity, experiencing the calm and clarity of spaciousness, and cultivating creative engagement as a way of being in the world.
All events are at the Wellington Friends Centre, 7 Moncreiff Street, Mt Victoria, Wellington. Doors open at 7.15pm and the sessions start at 7.30pm. For more details see our Meetup page.
Signup for our newsletter directly to your inbox at onemindfulbreath.substack.com/
Wednesday 9 February – Deepen your practice: lessons from Sŏn Buddhism
Join us in a meditation session where we'll be exploring ideas, themes and meditation techniques developed in the Sŏn Buddhist tradition, which originated in Korea. Everyone is welcome, even if you haven't meditated before.
We'll be examining the use of kōans (anecdotes or riddles without an answer) as a anchor in meditative practice and reflecting on how this could improve our own time on the cushion. We'll also be considering the symbolism of a ritual in Sŏn Buddhism and how this can deepen our own practice. We'll also be meditating as a group.
Wednesday 16 February – Recognising, accepting, and embracing our lives in all their complexity
In this session we’ll be examining the Buddhist call to recognise, accept, and embrace our finite lives in all their complexity. In the time that we have to live, we will unavoidably experience the “10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows” of life. While we have some ability to shape the course of our life to experience more joy and happiness, much of what we experience is beyond our control. In this session we’ll be looking at the three causes of suffering (dukka), being:
The inevitable pains and losses connected with our finite life and our relative lack of control over the processes of sickness, aging, death, not getting what we want, getting what we don’t want, etc.
The tendencies to cling and a delusory understanding of the self combine to create extra suffering (the “second arrow”) on top of the inevitable suffering connected with being finite, limited beings.
Our social systems of exploitation and oppression (capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) mutually interact with and reinforce our tendencies to crave and to cling and facilitate delusion about ourselves.
Despite being about suffering we’ll be focused on the positive and the practical - what can you do, how you can help, and how this connects with your practice and your daily life. We’ll also be meditating together as a group.
Wednesday 23 February – Practicing open awareness
When you’re stressed, do you turn to self-compassion, or to self-criticism?
In this session Mithun will lead a discussion on how self-compassion could be an antidote to shame and self-doubt and also explore the three components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness.
We will finish the session with a guided meditation.
What have we been up to?
January is often a month for starting new direction, and we usually find we have more people coming along to an OMB session for the first time. This year has been no exception with many new faces but also many new insights, perspectives and contributions, which has been great to see.
January focused on helping participants develop the practice and the habit of meditation, with a session for beginners then a session on practicing open awareness meditation, following by a session on Tibetan tonglen meditation.
Register now for SBN’s online course: Exploring a secular dharma
Registrations are now open for the March 2022 class of of the Secular Buddhist Network’s online course on secular Buddhism. Course participants will explore key ideas and practices, including the fourfold task, a secular approach to meditation, and creating of 'culture of awakening' as an integral part of the path. Every two weeks during the course, participants will meet with the course instructors.
If you’re interested in learning more about Buddhism we’d strongly recommend this course! Find out more
