Monthly Mindfulness Practice Group
Our most popular regular offering
Offered monthly on Saturday, 9:00-11:30am, via Zoom
Check the calendar for the current schedule.
Appropriate for beginners and experienced meditators alike, our monthly drop-in group features meditation, teaching, experiential, and group discussion. It's an informal gathering that explores basic mindfulness and self-awareness practices in a "lightly-Zen" (mostly secular/spiritual) sense. There's usually around a dozen of us, and it's usually a combo of more experienced folks and pretty new folks. We usually start and end with a short, silent sitting. We have a theme/teaching portion, and an exercise or two designed to help us see something we might not otherwise. Bring a journal or notebook.
Each group is recorded, and the link sent to all participants as a resource to revisit later if desired.
A relaxed a friendly atmosphere, perfect for exploration.
Suggested donation $30-40. No registration required; all are welcome!
For the Zoom link, click here.
Dharma Talk Saturdays
One Saturday a month, 8:30-9:45am CT. (Please check the calendar for the schedule.)
Join us
one Saturday a month for a public talk on a meditation-adjacent topic.
Come at 9:00 just for the talk, or come at 8:30 and join us for the sitting, too.
Here's our format:
8:30-9:00 Open, shared silent meditation
9:00 Non-boring Dharma talk
9:25 Questions and Discussion
9:45 End
Online via Zoom, free and open to the public, freewill offering by donation.
Drop-in, no registration required; all are welcome:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84846144748
Book Study Group
The FCZ Book Study Group meets once a month on a Saturday, 9:30-10:30amCT, immediately after the Saturday Meditation Community. A welcoming and curious atmosphere, perfect for newcomers and experienced folks alike.
Co-lead by our own Leah and Joan. Please join us!
Check the calendar for the current schedule.
For registration, the Zoom link, and more information, just click the button to email the facilitator:
Fall Class
Six Facets of Our Jewel Nature:
Exploring the Psychology of the Buddhist Perfections
Seven Tuesdays, Sept. 8- Oct. 20, 6:00-7:30pm CST, via Zoom, $179
(scholarship rates available)
The Back Story
The Six Paramitas (or "Six Perfections") are a foundational set of virtues in Mahayana Buddhism designed to overcome personal afflictions and guide practitioners toward enlightenment.
The Six Perfections are generosity, ethics, patience, joyful effort, concentration, and wisdom.
Together, they offer more than just spiritual ideals. They provide a practical, psychological map for anyone working to integrate their full self—light and dark, conscious and unconscious—into a life of wisdom and compassion.
The Class
We’ll spend seven weeks exploring these in detail, seeing how we already possess and practice each, and learning more about the forms they each can take, while devoting ourselves to watering the seeds of their practice in our everyday lives.
The spirit of these six ideals permeate Buddhist teaching and practice in all their forms, and our class will familiarize you with them through the vehicle of your experience of everyday life.
Join us for a wonderful wandering through six wonderful landscapes that are already yours.
PLEASE NOTE: As always, all are welcome to this friendly exploration. No deep knowledge of the Buddhist tradition is required, although a commitment to some expression of daily meditation practice is presumed. All of our explorations will be curious and thorough, and we’ll be able to speak to all levels of experience. You’ll fit right in!
The Details
Class is seven Tuesdays, 6:00-7:30pmCST, via Zoom. The fee is $179. Scholarships available upon request. No required text; all readings will be provided.
All classes and course content will be recorded, so non-sequential learning and distance attendance are both possible and encouraged. You won’t miss anything.
It’s also absolutely okay to register the class only for the recordings.
The Reminder
People care about this beautiful and suffering world. They do it most powerfully and most directly by caring for their own precious inner lives. Walking the spiritual path is still a choice people make; a loving response to the human condition that people still choose. This will be a gentle, sincere, unique, and collective inquiry, and will help us develop creative day-to-day mindfulness practices so that we more deeply experience and appreciate our precious and fleeting lives.
Please join us and spread the ripple by bringing a friend!
Introduction to Zen Meditation class
Are you new to meditation or Zen Buddhism?
FCZ offers an Intro to Zen Meditation class by registration bimonthly on Saturday mornings,
from 9:45 – 10:45 a.m. CT via Zoom.
This beginner-friendly class focuses on the instructions for Zen meditation (zazen) and also includes some basic Buddhist principles to help us connect our meditation practice to our daily lives.
You are welcome to attend this Intro class as often you like, as the teaching parts vary from class to class.
This is an ongoing, drop-in class that is open to the public.
There is a suggested donation of $10-20.
Please see the website calendar for the upcoming dates.
NOTE: Registration at least three days in advance is required for this class so you have time to review some helpful material ahead of time.
Half-day Retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 9am-3pm,
in person at Episcopal House of Prayer, Collegeville, and via Zoom
Our silent Half-day Meditation Retreats are six hours in length and feature sitting meditation, walking meditation, a short dharma teaching talk, and the option of meeting one-to-one with the teacher.
Appropriate for beginners and experienced contemplatives alike, these simple retreats are user-friendly, restorative, and often profound.
$40/person
Check the calendar for the next one and join us to discover what a big difference a few short hours of silence can make.