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
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.
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/Winter Class
Refreshed by RAIN:
Discovering Freedom in a Simple Buddhist Model of the Self
Six Tuesdays, November 4 - December 9, 6:00-7:30pm CST, via Zoom, $149
The Back Story
The great master Dogen famously wrote:
To study Buddhism is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self to to be enlightened by all things.
The Buddhist tradition has been examining the nature of experience and the self for 2500 years, and it’s made a lot of deeply insightful complex observations about Reality and how we humans experience it. It’s also made some deep insights that are also simple, thank goodness, and that are both easily understood and simply practiced.
This time around, we’re doing the simpler stuff.
The Class
Many contemporary meditators have some familiarity with two simple Buddhist tools to help us work with difficult experiences: R.A.I.N. and ABCD.
(NOTE: I originally wanted to call this class “It’s Raining on my Alphabet,” because I thought it would be funny. But I didn’t think anyone would get it, and I wanted people to sign up for the class, so I didn’t.)
Using these two ancient meditation practices, we can learn to use our awareness to break down the elements of our immediate experience. It’s like slowing time down a bit so that we can see more clearly what’s actually happening.
The first (RAIN) centers around careful observation of the elements of our reaction to experience, and the second (ABCD) helps us see more deeply what past conditioning in us is rising to meet that experience.
When combined, these two simple models can help us to:
a.) connect to our natural capacity to observe our experience and understand more clearly what’s actually happening (the clarity of wisdom), and
b.) quickly pinpoint the exact nature and cause of our suffering, thus giving us the insight to help transform it (the medicine of compassion).
Knowing why we’re thinking, feeling, and acting the way we do helps us to see more deeply into our lives and drop the self-rejection and judgement we all do so habitually.
Basically, both these models are just simple ways of making friends with yourself.
So, in this class, we’ll combine them and work with them both, because in essence, they are both ways of understanding- and befriending- the way our egos function in the world. And they complement each other perfectly as one integrated model.
Although some of us have had some exposure to these ideas, in this class we’ll do a deeper dive into these simple, intersecting, and overlapping models of the self to get the clarity we need to work skillfully with them in our everyday lives.
So even if you’ve never heard of any of this stuff, by the end of the class, you’ll be an expert!
PLEASE NOTE: As always, all are welcome to this friendly exploration. No deep knowledge of the Buddhist tradition is required. All of our explorations will be curious and thorough, and we’ll be able to speak to all levels of experience.
The Details
Class is six Tuesdays, 6:00-7:30pmCST, via Zoom. The fee is $149. 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!
Half-day Retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 9am-3pm,
in person in Eagan (formerly Aslan Institute) or at Episcopal House of Prayer, Collegeville
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.