Category Archives: News and Events

Beginner’s Mind: Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation

“We ourselves must walk the path but Buddhas clearly show the way.”  — Gautama Buddha.

This 10-week workshop will explore the Buddha’s core teachings on how to live with greater ease, joy and connection. Using the practice of mindfulness meditation as a foundation, we will examine how to develop a personal practice and apply these teachings in order to live with greater wisdom and compassion in the midst of the demands, stress, pace and distractions of our hyper-connected modern life.  Each session will include meditation practice, instruction and group discussion. No previous experience with meditation is needed to participate.

John Bigay, a student and practitioner of Zen and Vipassana meditation for more than 15 years, will lead the workshop.

Tuesdays, 9/13 – 11/15,  7:30-9:00p.m.
Suggested donation: $120 (Need-based scholarships available)
Location: Thoreau Farm, 341 Virginia Road, Concord
For more info or to register: ConcordMeditation@Gmail.com

The idea behind Thoreau Farm as a place for stories is connection.  We seek to connect people in meaningful ways.  Our storytelling programs seek to confront real problems described in recent debates concerning the dehumanizing effects of technology and how it disconnects us.  Thoreau himself issued such warnings:

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. (Walden.)

Sherry Turkle of MIT will be interviewed by Krista Tippett this week on Krista’s radio show “On Being.”  She addresses the question: What is the path to integrating technology into robust, meaningful living? Check it out at their website:  Krista Tippett On Being

Brian Morton writes this morning in the NY Times:

Thoreau, Gandhi, Mandela — it’s easy to see why their words and ideas have been massaged into gauzy slogans. They were inspirational figures, dreamers of beautiful dreams. But what goes missing in the slogans is that they were also sober, steely men. Each of them knew that thoroughgoing change, whether personal or social, involves humility and sacrifice, and that the effort to change oneself or the world always exacts a price.

Read the complete Op-Ed, “Falser Words Were Never Spoken” at the NY Times.