Classes
Upcoming offerings to connect you to practice and community
Classes on meditation, Zen, and contemplative spirituality are offered throughout the year on Tuesday or Thursday evenings.
Monthly Mindfulness Practice Group
Our most popular regular offering!
Offered every month on a Saturday, 9:00-11:30am, via Zoom (check calendar for dates).
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.
Upcoming Class
Small Things with Great Love:
Bringing Devotion to Everyday Life
Five Tuesdays, September 17 – October 15, 6:00-7:30pm CT, via Zoom.
$129 (early registration, before September 1) or $149 (standard rate)
The Back Story:
“We cannot do great things.
We can only do small things with great love.”
-Mother Teresa
“DEVOTION”: Middle English, from Latin devotio, from devovere, "to consecrate."
This fall’s experiential class focuses on what’s called gyoji (or “continuous practice” in Zen Buddhism); the non-separateness of spiritual life and secular life.
How can our devotion, intention, and vow as spiritual aspirants spread into all arenas of our everyday lives?
Our five weeks together will be arranged in a progression of themes, all of which center around shared devotion to living as embodied enlightenment and love:
1. Devotion to practice (explore discipline & prayer as an offering)
2. Devotion to self (mind and body care as care for spirit)
3. Devotion to other (objects and resources as sacramental)
4. Devotion to other (people, animals, relationships)
5. Devotion to work (livelihood as extension of spiritual aspiration)
The Class
This class will focus on using the activity of everyday life to deepen our understanding of- and experience of- what devotion really means.
Can we experience our morning coffee as communion?
Can a conversation with a neighbor be felt as a dance of divinity?
Can taking a shower be known deeply as an adoration of the Eternal?
Join us for this fascinating, challenging, and practical inquiry into how the experience of devotion can fill our lives and change our hearts.
"There are two ways to wash the dishes.
The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes.
The second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
The Details:
Class is five Tuesdays, Sept. 17 – Oct. 15, 6:00-7:00pmCT, via Zoom.
The fee is $129 (registering with a friend, or early registration before Sept. 1) or $149 (standard rate). Scholarships available upon request. A commitment to a daily meditation practice is requested. 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!
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. And after more than 2,500 years, 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 bring a friend!
Retreats
Deepen your practice with these immersions in silence.
Half-day Retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 9am-3pm,
in person at Aslan Institute
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.
Zazenkai mini-retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 8:30-11:30am,
via Zoom
Our regular zazenkai mini-retreats
("to come together for meditation")
are simple, three-hour immersions in group mindfulness practice.
They feature a few periods each of both sitting and walking meditation,
a short teaching talk, and a little break half-way through.
Simple, easy, friendly, quiet, and open to everyone.
$30 donation suggested.
Check the calendar for the next one and join us to discover what a big difference a few short hours of silence can make.