Dear Common Ground Friends,
As we complete another circle around the sun, let’s acknowledge together with tenderness the many storms in our personal and collective lives, and all the unnecessary suffering that keeps us spinning round and round. Fortunately, we can also be grateful for the bright wisdom and fearless compassion that arises in moments to skillfully respond to the many joys and sorrows of life. Let’s aspire to more fully embody the practical and liberating teachings and practices from the Buddha and all our spiritual elders.
Common Ground Meditation Center exists to support this essential human work. We aspire to be a place that welcomes all people interested in awakening to the simple and profound capacity to meet each moment with intimacy, clarity, and non-attachment. Doing this inner work makes it possible to do the outer work of relating to our families, communities, and our wider world with fearless love. Common Ground is committed to being a sanctuary for the deepening of liberating insight. This is the medicine our troubled hearts and world truly need.
We are deeply grateful for all the support that flows to our Buddhist meditation community from all of our generous contributors, teachers, volunteers, and sincere practitioners. For 33 years, the Common Ground community has nurtured and been nurtured by a beautiful culture of generosity. May this practice of generosity, what the Buddha called dāna, giving and receiving freely, continue to guide and protect us all.
with gratitude to all who help make Common Ground possible,
Mark Nunberg and Shelly Graf
Common Ground’s Guiding Teachers
"Here, practitioners, a certain person abides with their heart imbued with loving-kindness extending over one quarter, likewise the second quarter, likewise the third quarter, likewise the fourth quarter, and so above, below, around, and everywhere, and to all as to themself; they abide with their heart abundant, exalted, measureless in loving-kindness, without hostility or ill-will, extending over the all-encompassing world."
— The Buddha, AN 4.125
