Wednesday Reading Group

(Zoom Only)

The Reading Group has been meeting for well over a decade and continues to bring forward and discuss books expressing an extremely wide range of Buddhist views and interests (intentionally texts representing diverse traditions, races, gender orientations, etc). The conversation is about making the dharma real in our lives. We meet on our regular Zoom link (click here) at 7:30 on Wednesday evenings and sit together for 30 minutes, after which our book discussion runs for an hour from 8:00 to 9:00.

Many join the group at 8:00 after the sitting period, and it is common for attendees to not have read (and even not to own!) the book we're reading, so please don't let this be a barrier to your own attendance. The book serves as a point of departure...and if the conversation interests you in the text, you can buy it and start to catch up before the next week's conversation.

The discussion is facilitated by one of the regular senior attendees to help keep the conversation smooth and ensure that all are included and heard as they wish.

Currently Reading:

Boundless Heart: The Buddha's Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity (2017)

Compassion, kindness, equanimity, and joy are not only the fruits of the awakened life but also the path to it: attitudes of mind that can be cultivated by anyone willing to set the intention for doing so. Christina Feldman shows how these ennobling qualities—known in Buddhism as the brahma viharas (sublime abodes) or the Four Immeasurables—are far more than simply the “feel-good” states they are sometimes mistaken for. If we pursue them sincerely as spiritual practice, they work together, complementing and enhancing each other, to lead us to the kind of awakening that we are compelled to share with others. Thus through the practice of the brahma viharas we can become participants in the healing and liberation of our world. 

About Christina Feldman

In the early 1970s, Christina Feldman spent several years in Asia, studying and training in the Buddhist meditation tradition. She has led insight meditation retreats in the West since 1974. A cofounder of Gaia House, in Devon, England, she is a regular teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and at Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California. In addition, she leads retreats in Europe.

She is the coauthor (with Jack Kornfield) of Soul Food and the author of Quest of the Warrior Woman, Ways of Meditation, and Buddhist Path to Simplicity, as well as Silence and Woman Awake. She lives in Totnes, Devon, England.

Future Books

The group periodically undertakes a selection process of identifying future books of interest and submitting for a group vote to identify those of broad interest. Books currently selected and to be read and discussed by the group, in upcoming order, are:

• Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community by Pamela Ayo Yetunde (2023)