The Center has two program wings with various classes and programs:
the Center for Mindful Living and the Compassionate Ocean Sangha.
Compassionate Ocean Dharma Center
presentsThe Heart of the Buddha's Teaaching:
Finding True Happiness
taught by
Joen Snyder O'NealOur suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your sufferring, and let it reveal to you the way of peache. – Thich Nat Hanh
In this course we will use the Buddha’s teaching as a framework for examining the dynamic of suffering and happiness in our own lives. We will look deeply at and touch the truth of our lives through the teaching of the Four Noble Truths (the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to liberation). We will practice bringing mindfulness to habits of mind and body and to the results they bring. Through deeply touching the truth of our lives, we find the conditions for happiness that are already present and available to us.
The course will include regular sitting meditation, talks, small group discussion, and practice-partner support. Practices modeled on those in Plum Village will also be shared, including mindfulness songs and the Beginning Anew ceremony. We will use Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (provided in the first class) as the primary text, supplemented by other commentaries, including ones by the Dalai Lama, Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and Joseph Goldstein.
The course fee is $150 (members ($140). Materials fee: $20 (includes book and handouts).Minneapolis (#B24), January 17-March 7
Wednesdays, 7:15-9:00 P.M.
Three Smooth Stones, 3336, E. 25th St., (near I-94 and the Riverside exit)
Mindfulness of Feelings
taught by Michael O'Neal
In this eight-week class we will practice bringing mindfulness to feelings, emotions, and the realm of mind in general. Emotions, particularly strong emotions, are often experienced as dangerous, frightening, or embarrassing. They can be overwhelming or, alternately, they can become choked off and estranged. By bringing mindfulness to our ever-changing mind-states, and by developing the capacity to sustain mindfulness even in the midst of painful emotions, we can learn to take care of this aspect of our lives with skill and compassion.
We will begin by looking at the Buddha’s teaching on the four foundations of mindfulness—body, feelings, mind-states, and mind-objects—and then look specifically at feelings and mind-states. We will study Thich Nhat Hanh’s presentation of the psychological teaching of store-consciousness and mind-consciousness, and the role of mindfulness in taking care of the seeds that manifest in mind-consciousness. We will also study teachings of the Dalai Lama on anger and compassion, as well as contemporary Western psychologists on the nature of our emotional life. The course as a whole will be grounded in meditation practice.
Reading material will be given out at the first class. This course is suitable for anyone who has completed an introductory course in mindfulness or Zen meditation.The course fee is $150 (CODC & MZMC members ($140). Materials fee: $20.
Minneapolis (#B23), January 15-March 5
Mondays, 7:15-9:00 P.M
(plus optional sitting period 6:30-7 P.M)
Minnesota Zen Center, 3343 E. Calhoun Parkway
Click here to view and print a registration form.