photo of two young people with hands in anjali
BMC group photo 12/2018
BMC summer retreat at IMCN
Chris, Sayadaw, Mimmi
Chris and Rod
Latest News
BMC is now meeting on Tuesday mornings for a virtual group meditation from 8:00am to 8:45am ET. More information can be found here.
About
Boston Meditation Center (BMC) is a Buddhist sangha in the Insight tradition serving greater Boston and the East Coast. Emphasizing the development of wisdom and kindness through traditional practices made accessible and relevant to modern-day lives, BMC welcomes everyone who seeks greater freedom and happiness in their lives. Central to our vision is the belief that the path of awakening is attainable by all and should be available to all. Our guiding teacher is Chris Crotty.
We offer weekly meditation classes and dharma talks, as well as daylong and residential retreats.
Weekly Meditations
BMC currently meets every Thursday from 7:15pm to 8:45pm ET. Meetings typically begin with 20 to 30 minutes of guided meditation, followed by a dharma talk and discussion with our guiding teacher, Chris Crotty, or another teacher or facilitator.
Donations are gratefully accepted.
Though grounded in the Theravada tradition, we strive to expose our members to diverse approaches to the dharma by occasionally hosting teachers from other traditions, such as Tibetan or Zen Buddhism.
Next Day Program:
November 7 - Tending to the Emotional Body
A Half-Day Workshop with Leslie Booker
Description
Citta, most commonly referred to as “emotions” in the Third Foundation of Mindfulness, is a collaboration of our emotional states and our mind’s response to them at that moment, guiding us to greater clarity and liberation. This heart/mind is intuitive, feminine, receptive and inclusive.
In cultivating intimacy with our own embodied experience, we are able to tend to what is needed through this deeper wisdom as we move towards, explore, investigate, and get curious about the impermanence of our emotional lives.
In this half day retreat, we’ll unpack the mysteries of Third Foundation of Mindfulness by moving through the body, feeling tones, and how we can use it to gain freedom and foundation in a turbulent world.
When
Saturday, November 7, 2020
9:30am – 1:00pm
Where
A Zoom link will be emailed before the program.
Cost
$25 Base
$35 Sustaining
$45 Contributing
Paying at the highest level you can afford helps us make our programs available to as many people as possible. There is also an opportunity to offer additional dana (generosity) for the teacher at the end of the program.
Please let us know if finances are an obstacle. Scholarships are available for anyone experiencing financial hardships.
Booker brings her heart and wisdom to the intersection of Dharma, Embodied Wisdom, and Social Justice. She shares her expertise nationally on expanding our vision around culturally responsive teaching, and changing the paradigm of self and community care. Booker is a graduate of the 2020 Spirit Rock Retreat Teacher Training, is a 2020 Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary, and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement in Mindful.org.
Next Residential Retreat:
June 1-6, 2021: Spring Mettā Retreat
5-Night Residential Retreat with Sayadaw U Indaka, Chris Crotty, and May Myint Oo
Description
The practice of loving-kindness (mettā-bhāvana) includes sitting and walking meditation to cultivate a loving, friendly, and benevolent attitude towards all living beings. For over 2600 years, loving-kindness meditation has been practiced to ensure that good-will surpasses all forms of enmity and ill-will. The well-being of mettā is a natural support for the development of insight and wisdom.
In this unique retreat, participants will have the opportunity to be guided by
Burmese meditation master, the Venerable Sayadaw U Indaka, who is renowned in Burma as both a mettā and vipassanā teacher. He will be joined by Western teacher Chris Crotty and Burmese translator May Myint Oo.
This fifth annual retreat will take place at the beautiful and spacious Won Dharma Center in Claverack, NY, where nature will play an important and supportive role in our meditation practice. Beginners and experienced students welcomed and encouraged.
Teachers
Sayadaw U Indaka was born in 1952 in Upper Burma and ordained in 1972 at the famous Mahagandhayon Monastery in Amarapura, Burma. Starting in 1976 he practiced vipassana meditation in the Mahasi Meditation Center in Mandalay; some years later he went to the Chanmyay Yeiktha Meditation Center in Yangon, where he was commissioned to teach meditation. In 1996 he became the abbot of the newly established Chanmyay Myaing Meditation Center on the outskirts of Yangon. In 2009 he established a second center in the northern town of Pyin Oo Lwin, not far from Mandalay. Sayadaw U Indaka’s books on the practice of metta meditation and the factors of enlightenment have been translated into English and German.
Chris Crotty is a Buddhist teacher, pastoral counselor, and adjunct professor in alternative medicine. Practicing meditation since 1998, he has taken retreat with Burmese monastics Sayadaw U Inndaka and Sayadaw U Tejaniya, scholar-practitioner Bhikkhu Analayo, western monastics of the Zen and Thai Forest tradition, and senior western Vipassana teachers. Chris was authorized to teach Buddhadharma in 2015, and in 2016 was encouraged to teach vipassana and metta by Sayadaw U Inndaka.