dear community,

are you aware of any open meditation group, online or otherwise? at best, there should be both regular sessions and sporadic retreats.

i use "open" with the same meaning as in sports (like open tournament). the idea is to find a group where people join the session to sit in silence in whatever posture they wish. the organizer only signals the beginning and the end of the session. what the participants do on the mat/zafu/chair and in their mind: empty-minded, noting, body scanning, counting breaths etc. is their decision and responsibility. who wants, can stay longer and chat with the others afterwards.

this would be really nice in order to reduce the burden of doing everything alone and having to be strict with oneself about the schedule. advanced participants who could guide the beginners would be a nice plus (but not during the session).

this is obviously not a setup for beginners, but for practicioners who already know the usual methods and made a choice to work on a specific one in depth.

any ideas?

I run a discord community.

In the past we have had weekly discussions on video call and some sporadic social meditation type exercises.

These group activities typically die a quick death since there's no one individual who agrees to act as a host, to show up whether or not others show up.

As moderators and custodians of the discord forum me and other mods are always willing to facilitate this by setting up calender events and announcements. If there is general interest (there usually is), and atleast one individual who would want to act as nominal host and show up every time, on time, we could actually set this up.

Discord servers have an inbuilt group video call facility.

Just putting this out there as a thought.

Invitation to discord forum:
https://discord.com/invite/veP83mnC

P.S. The nature of the forum is such that it attracts very serious meditation practitioners
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You could try "sitheads" on YouTube. They have had the best guest also. But they do live sessions
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