We meet every Sunday at 3:00 PM in the East Room Library at the Unitarian Campus on Fruitville Road in Sarasota, FL. Each two-hour session includes a 30-minute guided meditation, followed by a presentation on the week’s topic and a group discussion or interactive exercise. A regular daily meditation practice is highly recommended. Please see the Meeting Handouts Pages for each week’s meetings in more detai
January 3, 2026, Saturday Morning 10 am until 2 pm Half Day of Sitting and walking Meditation. We will sit for 30 minutes, followed by a 20-minute walking meditation, and then a 30-minute sitting meditation. Then a 10-minute break and repeat sit, walk, sit. All will be silent except a short guide for the initail sitting meditation. Please bring something to drink.
December 21, 2025, Meditation Sunday in Sarasota, 3 pm, Unitarian Campus: Demand, Preference, and Acceptance: Where Suffering Can Begin. We will start with a 30-minute meditation, followed by a presentation and group discussion on Demand, Preference, and Acceptance: Where Suffering Can Begin. The inquiry will explore a simple but often overlooked distinction: the difference between having preferences and turning those preferences into demands. Drawing on the Buddha’s teachings from the Pāli Canon, as well as insights from modern psychology, we’ll look at how suffering (dukkha) tends to arise not from wanting things, but from needing reality to be other than it is.
Together we’ll examine how acceptance is frequently misunderstood—as passivity or resignation—when in fact it plays a central role in clarity, responsiveness, and reduced reactivity. The discussion will be experiential rather than theoretical, inviting participants to notice how demand and acceptance show up in everyday life, both mentally and in the body.
December 14, 2025 Meditation Sunday “Who is Craving? ” We will start with a 30 minute meditation followed by a presentation on “Who is Craving” and a group discussion.
This week’s session will explore one of the most important questions in the Buddha’s teaching: Who is craving? We’ll look at why the Buddha redirects this question toward causes and conditions rather than a separate self behind experience. Craving often feels deeply personal, yet when we examine it closely, we find that it arises naturally from biological, emotional, and perceptual conditions. Our discussion will focus on how this shift in perspective eases reactivity and opens the possibility for a more spacious, responsive way of relating to desire.
We’ll also look at how the mind overlays experience with “me, my, and mine,” creating a sense of ownership that tightens the whole system. Understanding this overlay as part of the conditioned process—not as a solid self—helps us see craving without becoming entangled in it. The goal isn’t to eliminate craving but to understand it more clearly, so our relationship to it becomes wiser and less burdened.
November 30, 2025 Gratitude
Gratitude as a practical mental skill. We’ll look at gratitude not as a mood or virtue to chase but as a way of conditioning the mind toward steadiness, contentment, and reduced reactivity. We’ll explore how recognizing what has been done for us — in big and small ways — supports the Brahmavihāras and weakens the mental habits that create friction and dissatisfaction in everyday life.
After the talk we’ll open the discussion and then move into a short breakout exercise called “Unspoken Gratitude.” Each person will reflect on someone who positively shaped their life but was never fully thanked, not for the sake of sentiment, but to observe what happens in the mind and body when appreciation is brought into awareness. The whole session is designed to be grounded, experiential, and immediately relevant to how we live and relate.
November 23, 2025 Pleasure and Wholesome Enjoyment
A lot of people hear the Buddha’s teachings and assume pleasure is something to avoid, but that’s not what he taught. The issue isn’t pleasure itself — it’s the intention behind it and where the pleasure is derived from, along with the clinging, grasping, and reactivity that can form around it. Some forms of pleasure tighten the mind; others help it open. Some are wholesome and others not so much.
Pleasure can actually support the path when it leaves us more relaxed, more connected, and less reactive rather than more agitated or demanding. We’ll explore different forms of pleasure — from simple sensory enjoyment to the pleasure of being skilled and fully absorbed in an activity, to the warmth of compassion, and the deep ease that emerges when reactivity settles.
The intention of the session isn’t to judge pleasure or set rules about it, but to explore how enjoyment becomes part of the path when it’s experienced with awareness rather than craving. In other words, pleasure doesn’t have to pull us off balance — it can reinforce balance when it’s met without attachment and grounded in appropriate intention.
November 16, 2025, 3 PM Unitarian Campus, Appropriate Intention
We’ll be exploring Appropriate Intention (samma sankappa) from the Eightfold Path at our next meeting. This foundational practice involves cultivating three key aspects in our daily lives: renunciation (letting go of harmful attachments), goodwill (genuine care for ourselves and others), and harmlessness (minimizing suffering). We’ll discuss practical ways to integrate these intentions into everyday decisions and challenges, from morning routines to difficult situations.
November 9, 2025, 3 PM Unitarian Campus, The Middle Way – Views
We’ll continue our discussion on The Middle Way at this Sunday’s meeting. Last week’s reflections brought up some interesting perspectives, so we’ll pick up right where we left off and explore the theme a bit more deeply.
The Middle Way is often understood as balance — steering clear of both self-indulgence and self-denial — but it’s more than moderation. It’s an attitude of openness that avoids taking rigid positions, allowing us to respond wisely to changing conditions rather than reacting from habit or preference. In this sense, the Middle Way is a living practice of discernment, helping us navigate each moment with awareness, flexibility, and compassion.
As always, we’ll begin with a 30-minute meditation before the group discussion.
November 2, 2025, 3 PM, Unitarian campus on Fruitville, The Middle Way
The Discovery of the Middle Way
After years of living in both luxury and extreme deprivation, the Buddha realized that neither indulgence nor self-mortification leads to peace or liberation.
He called this balanced approach the Middle Way (Majjhima Paṭipadā) — a path that avoids the extremes of craving and aversion, excess and denial, belief and negation.
“There are these two extremes… avoiding both, the Tathāgata has awakened to the Middle Way, which gives rise to vision, gives rise to knowledge, and leads to peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and nibbāna.”
— Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11)
Oct 12, 2025, 3 pm, Unitarian campus, Meditation Sunday, The Biology of Pleasure, Stress, and Homeostasis. We will start with a 30-minute meditation followed by a presentation and discussion of the Body’s Chemical Factory.
Our bodies are remarkable chemical factories, constantly balancing pleasure and stress through an intricate exchange of hormones and neurotransmitters. What we experience as calm, joy, or tension isn’t abstract—it’s biology doing its job to keep us alive and balanced. When we understand that dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and cortisol are simply parts of the same feedback system, we can stop moralizing our emotions and start listening to them as information. Mindfulness helps us recognize when we’re out of balance and invites us to restore equilibrium—by reconnecting, breathing, or simply pausing. In that awareness, we stop fighting our own biology and begin to live in harmony with it, which is really what peace feels like: the chemistry of homeostasis in motion.
Oct 19, 2025, 3 pm, Unitarian campus, Meditation Sunday, The Heart of Generosity
A Truly Flourishing Life Begins With Generosity
“A truly flourishing life is not possible without a generous heart.” – The Buddha
In the Buddhist tradition, generosity—dāna—is the very first of the ten pāramīs (perfections or qualities of an awakened mind). It is the gateway to the spiritual path because of the joy that arises from a generous heart.
When we give freely—without clinging, expectation, or self-interest—we unlock a source of happiness that is deeply nourishing.
The Buddha taught that generosity should be:
- Given without expectation of reward other than a feeling of happiness.
- Practiced with mindfulness and delight before, during, and after
- Rooted in compassion, goodwill, and the desire for others’ well-being
Even accepting generosity is a generous act. When we reject or diminish another’s offering, we deny them the joy and opportunity to give.
Generosity may begin as an action, but it ripens into a generous spirit—a disposition of openness and care that touches every part of our lives.
October 26, 2025 Meditation Sunday, The Middle Way
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