East Bay Meditation Center

ONLINE: Buddhist Love, Compassion, Joy, & Equanimity (Brahmaviharas)
2026-04-01 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-04-08 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-04-15 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-04-22 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | East Bay Meditation Center, 285 17th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
ONLINE: Buddhist Love, Compassion, Joy, & Equanimity
4 Class series, Wednesdays on April 1, 8, 15, and 22
6:30 – 8:30PM PT (Time Zone Converter)
Part of EBMC’s Core Buddhist Teachings – 6-month Curriculum
Open to all
Closed Captioning Provided on Zoom

The Brahmaviharas (Divine Abodes), also called the Four Immeasurables, are Buddhist teachings and practices that help us to access dynamic calming, stilling, and healing mindbody states. As we cultivate the limitless qualities of loving goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, in time we harvest true happiness, spiritual strength, and awakening insight. These practices are considered complementary to insight (mindfulness) meditation. Dharma talks, discussion and Q&A. Instruction provided for beginners in meditation.

Cost
The teachings are regarded as priceless. So they are offered without a fee. You are invited to support the teachings and our efforts by contributing voluntary donations (the practice of “Dana”) for the expenses of the meditation center and the support of the teachers.
The ticket prices are listed as different tiers with suggested donations based on income ranges. For those who wish to give more, you may choose an “add-on” to your ticket. For those unable to give, there is an option for that.
Other ways to give:
To make a gift to sustain the work of East Bay Meditation Center, you may do so at bit.ly/ebmc-give 100% of our programming on a sliding scale and no one will ever be turned away for lack of funds.
Please also consider giving a financial gift to our teachers as well, who do not receive a salary for their work, and give their teachings freely to all.
Venmo: @MushimPatricia-Ikeda
PayPal: info@mushimikeda.com
Please indicate “Divine Abodes” in the subject line.
Thank you for the gifts of your generosity and for supporting the work of East Bay Meditation Center and our beloved teachers who have volunteered their time.

For Zoom participation, these are our Universal Access Guidelines:
1. When speaking, introduce your name, pronouns, and (optionally) a brief physical description of yourself.
2. If using virtual backgrounds, please use static, simple, high-contrast backgrounds.
3. Please keep your camera still while your camera is on.
4. Please repeat your name when you speak to help those with visual impairment.
5. The host/volunteer will attempt to read any comments that appear in the chat out loud.
6. Please strive for clear audio and mute when you are not speaking. Phone access is also available.
7. If you have unmet access needs, please send a message to the volunteer or host in the chat. If the chat is not accessible to you, please offer them briefly in one minute or less via voice. Please do not send access requests directly to other participants.

Teacher

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is an internationally-known secular mindfulness and Buddhist teacher working primarily with justice activists and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) meditation practitioners and with people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. A core teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, she is an author whose writing has been published in Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma and various anthologies. She is the recipient of an honorary doctor of sacred theology degree from the Starr King School for the Ministry. Mushim was selected by Lion’s Roar Buddhist media magazine as one of twenty-six “Great Buddhist Teachers” in the January 2022 issue. www.mushimikeda.com

HYBRID: BIPOC Sangha
2026-04-02 19:00 - 20:30, 2026-04-16 19:00 - 20:30, 2026-05-07 19:00 - 20:30
The BIPOC Sangha is a growing community of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color waking up and getting free!
Thursdays
7 – 8:30 PM PT
**Hybrid on First and Third Thursdays (online only on other Thursdays)
**Potluck in the EBMC kitchen on the Third Thursday meeting, from 6-7 PM PT! Bring a dish or beverage to share.
Closed Captions Provided.
Zoom info: Meeting details are shared through their mailing list (subscribe on their website), and their Facebook group.

ONLINE: 8 Step Buddhist Recovery Deep Refuge
2026-04-04 10:00 - 11:30, 2026-04-11 10:00 - 11:30, 2026-04-18 10:00 - 11:30, 2026-04-25 10:00 - 11:30, 2026-05-02 10:00 - 11:30, 2026-05-09 10:00 - 11:30
Every Saturday from 10AM – 11:30AM PST / PDT ONLINE
Compassionate Dharma Deep Refuge Buddhist meetings focus on ways to heal addiction. Based on the Eight Steps to Recovery developed by Dr. Mason-John M.A (hon.doc) and Dr Groves, we believe this inclusive approach can build a solid foundation for those at any level of recovery and for those who have yet to seek help.
Through these practices we hope you gain a practice that can sustain you in your recovery.
We are a multi-recovery space. Whether you are navigating addiction to substances like drugs and alcohol, or process addictions, such as disordered eating, codependency, or sex and love addiction–you are welcome here.
Advance Registration is not required.
For additional information, please contact: ebmcrecovery at gmail dot com.

ONLINE: Parent-Caregiver Sangha
2026-04-06 20:00 - 21:15, 2026-05-04 20:00 - 21:15
EBMC’s Parent-Caregiver teaching team will be offering a monthly parents’ meditation group for restoration, support and connection.

Parenting often can be challenging…as well as a great practice. We offer a short talk, guided meditation and sharing. We gather to create a safe refuge to share the joys and the challenges of caring for young people by cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, patience and generosity with the support of the sangha. We welcome all parents/grandparents/caregivers of young people to join us. No prior experience necessary.

Meeting time: First Mondays of the month, 8-9:15 PM Pacific Time. On Zoom (closed captions provided).

Click here for more information.

ONLINE: Kapwa Meditation for Filipinx/a/o Community
2026-04-08 07:00 - 07:30, 2026-04-15 07:00 - 07:30, 2026-04-22 07:00 - 07:30, 2026-04-29 07:00 - 07:30, 2026-05-06 07:00 - 07:30, 2026-05-13 07:00 - 07:30
We are happy to announce that a weekly Kapwa Meditation for Filipinx/a/o folks will begin on Wednesday, Jan. 8, from 7:00 to 7:30 AM Pacific Time. We will continue to gather every Wednesday morning, coming together for support and practice, on our paths of individual and collective transformation.

In addition to our weekly meditation, we would like to remind everyone of our monthly Kapwa Deep Refuge Group for Filipinx/a/o folks. Launched in the Spring of 2024, we meet on the third Sunday of every month, from 9:00 to 10:30 AM Pacific Time.
Together, in both spaces, we aspire to cultivate a special community space in the intersection of Filipinx/a/o identity + culture + history and Buddhist spiritual practice.
The Zoom credentials are the same for both our weekly Wednesday meditation and our monthly gathering.
If you identify as Filipinx/a/o and would like to join, please contact us at: kapwa.deep.refuge@gmail.com

ONLINE: White and Awakening Monthly Sangha
2026-04-12 10:30 - 12:00, 2026-05-10 10:30 - 12:00
The White and Awakening Monthly Sangha will meet on the second Sunday of each month from 10:30 am to Noon PT/1:30-3:00 pm ET beginning January 11, 2026. This group is a joint offering of EBMC and Brooklyn Zen Center. All meetings are on Zoom.

Facilitated by Crystal Johnson, Sarah Emerson, Heather Lear, Kitsy Schoen and guests, the monthly sangha is an opportunity for white people to gather and discuss their dilemmas and successes in waking up to whiteness and making a difference in undermining white supremacy culture in all of its many manifestations, including in our sanghas. Our intention is to create a supportive space that allows us to do the hard and painful inner work that frees us to take action in the world.

Open to all self-identified white people and to those for whom whiteness is an important part of their identity. Questions? Email us at whiteandawakening@eastbaymeditation.org.

Sign up here to receive the zoom link.

FACILITATORS

Crystal Johnson is a retired clinical psychologist and a Community Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, CA, where she also serves on the Leadership Sangha (Board) and as a member of the Radical Inclusivity Committee. She completed the year long Commit2Dharma training at EBMC, as well as the 2-year Dedicated Practitioner Program and the 2-year Community Dharma Leader Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. In her teaching, she focuses on creating/co-creating programs for white dharma practitioners seeking to build awareness, knowledge and skills to challenge the dynamics of white privilege and race-based oppression, and create truly inclusive sangha. Her courses include White and Awakening in Sangha at EBMC, Unpacking Whiteness: Reflection and Action at the San Francisco Zen Center, White and Awakening Together at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Unpacking Whiteness for the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and Unpacking the Whiteness of Leadership for Branching Streams. She offers consultation to individuals and organizations seeking to disrupt the practices of white supremacy culture and support change toward racial equity.

Sarah Dōjin Emerson’s formal practice in Soto Zen began in 1996. She received Dharma Transmission from Abbott Konjin Gaelyn Godwin of the Houston Zen Center in 2015. She has a M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and has worked in the fields of mental health and pastoral care with children and adults. She experiences Bodhisattva Zen practice as deeply supportive to inquiring into, challenging and transforming systems of oppression, particularly racial inequities and the harm they cause within convert Buddhist sanghas, and in U.S. society generally. Sarah has worked for many years in grief support- clinically, ritually and in community- specializing in child loss. She lives with her partner, Charlie Pokorny (who is also a Soto Zen Buddhist priest), their children (who are her most profound and constant teachers) and numerous pets in Brooklyn, NY.

Heather Lear (she/her) was born and raised with the Dharma in a family of Insight Meditation practitioners in the South, and is now based on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land in San Francisco. She studies and teaches at the intersection of heart-centered Dharma, embodiment practices and DEIA work around white and awakening in community, and serves as the Program Manager at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Heather has completed various study and teaching programs, including Spirit Rock’s LEAP program, the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training, and Radiant Heart Qigong Teacher Training with Teja Bell. She has served on the board at Insight Santa Cruz, on the teaching team offering the 6-month White and Awakening in Sangha program at the East Bay Meditation Center since 2019, and is part of the current Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders (CDL7) cohort.

Kitsy Schoen, MSW, began her mindfulness practice and was inspired to work as a hospice social worker after meeting Stephen Levine in 1979. Throughout her career she has been able to integrate mindfulness and her passion for racial equity into her work. At Kaiser Permanente, Kitsy led the NCAL Kaiser Psychiatry’s Cultural Diversity Workgroup and was a founding member of the “Isms Collaborative”, a group of representatives from public and private health care organizations that sought to address workplace bias in agencies committed to reducing health disparities. In 2004 she began Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader program with the specific focus of bringing insight and compassion practices to working with other white people on racism. In 2007, she joined the Leadership Sangha (board) of East Bay Meditation Center and began offering antiracism classes to white practitioners. Kitsy has provided training and consultation to numerous mental health training programs and dharma centers on issues of racism, power and privilege.

ONLINE: Alphabet Sangha
2026-04-14 19:00 - 20:30, 2026-04-28 19:00 - 20:30, 2026-05-12 19:00 - 20:30
A meditation group for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Same-Gender Loving, and Two-Spirit communities. Because that’s such a mouthful, we call ourselves the Alphabet Sangha.
Tuesdays
7:00 – 8:30 pm
Please email: alphabetsangha at eastbaymeditation dot org to request Zoom link to join online.
For more information, visit the ALPHABET SANGHA WEBSITE

ONLINE: Kapwa Deep Refuge Group for Filipinx/a/o Practitioners
2026-04-19 09:00 - 10:30
This is a peer-led deep refuge group for self-identifying Filipinx/a/o (including mixed) folks. Together we cultivate a special community space in the intersection of Filipinx/a/o identity + culture + history and Buddhist spiritual practice. We gather to support each other, heal, and walk the Dharma path.

Kapwa Deep Refuge will meet every 3rd Sunday at 9am PST – 10:30am PST via Zoom. The inaugural meeting will be on April 21, 2024.

If you identify as Filipinx/a/o and would like to join, please contact us at: kapwa.deep.refuge@gmail.com

ONLINE: We Choose Each Other with Dean Spade, Weyam Ghadbian and René Rivera
2026-04-25 12:00 - 13:30
ONLINE: We Choose Each Other: Showing Up in Harrowing Times
With Dean Spade, Weyam Ghadbian, and René Rivera
Saturday, April 25th 2026
12-1:30pm PT
Online via Zoom

How do we show up for each other in principled, loving ways in a world on fire? How do we tend to relationships and move toward liberation?

At a time when violence, division, and disconnection feel ever-present, The East Bay Meditation Center invites you to join us for a timely and heart-centered conversation, We Choose Each Other: Showing Up in Harrowing Times.
Beloved movement folks Dean Spade, Weyam Ghadbian, and René Rivera will explore how we take action that is rooted in love, stay in relationship amid rupture, and engage conflict without reproducing harm. Grounded in EBMC’s commitment to liberation, belonging, and socially-engaged Buddhist practice, this conversation will weave together decades of movement work, conflict transformation, and trauma-informed meditation to ask: What does it mean to choose each other—again and again—when so much that is happening in the world pulls us toward isolation? This gathering will offer both practical tools and spiritual nourishment for building resilient, accountable, and loving communities that can meet this dumpster-fire moment and create the world we want and need.

This timely event is also a fundraiser for the crucial work of the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) and we invite you to give generously to support this important community institutions.

Dean Spade has been working in movements for queer and trans liberation, and against war, police, prisons and borders for the past 25 years. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.” His new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together, and he is the host of a new podcast with the same name.
Weyam Ghadbian is a facilitator, trainer, organizational consultant, and mediator who has been working with grassroots and social justice organizations for over a decade. Weyam is Syrian and was politicized at a young age by parents who were exiled from Syria for dissent. They co-created the Turning Towards Each Other Conflict Workbook with Jovida Ross and have spent the last five years translating it into a customizable curriculum for groups and organizations to build healthier cultures. They are a Gemini, an eldest child, and moonlight as a comedian.
René Rivera is a meditation teacher and restorative justice facilitator working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer Latinx trans man. René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. He loves to share his own daily life practice of bringing awareness to how he shows up in all kinds of relationships, with self, beloveds, friends, family, community and with the land. René is a facilitator in training for the School of Consent and a restorative justice facilitator, working to heal sexual and gender based violence.

EBMC has been a refuge, a spiritual home, and a mindfulness and meditation training center in downtown Oakland serving people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people living with disabilities, social justice activists and the general community for almost 20 years. Founded in a celebration of diversity and equity, EBMC has been described as a beacon of light around the world for organizations committed to radical inclusivity and the intersections of activism and contemplative practice.
At EBMC we rely on a generosity-based model of financial sustainability called Gift Economics. This means that there is no set fee for any of our offerings, and everyone is invited to give at the highest level they can for the benefit of all. Through this practice we are encouraged to shift our relationship to money and to capitalism and to invite equity and radical inclusivity into our process of healing and spiritual liberation.
For a list of our offerings and more information please visit our website at www.eastbaymeditation.org.

ONLINE: The Enduring Precepts (5 Precepts)
2026-04-29 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-05-06 18:30 - 20:30
ONLINE: The Enduring Precepts (5 Precepts)
4 Class series, Wednesdays on April 29, May 6, 13, & 20
6:30 – 8:30PM PT (Time Zone Converter)
Part of EBMC’s Core Buddhist Teachings – 6-month Curriculum
Open to all
Closed Captioning Provided on Zoom

Six years ago, pandemic-panicked people in the United States were hoarding toilet paper and steaks. Today we’re dealing with ongoing volatile ethical issues such as war, climate crisis, use of AI (artificial intelligence) in tech, forced deportations, and political divisiveness.
Rooted in EBMC’s mindfulness-based, diversity-equity-inclusion and social justice-centered mission, this four-class series offers a path to reflect on current ethical discernment and action. Buddhist life, for both laypersons and monastics, is rooted in Five Precepts, guidelines that are paths of deep contemplative investigation resulting in behaviors and actions aligned toward non-harm, in the service of all life.
The compassionate realization of our “interbeing,” and the sometimes complex relationship of intent to impact are woven into this “Living Dharma” approach.
Dharma talks, discussion and Q&A. Instruction provided for beginners in meditation.

Cost
The teachings are regarded as priceless. So they are offered without a fee. You are invited to support the teachings and our efforts by contributing voluntary donations (the practice of “Dana”) for the expenses of the meditation center and the support of the teachers.
The ticket prices are listed as different tiers with suggested donations based on income ranges. For those who wish to give more, you may choose an “add-on” to your ticket. For those unable to give, there is an option for that.

Other ways to give:
To make a gift to sustain the work of East Bay Meditation Center, you may do so at bit.ly/ebmc-give 100% of our programming on a sliding scale and no one will ever be turned away for lack of funds.
Please also consider giving a financial gift to our teachers as well, who do not receive a salary for their work, and give their teachings freely to all.
Venmo: @MushimPatricia-Ikeda
PayPal: info@mushimikeda.com
Please indicate “Enduring Precepts” in the subject line.
Thank you for the gifts of your generosity and for supporting the work of East Bay Meditation Center and our beloved teachers who have volunteered their time.

For Zoom participation, these are our Universal Access Guidelines:
1. When speaking, introduce your name, pronouns, and (optionally) a brief physical description of yourself.
2. If using virtual backgrounds, please use static, simple, high-contrast backgrounds.
3. Please keep your camera still while your camera is on.
4. Please repeat your name when you speak to help those with visual impairment.
5. The host/volunteer will attempt to read any comments that appear in the chat out loud.
6. Please strive for clear audio and mute when you are not speaking. Phone access is also available.
7. If you have unmet access needs, please send a message to the volunteer or host in the chat. If the chat is not accessible to you, please offer them briefly in one minute or less via voice. Please do not send access requests directly to other participants.

Teacher

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is an internationally-known secular mindfulness and Buddhist teacher working primarily with justice activists and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) meditation practitioners and with people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. A core teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, she is an author whose writing has been published in Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma and various anthologies. She is the recipient of an honorary doctor of sacred theology degree from the Starr King School for the Ministry. Mushim was selected by Lion’s Roar Buddhist media magazine as one of twenty-six “Great Buddhist Teachers” in the January 2022 issue. www.mushimikeda.com
