East Bay Meditation Center

ONLINE: Kapwa Deep Refuge Group for Filipinx/a/o Practitioners
2025-02-16 09:00 - 10:30, 2025-03-16 09:00 - 10:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | East Bay Meditation Center, 285 17th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
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: Kapwa Meditation for Filipinx/a/o Community
2025-02-19 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-02-26 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-03-05 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-03-12 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-03-19 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-03-26 07:00 - 07:30, 2025-04-02 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

HYBRID: BIPOC Sangha
2025-02-20 19:00 - 20:30, 2025-03-06 19:00 - 20:30, 2025-03-20 19:00 - 20:30, 2025-04-03 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
2025-02-22 10:00 - 11:30, 2025-03-01 10:00 - 11:30, 2025-03-08 10:00 - 11:30, 2025-03-15 10:00 - 11:30, 2025-03-22 10:00 - 11:30, 2025-03-29 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: Alphabet Sangha
2025-02-25 19:00 - 20:30, 2025-03-11 19:00 - 20:30, 2025-03-25 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 SERIES: A Year to Live
2025-02-27 17:00 - 19:00
ONLINE SERIES: A Year to Live
with Tania Triana and Ream
6 Thursdays
Feb 27th, April 24th, June 26th, August 28th, October 23rd, December 11th
Time: 5-7 PM PT (Time Zone Converter)
OPEN TO ALL
Closed Captioning Provided on Zoom

What if 2025 was the last year of your life? In Buddhism, we practice to meet conditions as they arise and to bring our practice to each moment, without preference for the outcome and with the maximum compassion. This yearlong course will build your capacity to live each day of your life with intention, supported by practice, even as the conditions around us intensify, such as climate crisis, political repression and war.

We will come together to meet the world as it unfolds, moment to moment, and to strengthen our practice of mindfulness, wise understanding, wise action, equanimity, and joy. In community, we will prepare for a good death, which is inevitable– one that is supported by heart practices, such as forgiveness and loving kindness, and the Buddha’s ethical teachings on life and loss. With one another, we can face what comes.

This course features six months of live group work with the teachers, and six months of small group peer work over the course of the year. Your registration covers ALL SIX live meetings.

The five remembrances of the Buddha, first found in the Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”), are intended to be recited every day:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

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. Please scroll through the entire menu to see all the options. 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 via Paypal: paypal.me/eastbaymeditation or our website: eastbaymeditation.org/dana 100% of our programming is sliding scale and no one will ever be turned away for lack of funds.

Giving to our teachers:
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. In this way, we practice sacred reciprocity between teachers and students.
VENMO: @ranger18ream
PAYPAL: Adelante@riseup.net
(Please reference “Year to Live” and the teachers will share the gifts with each other)
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:
– Please do not use virtual or blurred backgrounds
– Please keep your camera still when it’s turned on
– Please say your name when you speak
– Facilitators will attempt to read any comments in the chat out loud
– Please mute when you’re not speaking.

Teaching Team

Tania Triana (they / she / elle / ella) is a queer Black Latina spiritual warrior and proud bilingual daughter of Latin American immigrants. Tania is grateful to have found a spiritual home and social justice community at EBMC and in the virtual sangha of Buddhists for Justice in Palestine. They served on EBMC’s Leadership Sangha (board of directors) from 2019 to 2024, and graduated from the EBMC’s inaugural Spiritual Teacher and Leadership Program in 2023. When she’s not teaching her brilliant high school students or leading meditations at EBMC or BJ Pal, Tania can typically be found with her head buried deep in a book, or out and about enjoying walks in nature, hamming it up at karaoke, or plotting our collective liberation.

Ream (they/them) is a queer organizer of European ancestry on unceded Ohlone Land, working for over 25 years in the labor movement, currently as the Strategic Campaigns Director for the United Domestic Workers’ Union. Ream is a Community Teacher at the EBMC and is a co-founder of EBMC’s Social Justice Sangha, and Racial Justice Skills for White Practitioners Deep Refuge Group. Ream is a teacher and practitioner with Generative Somatics.

ONLINE: Afrikan Healing and Wisdom
2025-03-02 09:00 - 10:30
ONLINE: Afrikan Healing and Wisdom
With Vimalasara Mason-John, Arisika Razak, and Aleta Toure’
First Sundays
9:00 – 10:30 AM PT
Closed captioning provided over Zoom
It’s spring time and life is blossoming in the midst of suffering. It’s International Women’s Day – a time when we celebrate the birth of the Buddha, and the resistance and achievements of trans-womxn, gender-expansive people and cis womxn. As we remember the legacies of bell hooks, Miss Majors, and Tina Turner, what are we giving birth to?
Join us for EBMC’s first Black-led, Black-Sangha Affinity group held on the first Sunday of every month starting on Sunday, from 9 AM till 10:30 AM.
Today, those of us living in the USA vibrate to the breath of our Ancestral North Star, highest realm of guidance. Our ancestors are with us, as we step into a seemingly repeated quantum leap of time, during one of the most turbulent election seasons since the presidential election of 1876, and the 1877 compromise which ended Reconstruction. We are in a sentinel moment, echoing the situations described in Martin Luther King’s book, “Why We Can’t Wait”. Like our Diasporan kinfolx, we are questioning our common humanity, as we see the age-old dream of peace, and ecological balance distorted in the deep and seemingly bottomless pool of genocide, war, climate change, ecological devastation, poverty and global health pandemics.
Join us as we bring a timely spoonful of Afrikana medicine to these challenging and difficult times. We’ll add ancestral healing traditions to the simple practice of the breath, sharing meditations, libations, chanting and other embodied practices to remember our resilience, honor our ancestors, and support an inclusive and affirming community for all members of the Afrikan Diaspora.
REGISTRATION
We will continue to add registration for each month!

COST

Here at EBMC, we practice gift economics and our programs are offered freely without set fees. Financial gifts from our community help to sustain our teachers AND our center. Generosity is the Buddha’s first teaching, the lifeblood of EBMC, and an act of sacred reciprocity. We ask that those who have more financial means give more, in order to help balance the giving of those who have less financial means.
To make a gift to sustain the work of East Bay Meditation Center, please do so via our website: eastbaymeditation.org/dana. Consider becoming a monthly donor for any amount! These contributions are especially valuable to our sustainability.
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. In this way, we practice sacred reciprocity between teachers and students.
Giving Information:
VENMO: @Arisika-Razak
PAYPAL: arisikarazak@gmail.com
(Please reference “Afrikan Healing & Wisdom” and the teachers will share the gifts with each other)

TEACHING TEAM

Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John is the author of the new revised edition of Detox Your Heart – Meditations For Emotional Trauma published by Wisdom books in 2017. She is co-author of the award-winning book Eight Step Recovery – Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction. She is a TEDx speaker and is the author of eight books including her award winning novel Borrowed Body. She is the curator of Teachings in Uncertain Times, an online retreat by Teachers of Color for Tricycle Magazine February 2017. She is a leading African Canadian voice in the field of Mindfulness for Emotional Trauma and Addiction.

Arisika Razak, MPH, EBMC Core teacher, is the former Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Previously a nurse-midwife, her teachings incorporate diverse spiritual traditions, women’s health and healing, multicultural feminisms, queer theory, and diversity theory. Arisika has led national and international healing workshops and ritual celebrations for women for over three decades, as well as embodied spiritual workshops for people of all genders. She has co-facilitated workshops with Marlene Jones at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and regularly leads workshops at EBMC.

Aleta Toure’ (Visiting Teacher) Aleta Toure’ bears witness as a vessel for social change through organizing, education and healing arts. She centers healing in monastic lifestyle knowledge though Intentional Communities and Black cooperative movements. Her cooperative serves communities through Black Trauma Anonymous (BTA), Tai chi, Ecstatic Healing Dance and Healing Responders. Aleta spends time within Peace Pagodas, monasteries, hermitages, and dojos which have framed her work through Free Marissa Now, “I am Troy Davis”, University Without Walls and other Diasporic Movements. She leads the 2025 California Reparations Interfaith Healing Walk to bring healing, theory and practice back as a Liberation tool.

ONLINE: Four Foundations for Resilience and Well-Being
2025-03-03 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-03-10 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-03-17 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-03-24 18:00 - 20:00
ONLINE SERIES: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness for Resilience and Well-being
4 Class Series
Mondays on March 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th 2025
6:00 – 8:00PM PT (Time Zone Converter)
With Melvin Escobar
Open to All
Closed Captioning Provided on Zoom

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness is a central teaching in Buddhist practice. They can provide a solid basis for skillful action in times of stress. We will explore these teachings and interweave them with contemporary psychological frameworks, informed by an understanding of structural oppression.
Through talks, interactive exercises, stationary and gentle moving meditation, and recommendations for home practice, participants will gain awareness to help us be more in the moment and fully appreciate this one precious life.

Attend all or some:
Week 1 – Mindfulness of Body
Week 2 – Mindfulness of Feeling
Week 3 – Mindfulness of Mind
Week 4 – Mindfulness of Dhammas

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 via Paypal: paypal.me/eastbaymeditation or our website: eastbaymeditation.org/dana 100% of our programming is 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.
PayPal: melvin@melvinescobar.com
Venmo: @Melvin-Escobar
Please indicate “4 Foundations” 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:
– Please do not use virtual or blurred backgrounds
– If you or your camera are moving around, please turn off your video
– Please say your name when you speak
– Facilitators will attempt to read any comments in the chat out loud
– Please mute when you’re not speaking.

Teacher

Melvin Escobar is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, licensed psychotherapist, and certified yoga instructor. Melvin has walked the path of service for much of his life, drawing on his experiences as a queer working-class Salvadoran born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. Having encountered the priceless wisdom embodied in Buddhism and Yoga, he continues daily to learn the revolutionary potential of body-centered contemplative practices for personal and social healing

ONLINE: Parent-Caregiver Sangha
2025-03-03 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: Midday Sangha
2025-04-02 12:00 - 13:35
*ONLINE ONLY ON APRIL 2ND 2025*
Join our peer-led multicultural sangha for silent meditation practice and community building.
Every Wednesday
12:00 – 12:45pm PST Silent sitting, standing or lying down meditation with optional walking meditation.
12:55 – 1:35pm PST Facilitated conversation about our practice and being the dharma in the world
HYBRID EVERY WEEK UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
Midday Sangha Coordinating Committee:
emiko yoshikami, Jennie Powe Runde, Sakshi Uomoto, Elese Lebsack and Robert Gavino
email middaysangha at eastbaymeditation dot org for zoom link and password
