The Fellowship’s Meditation Group meets in the sanctuary on Wednesdays from 7-8 p.m.
Overview
Meeting once a week to explore, practice and discuss meditative traditions. We will be looking at meditation through the inclusive lens of Unitarian Universalism. UU’s unique ability to distill the best of the world’s religions provides a perfect opportunity for our group’s focus.
Meditation
Our ego is constantly at odds with a more inclusive view of our place in the world. A fully realized ego is essential to a person’s survival but an understanding of an ego’s limiting perspective is what can liberate us from it’s myopic grip. What happens when we sit silently watching our breath and quiet our mind is a question most of us don’t have the opportunity to ask. Our group is dedicated to making a place of comfort and safety for this investigation.
Group leader and facilitator – John Willke
My personal practice draws heavily from Zen and Christian mysticism. I see more overlapping similarities than opposition between the two traditions. Unitarian Universalism is a natural home for my unorthodox practice.
I sit in Shikantaza (lit. “just sitting” in Japanese) three to four times a week by myself but my practice has always been tied to creating a place to do this with others.
A father to two talented daughters Olivia and India and husband to his beautiful wife Lynda, John Willke has been studying Buddhism since 1993. After a series of spiritual experiences for which western religions seemed to offer no adequate explanation he found a resonance in Buddhism’s basic wisdom.
He has studied with teachers from several traditions including Japanese and Korean Zen and Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. In 1997 he took Bodhisattva precepts as a lay practitioner in the Zen lineage of Suzuki Roshi from Tenshen Reb Anderson.
In 2002 along with his friend and long time UU member Ellenor Porter they started a sitting group at the UU fellowship of Galveston County which still gathers weekly for meditation.
