Meditation
Meditation Classes
Learn Meditation
We’ve been practising and teaching Buddhist meditation for many years, and continue to offer a range of friendly classes and practice sessions for all levels of experience
- Lunchtime sessions: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 1 pm, no need to book. Popular and informal – a good place to start or return to meditation
- Evening courses: Our Buddhism courses give a thorough grounding in meditation
- Saturday sessions: Meditation is a big part of our Tools for Living your Life Buddhism classes, most Saturdays at 11am. No need to book
- Once you’ve been meditating regularly for six months or so, try deepening your practice at our Monday online meditation nights. No need to book
Meditation Classes coming up
Our Teachers
Our teachers are ordained members of the Triratna Buddhist Order and those preparing for ordination. They are well-trained and experienced practitioners, communicating from their own experience.
Meditation Resources
You can listen to talks and led meditations on our talks page, YouTube channel and on Free Buddhist Audio. There’s a wide range of meditation kit and introductory books in our shop and we also have a reference library.
What is Meditation?
Meditation can transform our Lives
Many things are beyond our control, but we can take responsibility for our own states of mind and change them for the better. Buddhism sees this as the most important thing we can do. Meditation can help us develop concentration, clarity, positivity, and a calm seeing of the true nature of things.
Through regular practice and over time, we learn our mind’s habits, and cultivate new, more positive ways, transforming our understanding of life and actions within it.
Traditional Practices
We teach the same two traditional Buddhist meditations in all our classes:
- Mindfulness of breathing to develop awareness
- Loving-kindness meditation or Metta Bhavana for positivity
Two Traditional Meditation Practices
Mindfulness of Breathing Meditation
This practice helps us become calmer, more centred and concentrated, taking the breath as the object of attention and noticing it coming and going in a relaxed, open way. Settling the attention on the breath lets our mind quieten down and awareness deepen.
The mindfulness developing from this helps us to keep a continuous flow of attention to what is happening in each moment.
- Listen to mindfulness of breathing meditation led by Ratnaguna – 20 minutes
Mindfulness is body and mind fully engaged in a state of clarity and positivity that saturates and colours the whole of our experience
Loving-Kindness Meditation
Traditionally called the Metta Bhavana, this meditation practice helps us to develop a gentle transformation in our emotional life. Through wishing ourselves and others happiness and well-being, we can become more emotionally positive, kind, and compassionate.
- Listen to Metta Bhavana meditation led by Padmadarshini – 27 minutes
You are deeply concerned for their well-being, happiness, and prosperity…When you feel this loving-kindness you want them to be not just happy but deeply happy; you have a strong desire for their true welfare, growth and progress
Going Deeper
Deepen your Experience of Meditation
After an introductory meditation course, you may want to continue your practice or take it to deeper levels. You could try:
- A Buddhism course to put meditation in context. Learn how ethical living can support our meditation
- Evening and weekend meditation events: local and visiting teachers lead occasional workshops to help deepen our practice and answer questions that arise from it. Check our YouTube channel for talks and meditations from past events
- Retreats: an ideal way of going deeper with your meditation with more silence and space
- Using the meditation halls to drop in and meditate when the Centre is open. It’s safest to check first with reception that they are not in use
Meditate – do not delay, lest you later regret it
Manchester Buddhist Centre
16-20 Turner Street
Northern Quarter, M4 1DZ
info@manchesterbuddhistcentre.org.uk
0161 834 9232
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Opening Times:
• Tuesday - Thursday 11am - 3pm• Saturday 10.30am - 2.30pm
• Sundays 2nd, 9th, 16th December 10.30am - 2.30pm
• Closed 24th December - 1st January inclusive
• Bodywise opening
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