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We have affirmed the
Charter for Compassion.
So can you.

Niagara Workshop: Four Immeasurables
with Franca Leeson

When: Sunday May 6, 2012, 10am - 5pm
Where: private residence near St. Catharines ON, address & directions upon registration. Ride sharing from Toronto may be available.
Cost: Donation as you can afford (suggested minimum $35 but no one will be turned away because of money)
To register: email

These workshops continue the study of Wake Up To Your Life, a compilation of meditation methods based in Tibetan Buddhism. Its author, Ken McLeod, thoroughly trained in the Kagyu lineage, makes the intention and method of these teachings richer and more accessible to people from Western cultures while remaining faithful to the time-tested traditions of his lineage.

Love and compassion are not qualities added to the mind. These qualities are part of the awakened state even if for the moment this state exists only as a potential for us.
—BOKAR RINPOCHE (1940-2004)

The Four Immeasurables — equanimity, love, compassion, and joy — are emotional states not coloured by belief in a separate self. In this one-day workshop we will explore two of them.

Love is the wish that another be happy. Like all immeasurables, it is based on opening. When we believe in a separate self, our ability to open is inhibited by our patterned defences of that "self". Even an feeling of love can warp into grasping attachment just as toxic as hatred and cruelty. Thus our experience of love is falsified — it becomes a stand-in for the real thing. Clinging to this fake love, and being unable to rest kindly with the parts of us that are closed, prevents us from waking up.

Equanimity is a quality that shines through when one is able to stay open to experience, without preference or prejudice.

A monk in all earnestness asked Master Tozan, "How do you avoid the discomfort of hot and cold?" And Master Tozan said, "Go to that place where there is no hot and cold." And the monk said, "Where is that place?" And the Master said, "When you are hot, be hot and when you are cold, be cold."

We will begin to explore "opening", "closing", and their relationship to equanimity and love, through meditation, discussion, and experiments.

Participants should have a sincere commitment to an ongoing meditation practice. For information or to register email

Franca Leeson

I have been teaching Buddhist meditation in meditation centres, community centres, and in private sessions since 2000. I've also presented meditation and creativity sessions at Mindcamp in Toronto since 2003, at the CREA (Creativity European Association) Conference in Italy since 2005, and at the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) in 2007. Click here for more information about me.

Look Again classes are scent-free! A number of students are sensitive to scented products, and suffer greatly if exposed to perfume or scented soap or hair products. Please avoid using any scented products at all on any meditation class day.

toronto meditation classes - look again