Our Program

The MMB Program at All Souls offers opportunities for people of all backgrounds to practice and learn with dharma teachers of an array of lineages. Our program was founded in 2016, by our assistant minister Rev. Pamela Patton, who is both a Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist, and who has been involved with All Souls for 30 years. Her own spiritual practice is in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and her dharma home is Shantideva Center in Brooklyn, our sibling center. Keep reading below to learn more about our regular offerings, our teachers and community meditation facilitators, and to visit the Shantideva Center website.

Our Regular Offerings

Daily Meditation Practice: Our community meditation leaders host a half hour meditation through Zoom from 8:30-9 Monday through Saturday. Click here to join.

Weekly Dharma Study Groups: Hour-long meditation and discussion groups via Zoom several times per week.

MONDAYS 10-11: Meditation and Discussion with Reverend Pamela Patton and Guest Teachers. Click here to join.

Join us for a talk and a meditation followed by a discussion. The topics are different each week — some examples include destructive emotions and the Buddhist understanding of impermanence.

ALTERNATING TUESDAYS 1:00-2:30: Dharma Study Group with Harry Miller. Click here to join.

This is a drop-in group — all are welcome to attend once or as many times as you like. We explore basic teachings of Buddhism using both a philosophical and, more importantly, a practical, approach. We study important Mahayana texts like the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. We perform a close reading of the texts, paragraph by paragraph and line by line when necessary. It is a very interactive class.

THURSDAYS 10-11, Transforming our Suffering with Reverend Pamela Patton and other Community Mediation Leaders. Click here to join. We are currently reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. Here’s a little more about the book: 

“Radical Acceptance offers us an invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear, and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork—all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s forty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students. Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she shows us how we can stop being at war with ourselves and begin to live fully every precious moment of our lives.

Weekly: In-Person Sits with a rotating crew of Community Meditation Leaders

We have a 30-minute sitting practice on Sunday mornings at 10:30am before Sunday worship, in the Minot-Simons room at All Souls NYC, 1157 Lexington Ave. 

Monthly

Dharma talks with guest teachers from a range of lineages, on Sundays from 1:30-3pm at All Souls NYC, 1157 Lexington Avenue. See our calendar below for upcoming talks.

Online Sangha Social Hour: If you are curious about our online meditation programs, this is an opportunity to join community meditation leaders and participants in an informal conversation about practice and bringing mindfulness into our daily lives. Join us for the monthly Online Sangha Social Hour!” Click here every 3rd Saturday of the month at 11am EST to join our Sangha Social.

Sanctuary Sounds Join us for our monthly sound bath series, the Third Sunday evening of the month, held in our resonant sanctuary space. We invite a range of gifted sound artists to offer an immersive hour of mindfulness, rest, and recovery, with an appetizer of poetry. See our calendar below for upcoming Sanctuary Sounds.

Learning Series We also occasionally offer in-person and online series to deepen our practice together. Past series include: Mindful Eating, Being Alone, Date with Death, Lectio Divina, and half-day Meditation Retreats. Join our mailing list below to stay in the loop about our learning series.

Shantideva Center is dedicated to cultivating wisdom and compassion through the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. We are affiliated with the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), which is based on the Buddhist tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa as taught by our founder, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Spiritual Director, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Programs include Buddhist teachings and retreats with qualified teachers, study programs, meditation, pujas and ritual practices, community service, and special events.