One Mindful Breath is a secular dharma practice community in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Find out how simple meditation can be
Meditation is not about trying to ‘stop your thoughts’. Instead, it’s a useful skill for living a less reactive and more ethical life. With us you can:
Learn to practice meditation
Connect your meditation practice to living more compassionately
Find a friendly group of people to meditate with, and
Discover a creative, secular approach to the teachings of the Buddha
We can be found at the Friends’ Centre in Moncrieff St, Mt Victoria in Wellington every Wednesday evening. If you’ve never meditated before you might like to come on the first Wednesday of the month which is our beginners’ session. Doors open at 7:15pm.
As well as our regular Wednesday evening sessions, we also offer day-long meditation retreats. Take a look at our Events pages or follow us on Facebook for regular updates.
VACCINE PASSES
For the current stage of the COVID pandemic, OMB is no longer requiring vaccine passes as a condition of in-person attendance. However, in the spirit of protecting those more vulnerable and reducing impact on the health system, OMB encourages people to have up-to-date vaccinations, especially if you are attending in-person. If COVID conditions change or the Government has future requirements, OMB may need to reconsider its policy.
you can Just turn up
People with all levels of meditation experience are welcome, including absolute beginners. You can turn up to any Wednesday session – no registration needed. While there’s no fixed fee for our events, your contribution towards future events is gladly accepted. We are a secular Buddhist group, but you don’t need to ‘be’ a secular Buddhist to come along to one of our sessions.
Our practice is a simple one
On Wednesday evenings, we sit in chairs, but if you’d prefer to sit on a cushion we have some available (or you can bring your own). We don’t believe in a “correct” way to meditate - but there are approaches that some people find easier than others. We practice a wide variety of different techniques, including open-awareness meditation, sound meditation, body-scanning meditation, and guided meditations.
We sit in silence and try to be aware of what is happening for us in that moment. Watching our breath, we may become aware of sounds, thoughts and feelings. We seek to observe those sensations and simply allow them to go, without reacting or ruminating.
Our sessions usually include a talk and discussion on a topic connected to living more mindfully. That might be on meditation techniques, Buddhist philosophy, or scientific research on mindfulness.
Never meditated before? There are many different ways to meditate. You can download a set of simple instructions here, or listen to the instructions below. We don’t prescribe one approach to meditation; experiment with different practices, and you’ll find what works for you.
our Values
Practicing mindfulness for us is the first step in developing an ethical life. Through developing concentration in meditation, we gain insight into the mind’s habits. This allows us to cultivate more compassionate and generous states of mind, which translates into action in the world.
Our practice is based on secular Buddhism. We develop our practice around the four tasks that Gotama, the historical Buddha, taught his followers. These are to:
Experience life
Let go of reactivity
See the stopping of that reactivity, and
Act – respond, speak, see, and set an ethical direction in our lives through the cultivation of a path, ‘the eightfold path’.
When we pause, and let our mind rest, we feel better – there’s no great mystery in this, the only mystery is why we don’t do it more often.
If you want more in-depth information, the article A Secular Buddhism by Stephen Batchelor is a good place to start. There are also helpful resources available at the Secular Buddhist Network – Connecting Secular Buddhists Worldwide.