This is the website of the Satipanya Urban Southeast Saṅgha.
We are an online saṅgha and study group that practices and studies predominently in the Mahāsi tradition. We currently meet on the second and fourth Sunday of each month on Zoom from 10:30 – 12:00 with optional chat from 10:20 and after 12:00.
The meeting is open to anyone who is part of the Satipanya community. You can find details of how to join in the Satipanya Newsbyte.
Each meeting starts, at 10:20, with an optional 10 minutes to say hello and catch up. If that's not your thing, feel free to join with your mic muted at 10:30 when we start meditating. After this, we do a brief chant of refuges and precepts, before somebody recaps a talk we've all listened to before the meeting and guides a discussion about the topic(s) of the talk. Other than the optional chat after it's all concluded, we end the “formal” part of the session with a short guided mettā meditation.
Guide for hosting a session
Basically, you just want to recap the talk. You probably want about 15-20 minutes of actual recap, and the rest of the time (30-40 minutes) for discussion. Try to break up the recap into three or four “natural” places where you think people will 1) remember what you’ve talked about!, and 2) have something interesting to talk about or questions to ask.
While they’re rarely needed, it’s a good idea to prepare some questions to stimulate discussion in advance in case people don’t have any.
The final key thing to remember is that you don’t have to argue for or support the premise of the talk. That’s the original teacher’s job, and as we all (should) have listened to it, that’s also for all of us to do. (Unfortunately, we had some people who left the group because they felt that people were questioning “their take” on it. It’s not supposed to be anyone other than the original teacher’s “take” … hence why we call it a “recap”.) Using “and <teacher’s name> then said”, and so on can help with this.