Group sittings are critical for establishing your daily practice, creating a supportive community, and helping dhamma spread. So how do we help these group sittings get established and grow? While I’ve seen people working hard to develop and support the centers, and to provide outreach events for potential new students, I haven’t observed many supports for local group sittings. Hosts are kind of on their own to get things rolling. I’m still trying to learn how best to support group sittings so let me know if you’ve observed anything that has worked in your area or if you have ideas.

One idea I’ve had is to create an interactive map where group sitting hosts and meditators can mark their locations. Hopefully this will make it easy for meditators to find people in their home towns that are practicing in this tradition. So far the map looks like this: http://www.zeemaps.com/pub?group=408875&x=14.264554&y=21.780391&z=15&simpleadd=1&legend=1   Click on the different markers to pull up the information.

Markers: Meditators = Red, Group Sittings = Green, Centers = Blue

Now I need your help. I’ve created the infrastructure but I need you to fill in the map with your personal markers. To add you marker follow the simple and fast directions below.

1. Click on the map link above.
2. Click on the “Add” tab in the upper right corner.
3. Enter the Goenka oldstudent website password.
4. Enter whatever personal information you want to include. I added my full name, my email address, the city I live in, and the day and time of the group sitting I host.
5. If you’re adding a group sitting make sure you select the “group sittings” marker.
6. Click “Submit” and that’s it!

If you manage a website and would like to embed this map or used this link I would be happy to help you. My blog host won’t currently allow me to do that unless I pay to upgrade my site. I can also modify the link so the map is centered on your specific location. For example, if I wanted my map to be zoomed in on North Carolina because that’s where I host my group sitting I could easily do that.

Hopefully I’ll start seeing lots of markers popping up! If you have any questions please let me know.