Big Heart City Meditation SF

09/18/2025

Caverly Morgan leads the group this week with a talk on “Turning Toward What Is.”

Have you found yourself believing you have to get rid of thoughts in order to experience the truth of your being? Have you ever found yourself identified with a self who is on a mission to annihilate the self? Join us for an evening focused on direct experience and guided inquiry to explore this rich topic more fully. All welcome.

Join Us Friday, Sept 19
7:30pm Pacific

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83690089621

Meeting ID: 836 9008 9621


Named one of 2025’s powerful women of the mindfulness movement, Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, nonprofit founder, speaker, and writer whose practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness. Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Realizing Freedom Together, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making practices that lead to liberation for all, accessible to all. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops, and online classes internationally. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org.

09/10/2025

Vinny Ferraro leads the group this week!

Join Us Friday, Sept 12
7:30pm Pacific

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81802670379

Meeting ID: 818 0267 0379

09/09/2025

The Liberating Power of Giving a Sheet about What Really Matters: Online Daylong with Vinny Ferraro
Saturday, Sept 20
10am-4pm Pacific

Too often our attention gets hijacked by things that don’t matter—what people think, whether they’re acting right, the endless little irritations. And, while we burn energy on that noise, we miss the deeper invitation: to align our hearts with what truly frees us.

During this daylong retreat, we’ll explore the power of skillfully giving a sheet. We’ll explore how the Buddha’s Eight Worldly Winds—gain and loss, praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain—keep us spinning, and how rooting ourselves in the boundless heart qualities opens us to a freedom that doesn’t blow away so easily.

We’ll spend the day together in practice, with meditation, a Dharma talk, and time for inquiry and discussion. No experience needed. Just a willingness to pause, let go of some of the weight you’ve been carrying, and sit down. Join us all day, or drop in for a while. No perfect people allowed.
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$40 Registration fee + dana to Vinny

If the registration fee is prohibitive for you, please email info@bigheartcity.org and we will get you registered.

This is a live online retreat. It will not be recorded.

Learn more & register at bigheartcity.org/daylong-retreat

the liberating power of giving a S**T about what really mattersOnline daylong retreat with VINNY FERRARO Saturday, September 20, 202510am-4pm Pacific on Zoom Register Here Too often our attention gets hijacked by things that don’t matter—what people think, whether they’re acting right, the end...

09/03/2025

Vinny Ferraro leads the group in person this week!

Friday, Sept 5 • 7:30pm Pacific

St. Gregory of Nyssa
500 De Haro Street @ Mariposa
Potrero Hill, San Francisco

There is plenty of street parking and MUNI bus lines 10, 19, 22 and 55 stop within one block. (Please double check MUNI schedules.)

Not in San Francisco? Tune into the live stream on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSTwQ1vM2h5gMmrdjEtCqNg

08/27/2025

We are delighted to welcome Dana DePalma to the group this week! She’ll lead a meditation and give a talk titled “Getting Real: Exploring Authenticity and Choice.”

Join Us Friday, August 29
7:30pm Pacific on Zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82215585413

Meeting ID: 822 1558 5413

Dana DePalma, MA, teaches online through Dharma Ground, where she serves as the Founding Guiding Teacher, and also at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where she serves as a Stewarding Teacher. Her approach emphasizes samādhi, ease, and the natural unfolding of practice. Visit dharmaground.org to learn more.

08/20/2025

Vinny Ferraro leads the group this week!

Join Us Friday, August 22
7:30pm Pacific 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85233090921

Meeting ID: 852 3309 0921

08/13/2025

Caverly Morgan leads the group this week with a talk titled “Return to Embodiment.”

Causing harm to ourselves and others requires disembodiment. We only normalize harm when we are identified with the conditioned mind that asserts separation. Join us for a gathering dedicated to returning to embodiment and releasing the mind into the heart. All welcome. And by all, we mean all.

Join Us Friday, August 15
7:30pm Pacific

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86167518134

Meeting ID: 861 6751 8134


Named one of 2025’s powerful women of the mindfulness movement by Mindful Magazine, Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, nonprofit founder, speaker, and writer whose practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness. Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Realizing Freedom Together, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making practices that lead to liberation for all, accessible to all. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops, and online classes internationally. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org.

08/13/2025

Join us on Saturday, August 23 for an Online Daylong Retreat with Vinny Ferraro — Nothing To Prove.

You don’t have to earn your place here. Not by being calm, or wise, or having your life in order.

This is a day to drop the performance. To stop trying to “get somewhere.” To just be—right here, with what’s actually true.

Through meditation, stillness, and community, we’ll remember the radical power of presence. We’ll tune in to the quiet knowing that’s always beneath the noise. Not to fix or flee. But, to touch the kind of freedom that doesn’t require polishing the self.

There will be guided meditations, Dharma talks, and time to come home to your own experience.�There will also be space to connect, speak, and listen from the heart.

Don’t worry—we’re not auditioning for America’s Next Top Shaman. Whether you’re burned out, broken open, blissed out, or just dragging yourself in—come.

No perfect people allowed.�There’s nothing to prove. Just something to remember. You are welcome exactly as you are—whether you can stay all day or just drop in for a while. Come take your seat. We’ll be here.

$40 + dana • scholarships available

Learn more at bigheartcity.org/daylong-retreat

nothing to proveOnline daylong retreat with VINNY FERRARO Saturday, August 23, 202510am-4pm Pacific on Zoom Register Here “When we see that life cannot possibly meet our exact wishes and preferences, we relax. We begin to forgive our human frailties and failings and to treat ourselves more gently...

08/06/2025

Dave Smith leads the group this week with a talk titled “Faith: The Beginning of All Good Things.”

Join Us Friday, August 8
7:30pm Pacific 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81714384309

Meeting ID: 817 1438 4309

Dave Smith is an internationally recognized Buddhist meditation teacher, addiction treatment specialist, and published author. His background is rooted in the Insight Meditation tradition and he was empowered to teach through the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He has extensive experience bringing meditative interventions into jails, prisons, youth detention centers and addiction treatment facilities. Dave teaches residential meditation retreats and classes, provides trainings and consulting in both secular and Buddhist contexts, and works with students through his meditation mentoring program. He recently founded the Secular Dharma Foundation and lives in Paonia, Colorado. Learn more at davesmithdharma.com

07/31/2025

Vinny Ferraro leads the group in person this week!

Friday, August 1 • 7:30pm Pacific
St. Gregory of Nyssa
500 De Haro Street at Mariposa
Potrero Hill, San Francisco

There is plenty of street parking and MUNI bus lines 10, 19, 22 and 55 stop within one block. (Please double check MUNI holiday schedules.)

Not in San Francisco? Tune into the live stream on our YouTube channel—link at bigheartcity.org/schedule

07/23/2025

Matthew Hahn leads the group this week with a talk titled “Presence of the Past.”

So often, our practice involves the invitation to remain in the present moment, to draw attention toward what is happening, and to let go of the past. But is it really possible to let go of the past? Can the present moment be devoid of everything that came before? How might our practice be framed as a way of understanding the past? Let’s consider it and practice with it.

Join Us Friday, July 25
7:30pm Pacific 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84155787589

Meeting ID: 841 5578 7589
 
Matthew Hahn sat with his first sangha as a prisoner in Folsom State Prison, where he experienced the power of the Dharma to alleviate suffering. Since coming home in 2012, he has practiced principally within the Insight Tradition and is mentored by his primary teacher, Matthew Brensilver. He is a co-founder of the Recovery Dharma program, a facilitator for the Mindful Prisons Program in San Quentin, and is a Dharma leader at Spirit Rock and the Insight Meditation Center. Matthew was empowered with lay ordination by Venerable Pannavati and the late Ashin U Pannadipa. To learn more about Matthew, visit matthewhahn.com.

07/16/2025

Eve Ekman leads the group this week with a talk on “Living 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows: Cultivating Equanimity.”
 
Life brings us countless joys and countless sorrows. In this evening of meditation, we’ll explore how to meet it all with a steady heart. As Pema Chödrön reminds us, “You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.”

Together, we’ll practice recognizing the impermanence of emotions—seeing how feelings arise, move through us, and dissipate again and again. When we cultivate a first person experience of this always changing experience we can rest in a deeper equanimity, neither clinging to pleasure nor resisting pain.

Through guided meditation, reflection, and shared inquiry, we’ll learn to trust the spacious awareness that can hold every moment with compassion and balance.
 
Join Us Friday, July 18
7:30pm Pacific 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86204656271

Meeting ID: 862 0465 6271
 
Eve Ekman, PhD, MSW, is a contemplative social scientist designing, delivering, and evaluating tools to support emotional awareness in the fields of health care, wellbeing, and technology. Eve draws from interdisciplinary skills and first-person experiential knowledge from clinical social work, integrative medicine and contemplative science, and meditation. Eve is lead teacher for Cultivating Emotional Balance, is wellbeing lead on the health team at Apple, is a Senior Fellow at Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute. Learn more about Eve at eveekman.com.