SBMG began in 1991 when a few people, responding to the onset of the first Iraq War, began to meet regularly in each others’ living rooms to study Buddhist meditation and teachings from all lineages. Today, Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group (SBMG) meets as a thriving and diverse peer-led sangha (spiritual community), whose operation is collaborative, non-hierarchical, and consensus-based. We regard those who come and participate as members, sharing the commitment to help themselves and each other learn, practice, and serve the way of compassion and wisdom.
SBMG Mission Statement Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group is a peer-guided spiritual community (sangha) offering a place of inspiration, refuge and stability for the cultivation of mindfulness and compassion. We welcome people to a sangha that embraces diversity of members and Buddhist traditions.
Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group (SBMG) meets as a thriving and diverse peer-led sangha (spiritual community), whose operation is collaborative, non-hierarchical, and consensus-based. We regard those who come and participate as members, sharing the commitment to help themselves and each other learn, practice, and serve the way of compassion and wisdom.
Ethics: as a peer-led sangha, we have an active commitment to create a place of refuge and safety for all who participate, guided by the Five Precepts, or Mindfulness Trainings. The Caring Council was created to support SBMG’s Code of Ethics, which is being composed on the foundations for ethical conduct and conflict resolution articulated by San Francisco Zen Center, the Order of Interbeing, and EAR of Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City.
SBMG invites all who come, to join us in our ethical agreements and procedures. We ground all operations of the organization and all our relationships with teachers and participants in the principles of the Buddhist precepts. Any conflict that arises is seen as an opportunity for a deepening of understanding and compassion and for creating solutions that benefit the well being of all concerned.
The purpose of the SBMG ethics agreements and procedures is to insure that all that transpires within the operations of the organization, and in relationship with teachers and participants, is solidly grounded in the principles of the Buddhist precepts. Beyond doing no harm, we aim in all our actions, to benefit all life touched by our sangha, and all that supports its life. Conflicts are seen as opportunities for deepening understanding and creating solutions that benefit the well being of all concerned.
Consensus, the basis of decision-making throughout our sangha, specifically means here that we choose to trust that on the deepest level what another person wants is not at odds with what we want – that everyone is willing to suspend her/his own personal agendas and work for the benefit of the sangha.