Our Mission

Opening Heart Mindfulness Community (OHMC) is a 501c(3) that offers support for learning and practicing mindfulness in a non-sectarian way.

Our practices are based on the tradition of the Plum Village Community, and our teachings are inspired by a variety of individuals and groups including Thich Nhat Hanh and teachers from many other Zen, vipassana, and other mindfulness based traditions.

We practice mindfulness to become calmer, more alive, more genuine, and to extend greater understanding and compassion. By practicing together we inspire each other to bring meditation and mindfulness into our daily lives. Opening Heart supports and practices social action and inclusive community building. Rooted in our commitment to diversity, we operate with transparent democratic governance, generosity-based economics, and environmental sustainability. We seek to foster understanding and compassion by providing vibrant and generous opportunities to practice mindfulness within a diverse community in the Plum Village tradition, founded by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

We highly value the diversity of racial and cultural identity and background, nationality, sexual and affectional orientation, gender identity and its expression, religious background and belief, marital status, family structure, age, mental and physical health and ability, political perspective, and educational and class status. We recognize that in supporting racial and social justice equity within our sangha and throughout the mahasangha, we support the work of transformation individually and collectively.

Engaged Mindfulness Vision Statement

The Opening Heart Mindfulness Community Care Taking Council (CTC) has adopted this statement from Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center. We are grateful to them for sharing this language.

Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?

— Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step

As a community of practice in the Plum Village tradition, Opening Heart Mindfulness Community aspires to be an inclusive community that embodies three core values: mindfulness, compassion, and community.

Mindfulness is the awareness and transformation of not only our own suffering, but of the suffering around us. Therefore, we will look deeply into our society and will speak out against injustice and oppression. We will offer beneficial services and spiritual support to those who are at risk or who have been harmed. We will strive to change such situations by joining others in nonviolent movements and direct actions that genuinely have as their aim justice, reconciliation, peace, and love.

In pursuing engaged practice, Opening Heart Mindfulness Community will not support political parties or causes or take sides in political disputes. We welcome into our community all people who support the three values at the core of our community regardless of their personal characteristics, such as socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.

We encourage loving speech and compassionate listening at all our gatherings as we endeavor to embody Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching that no one is our enemy, that the moment we understand and feel compassion towards our enemy, they are no longer our enemy. We will endeavor to understand deeply the views and suffering of those with whom we disagree just as we endeavor to understand our own views and suffering. We know that peace and nonviolence do not mean non-action but that we are proactive in our love and compassion, that as a community we must demonstrate that peace is the way.