Welcome

Meaningful Life Center is a special place in Knoxville, TN that welcomes anyone interested in exploring and discovering a personal and unique path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. The Center’s workshops and activities are designed to support each person’s journey toward that goal. Please come in and explore.


Expand Your Horizons with Our Workshops and Programs.


We offer a wide variety of programs throughout the year. Check back often to see what’s coming up.You can take a look at some of our TYPICAL PROGRAMS to get an idea of what we offer for those exploring what it means to have a Meaningful Life.
Programs are open to anyone interested in such explorations.There is no fixed fee for programs, but each participant is asked to make a donation to the Meaningful Life Center. All programs are held at the Knoxville home of the Meaningful Life Center which is located at 116 Carr Street in the Homburg area.

Click HERE to see a sample of some of our offerings.

Our Schedule of Programs

We’re busy adding new programs for you to explore. Check back often to see what’s new.

Reading Poetry Together
with Sandy Cartwright
4 Thursday evenings beginning April 4
6:00pm to 7:30pm

This Spring we will be exploring the poets, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, Charles Simic and Amanda Gorman. We will be reading one poet per meeting. We will also set aside time for participants to read one of their favorite poems or to read a poem they have written. The workshop will be offered in person and on ZOOM.

 

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Show Me the Way: A discussion of biographies of those who have lived a meaningful life
with Chris Austin
Sunday, March 10
• Online: 9:00am to 10:30am
• In Person: 11:00am to 12:30pm

“If you to want a to read a great book on leadership, then read the biography of a great leader.”  If you want to read a book on finding meaning in life, read biographies of those who have lived meaningful lives. That’s exactly what we’ll do in this interactive workshop.

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Explorations in Awareness
with Don Oakley
Second and Fourth Tuesdays of each month through May
6:30pm to 8:00pm

Awareness is what notices all sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. In other words, everything. Enlightenment is the recognition of this spacious awareness as our essential beingness. It is not something we attain; it is something we recognize. It is not far away; it couldn’t be closer. We miss it because we tend to look for the obscure when it is hidden in the obvious.
This series will explore the nature of our conceptualizing minds and point toward that essence that we truly are. The focus will be experiential and non-denominational; it will not be philosophical or dogmatic. Each session will include a brief guided meditation to settle the thinking mind, an extemporaneous discourse, and time for exploring questions.

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Lovingkindness Meditation
with Fred Martinson
Saturday Mornings
10:0am to 12:00 noon
Metta is a part of the Buddha’s heart teachings about lovingkindness, or the Brahma Viharas – compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, and “unbounded friendship” – often called as a group the “Heavenly Abodes.” This workshop will bring participants into experiences of lovingkindness and focus on how to bring about compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, and “unbounded friendship” in one’s daily life.

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Wednesday Meditation Group
with Barbara Roberts
Wednesday Mornings
10:00am to 11:00am

If you have a meditation practice and would like to sit regularly with a group of practitioners, please consider joining us every Wednesday morning at the Meaningful Life Center. We sit in silence for a period of 45 minutes, beginning at 10 am. Our first meeting will be on March 23, 2022.

We welcome all participants, whether you are accustomed to meditating by yourself at home or you sit with another group. Our purpose is simply to offer the opportunity to meditate regularly with an informal group. Many people find that sitting with others offers a strong support for their practice.

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Monthly Second Saturday Zazen
with Tammy Kaousias, Todd Steed or Meghan Kogen Dieter
Second Saturday of Each Month
9:00am to 12:00 noon

The simple act of sitting in one place and not DOING something has been a gateway for liberation for millennia. There is a reason it “works”. Yet it is the willingness to show up and simply sit that transforms us. The reasons are not relevant. Neither is reading about it, thinking about it, or talking about it.

To access this ancient avenue, one must experience it. In these morning meditation sessions, you will have an opportunity to experience an extended meditation in a supportive environment.

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Film Discussion Group – Online
with Chris Austin
9:30am to 11:00am
Next meeting Sunday, March 24
Each month we get together to discuss a film that leads to conversations on how to live a more meaningful life. Click the link to explore past films we’ve discussed and to see a list of the upcoming films.

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Film Discussion Group – In Person
with Chris Austin
11:00am to 12:30pm
Next meeting Sunday, March 24
Each month we get together to discuss a film that leads to conversations on how to live a more meaningful life. Click the link to explore past films we’ve discussed and to see a list of the upcoming films.

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Knoxville Community of Mindfulness

Meetings, Classes and Events

Knoxville Community of Mindfulness Sangha Meeting
with John Blackburn
6:30pm to 8:00pm
On the First and Third Thursdays of each month
All are welcome

“When you allow yourself to be in a sangha the way a drop of water allows itself to be in a river, then the energy of the sangha can penetrate you, and healing and transformation become possible.”
​Thich Nhat Hanh
Sangha is the traditional name for a gathering of spiritual friends who are practicing the path of awareness. Our Sangha meeting includes guided meditation, a period of teaching, and discussion. It is suitable for both experienced and new meditators.

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Unconditional Love – Part 3
with John Blackburn
2:00pm to3:30pm
4 Sundays beginning Sunday, April 21
Registration through Knoxville Community of Mindfulness Required

This class continues to build upon the practices and teachings offered in Part 1 and Part 2. Part 3 will explore the awakening mind with practices which offer a direct experience of our true nature, which is Unconditional Love

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Introducing Meaningful Life Center

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“Know Thyself”

For thousands of years, the world’s wisdom traditions have affirmed that there is more to life than the everyday things on which we spend much of our time. In ancient Greece, the quest for wisdom was exemplified by the frequent admonition of Socrates: “Know Thyself.” He went further, saying, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Two thousand years later, this current was still going strong in the Western world, with the great mathematician, physicist, inventor, and philosopher Blaise Pascal saying, “It is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are.”

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Find Your Own Way

Meaningful Life Center participants explore, study, and discuss the components of a meaningful life and consider what is most important for their own lives in light of the guidance of a range of ideas from philosophy, psychology, science, art, music, literature, poetry, and the world’s wisdom traditions and practices.

By providing resources, encouragement, and support, the Center helps participants know themselves well enough to discover what a meaningful life might look like, and it facilitates each person’s ability to find such a life for themselves.

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Origins

During the past 20 years, several hundred people in East Tennessee, ranging in age from 25 to 80, have participated in workshops given by David White. These workshops, which in the past were known by word of mouth only, are the starting point for the Center.

The goal now is to provide access to these programs (and others being developed by past participants), to anyone who might be interested. By establishing a physical home for the Center, as well as a non-profit organization to manage its activities, it is hoped that a community will grow and develop with the purpose of nourishing the personal growth of all who participate.

Resources for this Difficult Time

As this time of crisis continues, one important action each of us can take is to cultivate a sense of peace and calm within ourselves, and then share those energies with anyone with whom we have contact, whether in person or via the various electronic devices we use.

The other thing we can do is find ways to help others through this crisis. Some are in a position to take actions that will affect many other lives, but the rest of us can find small things to do for those we know and for those most in need.

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Resources for finding inner peace

It’s hard to know what each of us can do to solve this great societal crisis. But each of us can make a monumental effort, deep within ourselves, to find inner peace and calm, and then share those qualities with everyone we touch (however that happens, in these extraordinary times).
Follow this link to various resources we’re compiling that you may find helpful in your journey to create inner peace.

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Resources for Helping others

Besides finding and sharing peace and calm, the other thing we each can do is help the people around us, and those in the most need. If you do this, it will not only help you as an individual, but if enough of us do this, it will change for the better who we are as a community and as a country. Help your neighbors and friends as much as you can, if you have the resources. Here are some organizational efforts that seem to be responding in a valuable way to this crisis.

We’re located at 116 Carr Street, Knoxville, Tennessee

For general information about the center we can be contacted by –

Phone: 865-333-5833 or
email:contact@meaningfullifecenter.org

Lending Library at The Meaningful Life Center

A unique assortment of books has been assembled to enhance the ideas and programs of the Center – to be loaned, free of charge to participants in the Center’s programs.  A list of books in our collection can be viewed here – Lending Library

Reactions to the Workshops

It is common for many religious institutions to take a stance of “We are right and others are wrong.”  I find the workshops offered at The Meaningful Life Center offer the message, “We are all wrong in our assumptions in how the world works, and we need each other to figure it out.”  This humble perspective makes all the difference. The Center helps people join arms in unraveling the mystery of how to live a life full of meaning, love and joy.

Chris – 10 workshops attended

“To say that these workshops will change your life hardly does the experience justice.  They are transformative in a way that is unique.  You find space and perspective in the difficult questions of how to live your life”

Bobby – 4 workshops attended

” It is a place for introspection and reflection.  In the Spring and Fall I feel that I need that and the Center’s Workshops provide a safe place for me to share this experience”

Judith – more than 30 workshops attended

“I like that they cause me to set aside a systematic time and space to reflect rather than prescribe.”

Ronda – 20 workshops attended

“The activities of the Center help me to create an open space.  I feel as if we make connections here  that transcend the way I feel about my social circle.   Its like our life is a box of Legos and we each get to put them together how we want.  The workshops help me discover how I want to assemble the pieces of my life”.

Valerie – 10 workshops attended