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Sunday Sangha – 18th May 2025

This session is led by Sean Oakes.

Start Time: 11 am PDT (LA) / 2 pm EDT (NY) / 7 pm BST (London) / 8 pm CEST (Paris). 90-minute live session.

This week’s theme: Vesak 2568: The Radical Message of Siddhattha Gotama

On the Theravāda holiday of Vesak, 2568 years after the Buddha’s death, we honor the ancient ascetic named Siddhattha Gotama, whose insights into the nature of suffering and freedom have inspired fierce disciplines, soaring poetry, subtle psychological and philosophical investigations, and social movements for nonviolence, and social justice. We’ll meditate, learn traditional verses celebrating the Buddha, and share how this sublime tradition touches our own lives, so many centuries later.

This session is freely-offered, but dana/donations are invited to help us meet our substantial running costs and to support our teachers. To donate, please click here. We appreciate your generosity 🙏

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Sean Oakes

Sean Oakes, PhD (he/him, queer, of Spanish/Puerto Rican and Northern European ancestry living on unceded Pomo land in California), teaches Buddhism, Yoga, and somatic practice. He has studied in Theravāda, Zen, and Vajrāyāna Buddhist lineages, including training as a monk in Burma, and was authorized to teach Insight Meditation by Jack Kornfield in 2010. His primary Buddhist teachers include Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Boorstein, Gil Fronsdal, Eugene Cash, Kitissaro, and Ṭhānissara; Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Anam Thubten, and Chammyay Sayadaw (U Janaka), with whom he ordained as a bhikkhu for a Rains Retreat in Burma in 2002. 

He studied Yoga with Alice Joanou, Rachel Shaw, Amanda Moran, and David Moreno, and taught mindfulness-based āsana and prāṇāyāma for 10 years, and performed for many years in music, dance, and performance art, including with Keith Hennessy’s Circo Zero, and trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Organic Intelligence (OI) with Steven Hoskinson, integrating the complex systems approach from OI in a distinctively Buddhist approach to trauma resolution. He received his PhD in Performance Studies from UC Davis in 2016, writing on extraordinary states of consciousness in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance. He teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, East Bay Meditation Center, Insight Timer, and elsewhere, focusing on the integration of philosophy, somatics, and social justice discourse with the Dharma. Click here to learn more about Sean Oakes.