[This meetup was formerly known as 'The Orlando Buddhism Meetup Group:  "American Beat" '  for some four years, and before that simply The Orlando Buddhism Meetup Group, probably since it started back in 2002, and it had an address of Buddhism-85]

Welcome to Buddhism in Central Florida

This meetup is for everyone, and yes there may be some things in the meetings that are related to Buddhism, sometimes there is some Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta), think of Hinduism as Buddhism's cousin, actually more like its Mom.  Anyway, Hindu events may help one appreciate Buddhism's historical sources.  But if you keep the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha in your heart then hopefully your actions, thoughts, and words will move forward in the right direction towards enlightenment for all.  Yes there are some apparent irreconcilable dogmatic differences but in the end they vanish. I intellectually assume that enlightenment is the same experience and state of being for all, no matter what path or religion taken.

This is your captain Jairo writing, and I am feeling fearless and so I have suddenly moved to give this place a name change, including the webpage URL name, I hope that doesn't screw up your links to pages here. I even changed the zip code from 32750 (North of Orlando city limits) to 32839 (more within the heart of Orlando) which I hope brings in folks from southern Orlando.

Welcome Buddhists and non-Buddhists, that means everyone. Ask not what this meetup can do for you, ask what you can do for this meetup. But seriously, this meetup can be serious fun.  Suggestions for meetups are always welcomed.

Yes we are all busy.  And so "I've been pretty busy lately" is our "go to" excuse.  But then we wonder why time slips away and we didn't get done what we had intend to at the beginning of the year.  So, for me personally, as one of my 2013 year's resolutions or intentions, I would like to practice certain Buddhist meditations daily.

Now what are you looking for in a group on Buddhism? Well as you may have read, the meetup has been around since 2002, and it had almost vanished from lack of interests and funding during its low points. But new people keep joining it but then forget about doing anything to make things happen.  This meetup is set up to automatically remove members that have been inactive for more than six months I think, so it seems like I get notices every week in my email stating that so and so was automatically removed from this meetup. Nevertheless it still has a pretty huge number of members, over 300.

This meetup has had many high points with the dedication of several great organizers such as Venerable teacher Ani Konchok Chime (aka Angela Harkavy) who now lives in Seattle, and Marc IronBuddha Allan, who moved away several years ago and now lives sometimes on the ocean and sometimes on the ocean ports, and Scott who rescued the meetup during one of its low point.  I am also sort of saving the meetup by paying my monthly $19.00 to keep it running.  But I should sit down and come up with good meetups that will attract new people, or old members that have forgotten how fun it once was.  I am hesitant to ask for donations here, but I am considering creating a page where you can donate a few dollars using PayPal to my PayPal account and this would be a great help. It's not set up officially yet, but here is a temporary link and the PayPal will work to get funds into my PayPal account but the amounts are not exactly what I want for this purpose, you may be able to manually change the amount once you get to a point after clicking the yellow PayPal button that says in Spanish "Compra Ahora" which means Buy Now. I will change the price points and the language later, but the mechanism to pay from your PayPal or credit card account into my PayPal account will still work for now,  just know that you will have to manually change the amount if you want to pay some other amount besides 20 dollars. I am thinking of adding the smaller amounts of 2 dollars, and 5 dollars. Thanks for considering making a donation anyway.

In summary, and most important to know is that, at this time, the name has been changed from  The Orlando Buddhism Meetup Group:  "American Beat" to  Buddhism in Central Florida and the URL changed from meetup.com/buddhism-85 to meetup.com/BuddhismInCentralFlorida and so members are now called Central Florida Buddhists.

There are some other changes I am considering implementing. Like changing the questions a bit, for new members from this point on.

And the last change for now is that I am allowing members to suggest meetups, but if a suggestion is too wild and purposeless then I will edit and even delete the suggestion made.

Wish me luck. Thank you all.

Compassion,

Jairo