About Us

Founded in 2005 as Insight Nashville, we met for six years at All Faith Chapel in Vanderbilt Divinity School, until our numbers outgrew that space. We now enjoy the hospitality and beautiful sanctuary of Second Presbyterian Church. Those who come to practice with us come from a variety of contemplative traditions: Buddhist Theravada, Zen, and Vajrayana; Christian, Jewish, other spiritual practices, or none. Everyone is welcome. One River Wisdom School of Nashville is an interspiritual meditation group meeting in a Presbyterian church that is indeed composed of “all faiths.”

We come together each week to study the Perennial Tradition’s ways of Wisdom, Justice, and Compassion. Contemplative practices can be used by anyone, whether religious or not. The weekly talks are teachings that arise from the meeting of contemplative practice with the challenges and delights of daily life.

Our weekly gathering begins with twenty-five minutes of sitting meditation. The first minutes of meditation are guided, followed by shared silence for the rest of the sitting. A talk of thirty to forty minutes then follows. We conclude with a brief loving kindness meditation and dedication of the merit of our practice to the welfare of all beings, to the ending of suffering, and to the arising of awakening and liberation for all beings.