In Focus is our gift to the community. A way for us to help show our recognition for the people, businesses and organizations that help make our city great. The team at KelownaNow.com is passionate about this community and the people that make it amazing. We want to show our friends, neighbours, family and colleagues that we notice them and the fabulous things that they do.
What is your name?
Melissa Berry Appleton
What do you always find yourself saying?
Slow down and should I give this time and energy?
If you could spend one whole day with anyone in the world who is currently alive, who would you select and why?
Susan Moon from the Everyday Zen Community. She is a lay Zen practitioner, a mother, writer and in her sixties. She led me in a great shift this past fall and I’d love to spend time with her in person. I’d like to do some writing with Susan.
If you were to receive any existing public award, what award would you like to win?
I am not much for public awards announced to single people. Anything great that I have accomplished usually involved a long list of incredible people right beside me. I’m a worker bee among the masses. Maybe an award for "The Courage to Keep Going."
If you could spend a day with any historical figure, who would you choose and why?
I’d like to have a grand luncheon with all my great grandmothers going back eight generations. Right back to pre-industrial revolution. Both my blood-related first nations great grandmothers and my adopted British/Torontonian society great grandmothers – all at the same table together.
Who inspires you?
The long lineage of women in Buddhist practice. Women who grow food. Mary Oliver. My grandmother who was a physicist, chemist, an artist and sharp as a tack. David Alexander, Naomi Klein, Michael Stone, Takao Tanabe, Jane Hirshfield, Brian Dean Williams, Krista Tippet, and Shelly McLaughlin.
What are three things on your bucket list?
To still be hiking in my 80’s with my husband, children and grandchildren. Find more ways to lengthen my kitchen table, enjoy creating and sharing food together, embody appreciative etiquette. Convince a very large group of women in Kelowna to shave their heads and wear no make-up for one month, chronicle their experience and to raise money for a really good cause (a bit bizarre, but I feel this one deep in my bones).
If you had an enormous yacht, what would you name it?
ENSO. I’d give it to ENSO to run long sailing excursions for teens, or maybe their parents, it’s hard to tell who needs more support these days. I have no need for such a grand possession unless it is to be experienced by many others.
If you could foresee a single day of your future in its entirety, what date would you select?
Cutting a ribbon to open a modern day Okanagan Dharma Centre led by leading Dharma teachers of our time. This centre would serve our community at large and more specifically long-term addiction recovery (modern secular Buddhism does this very well). It would be in town, something that we pass everyday, so it calls us to come inside and participate in daily practice with each other. It would have an agricultural project too. The centre would teach us to work with the land, skills for living, making and sharing food with each other. Michael Stone and I wrote a clear vision for this centre two and half years ago. It’s in the form of a beautiful book and also on our website.
What are you passionate about?
Cultivating compassion and generosity. Taking care of each other. Realizing that when we go six feet under or turn ashes to dust, we can’t take all this material crap with us……We might not even be able to hold onto it before we die. While we are living and breathing, we are also moving closer to death. It’s so beautiful. I try to cut as much b.s. out of my life as possible. Addiction Recovery. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Ethics. Wearing just one earing when two feels like just too much. Breaking out of social conformity.
What has been your favourite day of your life, up to this point?
One spring day when I was nine. I rode my bike down a really big hill with my hair blowing in the wind. The air smelled so incredible, my heart was bursting with joy, and I knew my mom was home making me lunch. I’m really big on the ‘nothing special’ heart bursting moments in life. Also the moments that hurt and the ones that bring joy.
What has been your proudest accomplishment?
When I stopped drinking alcohol at age 25. This decision led me down the most incredible path and human encounters. I am telling you this in support of CMHA’s campaign to end mental health stigma.
Where is your favourite place to dine in Kelowna? What do you like about it?
Susanne Zimmermann’s house. Don’t even try to get in… she doesn’t’ take reservations.
What is your favourite activity or event in Kelowna? Why?
Mohini Singh holds an annual event called East meets West. Incredible event, people and food. Reasonably priced, casual community comfortable. I had such an incredible time. We danced all night. ENSO Black Light Electronic Dance Party, raising funds for our Teen Unplugged Alpine Retreat. Stuart Yanow mixes incredible electronic music to ramp up the dance floor, and Kinshira performance artists create an incredible show for the dance floor. We are doing this again on April 22. Come out everyone! It is so good for our hearts to dance! Especially if you are over 35 years old!
What is the name of your business/organization?
ENSO Society for Contemplative Engagement.
What does your business/organization do?
ENSO Society is a newly established non-profit organization based in Kelowna that is actively bringing mindfulness and meditation programs to Kelowna and Western Canada. We offer programs for adults and youth for reducing stress, working with difficulties and waking up in our lives.
ENSO hosts:
Weekly meditation practice by donation (we have set 50 cushions! Chairs too.)
Weekend retreats,
Alpine retreats,
Public talks,
Hosts world-renowned neuroscientists.
Supports a UBCO fellowship with Michael Stone.
Mindfulness Meditation for Clinicians, Educators, and Front-line workers 8-month program led by Brian Dean Williams, Michael Stone and Dave Smith.
Year-Long Teen Program
Fundraising Events
ENSO facilitators are extensively trained (minimum of 10 years in practice under a senior teacher) and noted to be outstanding leaders of our time. They are both the teacher and the student in secular Buddhism, psychology, hold professional designations and are serving our communities in a multitude of ways. These teachers also mentor people in Kelowna, preparing them to lead the future of our work.
Where can people find you or your business online?
www.ensosociety.com
Where can people find your business on Facebook?
ENSO Society for Contemplative Engagement.
How do people connect with you on Linkedin?
Search my name, Melissa Berry Appleton
What is your mission?
Mission to support a sincere and dedicated practice community, and to serve others by providing mature programs, designed for individual and cultural awakening.
If you could achieve one thing within your field, what would it be?
To build a modern day Okanagan Dharma Centre right in the middle of Kelowna. The centre would have a large garden to grow food, serve a practice community and people in long-term addiction recovery.
Where do you want your business/organization to be in five years?
Opening The Okanagan Dharma Centre. (Let’s find a more interesting name though….)
Who do you consider to be a forerunner within your field?
San Francisco Zen Centre, Upaya Centre and Spirit Rock.
What three qualities do you feel that your business/organization exemplifies?
Modern Secular Buddhist ethical guidelines and precepts shape and guide everything we do within our practice community, our families, and business affairs. Currently we are predominantly females leading this cause. We would like this to morph to include more men as well as ethnic and gender diversity. We exemplify the kind of lengthy practice and training it requires to become a facilitator in this field. At a time when mindfulness and meditation are being adapted institutionally and diluted commercially, we will identify and work with new leaders to create leading edge practices and applications that are rooted in tradition, alive in this era, serving to meet the needs of our time.
What would you like to say to your employees/volunteers?
It is our hope your contribution to ENSO, whether it be through community practice, time/expertise, or financial contribution – also supports and enhances your own life, and your relationships with all human beings. Your contribution has vibrancy and impact on community, strengthens numbers of people involved and future direction of our service and care. We are deeply grateful and humbled by your care. ENSO is a new organization. We are in a creative and forming phase. You are a part of ENSO’s evolution and what it will be in our future years to come. It has vibrancy and impact on community, strengthens numbers of people involved and future direction of our service and care. It has vibrancy and impact on community, strengthens numbers of people involved and future direction of our service and care.
How does your business/organization impact the community?
We offer programs for adults and youth for reducing stress, working with difficulties and waking up in our lives. In the midst of all, we encourage our community to stop, slow down, to sit down right in the middle of our lives, settle, be awake, and support each other. We support time on the meditation cushion in our homes and together in community practice.
If you were trapped in an elevator with several wealthy investors from any field, which field would you want them to be experts in? What would say to them/talk about?
People who invest in not-for-profit charitable organizations and human work contribution. Creating socially innovative business models to support charitable organizations. The importance of start-up investment to pay skilled people to get things ‘off the ground’. Generosity, risk and letting go…….
If I could change one thing about Kelowna, it would be:
I would encourage a program for teens pick fruit for summer jobs. Get sweaty, dirty and fall exhausted into bed at the end of the day kind of work. Teens working for a meagre wage, suffering a little and not able to call home and complain to parents to pick them up for some kind of work injustice or feeling of entitlement. Let’s stop driving our kids everywhere. Stop being afraid. Let them walk, ride bikes and transit. Help them build skills to become independent out in the world. Teach them how to be safe, not afraid.
What do you think makes Kelowna great?
Most certainly the land, water and fresh food. It is positively spectacular. Let’s be so very careful in everything we do to support and protect our land and water. Let’s be so very careful in everything we do to protect our land and water. Listen and look so very closely. Let’s be so very careful in everything we do all day long, every single day to protect our land and water…. Let’s chant this everyday when we rise out of bed to greet the day. We are very rich in Kelowna, and it has nothing to do with money.
My choice for the Kelowna In Focus spotlight is:
Shelly McLaughlin.
Some general comments I would like to share are:
We are so fortunate to live in a place that is safe and free. Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes quickly and opportunity is lost. Let us awaken. AWAKEN! Do not squander your life.
May all beings be happy
May all beings be healthy
May all beings be free from danger
May all beings be free from twisted habit
May all beings be free from every form of suffering
We encourage you to leave your comments and words of support below, and submit your own nomination by clicking HERE. You are also welcome to submit a form of your own by clicking HERE. Thank you, Kelowna!
