Brookfield, Wisconsin · In person & online
Awaken your Mind
Open your Heart
Nourish your Life
Beautify the World
Our practice is taking care: of ourselves, of those we love, of the world, and of this moment.
Rooted in Mindfulness is a community mindfulness and meditation center in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Through in-person and online programs, we serve the Greater Milwaukee area and beyond. People come here to learn how to be more awake and present to their lives, and to live with greater freedom from the patterns of heart, mind, and action that can cause difficulty and even suffering.
We practice to understand and live with greater wisdom and compassion, and to act from both. This allows us to heal what needs to be healed, and to cultivate and protect what is healthy and wholesome.
Everyone is welcome. Please, come as you are.
What brings us together.
People come to RIM for all kinds of reasons: to enjoy life more fully, to find more strength in a difficult time, to live with greater meaning and purpose, to care for and cultivate healthier relationships, to know greater peace and well-being, and many others.
These diverse reasons are rooted in a common intention: to meet our lives with greater authenticity and basic human goodness, and to realize the wakeful nature already within each and every one of us. We find it whenever we notice what the mind is doing and are no longer only caught in it, and whenever care for someone arises without being asked. We practice to live from this wakeful nature more often, learning to recognize what gets in the way and cultivating the understanding that allows us to respond from it.
At RIM, meditation, teachings, and community are all part of one practice. We gather for learning, practice, and fellowship. We support one another by practicing together and being part of something larger than ourselves. Everyone takes part in their own way. Some share readily, and some prefer to sit and listen, and both belong.
Showing up to practice alongside others is already a support, for ourselves and for others. People with different backgrounds and experiences come to learn and practice together, bringing their own lives and their differences with them. Anyone who comes belongs here, from every walk of life. Our similarities and our differences let us grow stronger together. No one can do this practice for us, but no one has to do it alone.
Program categories
Our programs,
and where to begin.
Taking CARE, our way of practice, is offered through three program categories. No experience is needed for any of them, and every gathering is open to you.
A place to begin
Foundations
Introductory programs in Taking CARE, our approach to meditation and mindful living. We encourage everyone to begin here.
View Foundations programsPractice in community
Ongoing Learning & Practice
Regular gatherings for meditation, Dharma teachings, and learning in community. Any of our drop-ins makes a welcoming first visit, and many people return week after week.
View ongoing programsTime to go deeper
Immersion
Programs with more time for sustained meditation, a deeper exploration of the teachings, and space to settle more fully into practice.
View Immersion programsPlanning your first visit?
Find out what to expect, how to join, and where to begin.
Plan your first visitMeditation and mindful living
Practice for real life.
Mindfulness and meditation give us time to settle and see our experience more clearly, beneath our habits and reactivity. That clarity is where we have a choice. Practice does not remove every difficulty from life. It clears away much of what keeps us from seeing clearly and meets our lives just as they are.
Daily life
Calm and ease in body, heart, and mind
Rest helps us heal and restore ourselves. Meeting illness, pain, and grief with more calm, and with the support of meditation and community, is a medicine in itself.
Enjoying the life we have
There is so much to appreciate in the simple things we often overlook: a meal we actually taste, the company of those we care about, the pleasures of a beautiful day. We can meet them without grasping, and live with greater steadiness and joy.
The pressures of life and work
A busy to-do list, responsibilities at work and at home, money worries, someone who needs our care. We practice meeting these moments with greater ease, giving one thing our attention, and recognizing when we are doing too much.
Who we are and how we live
Knowing ourselves
We come to know our old reactions while they are happening, including the habits we reach for when we are tired or hurting. We learn to hold them with more understanding and care. As we learn the patterns of our heart and mind, we learn that we are not bound by them.
The people in our lives
Being more available to those we care about, even when we disagree. Understanding our part in a difficulty, and recognizing when there is a chance to repair, or when a boundary is needed. For many of us, these relationships become a place to belong.
Living by what matters
A clearer sense of what gives our lives meaning and purpose, and more of our moments lived in line with it. Words and actions that bring less regret, and care for what supports well-being for ourselves, for others, and for the world.
Beyond ourselves
Steady in unsettled times
Many people feel shaken, confused, and even helpless about the state of the world. Practice gives us greater steadiness, a clearer sense of what is ours to do, and the company of others when helplessness might otherwise have seemed the only option.
Our shared world
Care that reaches past ourselves and our own circle: taking part in what makes our community healthier, and looking after the living world we are part of.
A deeper freedom
For some, practice opens into a spiritual urgency and onto a path of awakening. As what clouds our seeing begins to clear, we come to know a clarity and warmth that do not depend on circumstances.
This is a whole-life practice, rooted in mindfulness. RIM is where we gather to practice and learn together. The rest happens between our gatherings, in everyday life. We bring all of it back to the community, and then we go home and practice again.
How practice benefits our livesOur practice
Our practice is taking care.
Taking CARE is our mindfulness-based approach to meditation and mindful living, true to the traditional teachings that arise out of Buddhist practice and wisdom. It is the framework that holds our practice, present in everything we offer, and it is also a program anyone can take part in.
Eight words describe this practice, arranged in pairs under the four letters of CARE:
- CCalm, Connect
- AAware, Attitude
- RRecognize, Remember
- EEmbody, Engage
As simple as these eight words are, they are infinitely deep. In four letters they hold a complete practice. They co-arise. They are not steps to complete; they are how we meet each moment.
We separate them so that we can explore each one in ourselves, in relationship to others, and in the vast web of causes and conditions we are part of. The circle’s three rings represent Self, Others, and Interbeing.
Taking CARE is simple enough to begin with today, and there is enough in it for a lifetime of practice.
Where this comes from
Deep roots. An open door.
We draw on the breadth of Buddhist teachings and practices, gathered and organized as A Handful of Leaves. We teach plainly, through practice and inquiry. Mindfulness-based programs, psychology, and modern science also inform how we learn and practice.
You do not need to be Buddhist or hold any religious beliefs to practice here. Secular and spiritual seekers sit side by side. Some come for a steadier way through stress, or for meditation in company. Others want to study the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, and pursue the path in depth. Our roots give the practice depth, but they do not determine who belongs here.
Get involved
Taking part in something larger.
RIM is co-created by the people who practice here. Volunteers host some of our gatherings, care for the center, and serve on our teams. Members start community groups to support themselves and others.
Some take the path of training to share the practice: facilitating practice sessions, drop-ins, and programs here at RIM, and offering the Taking CARE program at RIM and beyond.
Caring for the center and sharing the teachings are themselves forms of generosity. Each is a way of caring for others and for our shared world, and a way of practicing too.
We also carry the practice outward. RIM is part of a larger community. We partner with other nonprofits and community organizations working for the well-being of people, communities, and our shared world. Through the Taking CARE program, we offer mindfulness-based training to the people they serve and to the people who carry out their work.
Dana
A generosity-based approach.
Everything offered at RIM is given as a gift, and RIM is sustained by the people who learn and practice here. That support includes financial gifts, and RIM could not exist without them. Gifts to RIM pay for the center and its operating costs. Our guiding teacher receives a modest salary from RIM for leading the center. It is not enough to live on, so his teaching, like every teacher’s, is supported through the Teaching Fund.
Most of RIM’s support comes from the members who give each month. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to care for RIM with a financial gift, monthly or when you take part in a program. Programs list a suggested contribution so everyone can see what an offering takes to sustain.
For most programs, each person gives what they can, and no one is turned away for not being able to pay. A few offerings, such as overnight retreats, require a minimum contribution to cover the charges from the place that hosts us.
The tradition calls this dana, generosity of heart. Time, care, and sincere presence are gifts too, offered alongside financial support. The practice itself is also a gift. All of these matter.
Dana is an old practice living in a modern economy, and we try to be clear about both: what you receive here was given by someone, and what you give helps keep the door open for the next person.
We understand this is a somewhat radical approach, and it is a beautiful one: RIM and its community are supported by the generosity and goodwill of everyone who takes part.
RIM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
It matters how we live.
This life is precious. How we live matters, and so do the people in it and the world we share.
With patience, we come to understand what causes suffering and what supports well-being, and we learn to act in line with that understanding. Over time, our care reaches a little further than it did before, into the depths of our own being and out into our lives.
Everyone can begin here. Continuing asks for a willingness to learn, and to return when the practice becomes difficult. It is easier to keep going with the support of good company.