About RIM
Rooted in practice. Grown by community.
Who we are, what we practice, and why.
Rooted in Mindfulness is a community meditation center in Brookfield, Wisconsin, serving the Greater Milwaukee area and beyond, in person and online. We are a dharma community. At the heart of our practice is an open, settled awareness that meets whatever arrives with warmth, which the tradition calls silent illumination, and we draw on the breadth of traditional Buddhist wisdom and teachings. Taking CARE, our mindfulness-based approach to meditation and mindful living, is how we practice: plain enough to begin with, and deep enough for a lifetime.
Our vision and mission
Our vision is what we hope to see realized in our lives and in the world. Our mission is what we do, again and again, to bring it about.
Our vision. To be more awake and present in our lives, and to live freer of what binds us to unhealthy patterns of heart, mind, and action. This allows us to understand with greater wisdom, and what we understand allows us to care with kindness and compassion. From that awake, liberated wisdom and compassion we live, embody, and act, for the benefit of ourselves, those we care about, and our shared world. This is the great wisdom, great compassion, and great action.
Our mission. Together and in our daily lives, we practice taking care: coming to know ourselves as we are, cultivating what is healthy and wholesome, and releasing the patterns of clinging, view, habit, and reaction that bind us, so that we realize the wakeful nature already within us. We carry this practice into every moment of contact, for the benefit of ourselves, those we care about, and our shared world.
What we practice, and why
We practice Taking CARE: eight words that describe one practice from eight sides, Calm, Connect, Aware, Attitude, Recognize, Remember, Embody, and Engage, practiced in the spirit of silent illumination, an open, settled awareness that meets whatever arrives with warmth.
We practice to meet our lives with more clarity, freedom, and care: to enjoy what there is to enjoy, to meet what is hard without adding to it, and to care well for the people around us and the world we share.
Where it comes from
Silent illumination comes to us from Chan, the Chinese school of Buddhism also known as Zen, which teaches that a luminous, wakeful nature is already present in each of us. We honor every Buddhist tradition as part of one living family, and draw on their teachings through A Handful of Leaves. We teach plainly, for people living full modern lives, and our teaching is informed by mindfulness-based programs, psychology, and modern science. People from every tradition, and from none, find support here.
Held by a community
RIM is a nonprofit, and it is held by the people who practice here. Members sustain it through dana, the practice of generosity. Volunteers host our online gatherings, care for the center, and serve on our teams, and some train to share the practice. Our teachers offer what they have learned, and all of us hold the same Community Care Agreements. No one person or building holds it up.
Our teachers
Jesse Foy, RIM's founding and guiding teacher, has been studying and practicing for over 25 years, with a mindfulness-based mind-body medical practice since 2006. He trained as an MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) teacher through the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and also studied Buddhism and contemplative psychology at Naropa University.
How we began
Rooted in Mindfulness began as the name under which our founder, Jesse Foy, taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in medical settings and other organizations. Over time he began offering these practices by donation, and then in a small practice space of our own. A community formed around it, gathering week after week for ongoing learning and practice.
The teaching grew beyond the course it started from. Jesse brought in his education in Buddhism and contemplative psychology from Naropa University, and together we went deeper into the Dharma. In 2016, RIM became a nonprofit dharma center, and its Buddhist roots became visible in name as well as in practice. What people valued from the beginning stayed: plain, welcoming language, and a refuge that asks no one to believe anything.
Taking CARE is the next step in that story: a mindfulness-based program, true to traditional Buddhist wisdom and teachings. It carries the accessibility RIM began with and the depth of the Dharma it grew into, in eight plain words anyone can begin with. And through our outreach, the practice goes back out to organizations, where this story began.
One thing has not changed. The teachings have to be accessible enough to meet people where they are, and deep enough to accompany them for a lifetime.
Visit or reach us
Our center is at 4040 N. Calhoun Rd., Brookfield, WI 53005, and many of our gatherings also meet online. You can reach us at support@rootedinmindfulness.org or (414) 882-8932.