Zen Life & Meditation Center

What is Zen Life & Meditation Center

Zen Life & Meditation Center (ZLMC) is Chicago's place for mindfulness meditation. ZLMC has been offering meditation for beginners for over 18 years. It offers meditation classes and retreats as well as clear teaching for our times, rooted in a wisdom tradition that is translated for our secular-scientific culture. The Center offers a comprehensive core curriculum for beginners and advanced practitioners that provides people with practical tools for living a Zen-inspired life that is effective and empowering.

What is the Mission and Vision?

The Mission of the Zen Life & Meditation Center is to empower you to live a Zen-inspired life of openness, empathy, and clarity. The Vision is to live in an awakened world that transforms suffering into compassion and delusion into clarity through the realization of authentic expression. Through its vision, mission, and values the ZLMC seeks to cultivate a community of openness, generosity, and wisdom.

Why is it useful to live a Zen inspired life?

A Zen-inspired life is pro-active. It gives you time to reflect, to respond, to connect with others, and to build trust in relationships. When you do this well, you'll discover a larger world of possibilities, and one that is workable, no matter how difficult the challenge. A Zen-inspired life can be your life and the way you learn to contribute your unique gifts to the world around you. Zen is about letting something grow out of the native soil of your own life. Like plants, your life is rooted in your own conditioning, culture, language and beliefs. A Zen-inspired lifestyle is about how you cultivate that soil to support your life. And in Zen, this is done through the regular practice of meditation. This practice is a way of empathically keeping company with yourself. This simple practice, supported by new findings in neuroscience, is the foundation of a more effective life of openness, empathy and clarity.

What are some of the programs and teachings available?

The ZLMC offers a comprehensive Core Curriculum consisting of our Core Primer Series and a Core Gateway Series to give practical and down-to-earth tools for beginning the journey of living a Zen-inspired life with a strong foundation of mindfulness meditation. The Core Primer Series consists of 8 classes and two practice classes. Each class builds on each other, taking you more deeply into the practice of mindfulness meditation and how to begin applying this awareness in different aspects of your daily life. The Center also offers training for Corporate Wellness, advanced Zen Training, counseling, workshops, and retreats.

.