Meditation Springfield IL

🗺️ Here is an interactive map of the Buddhist centers and temples in the U.S. 🧘🏽

A Map of Buddhism in the United States An interactive map of all the Buddhist centers in the United States.

As recommended by Buddhist Coalition For Democracy .

"As liberation theologians, however, the starting point is the poor and the marginal, not a general “we.” By adopting this more specific standpoint, liberationists are not committing some metaphysical crime of dualism in defending a preferential option for the poor any more than a doctor who has a preferential option for treating someone with a severed leg over someone with a cold."

"This pointed attention is born of direct understanding that triaging suffering — and therefore attending first to material misery — is a requirement for a bodhisattva focused on ending dukkha (suffering) in the world."

"If the leg is used to ignore a cold or a cold the leg, the dharma (path) is lost.

As bodhisattvas, we can attend to the severed leg without losing empathy for the one with a cold. We can name catastrophic violence without exiling less severe forms of violence from our sense of concern. But the spiritual necessity of recognizing the latter should never lead us to negate acting to stop the enormous harm of the former."

"It is no small matter that while the Buddha never neglected the dukkha (suffering) associated with a life of protected indulgence, it was the lived, material suffering of the poor beyond the palace walls that drove him into a life of seeking the dharma. The scriptures are clear that the bodhisattva path is one of responding to the whole of interconnected suffering, yet some forms because of their dire immediacy must move us more urgently."

Toward a More Skillful Mode of Buddhist Political Speech "Knowing that so many are engaged in resisting the current violences and attacks on democracy in our nation," writes Gregory Snyder, "my hope is that our Buddhist communities will continue to work to develop a place that encourages our political voices."

"Every action, no matter how small, has consequences and can contribute to the well-being of the world."

🧘🏾 Interested in meditating but don't know where to start?
Here are some free resources (including apps/guided meditations, virtual gatherings, and in-person local opportunities!) – please add your own recommendations in the comments❣️

⏰ “Insight Timer” offers approximately 268,417 free meditations and is available via app or website:
https://insighttimer.com/guided-meditations

✌🏿 BlackFULLness app offers culturally rooted practices that restore peace, reduce stress, and reconnect us to joy. This is how we thrive - softly, boldly, and fully.
https://www.blackfullness.com/

💌 Tara Brach offers a library of guided meditations:
https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations-archive/page/39/?et_blog

🖥️ Here are a couple of virtual gathering options:
🫂 Local: Prairie Zen Center out of Champaign, IL (weekday and Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings):
http://www.prairiezen.org/text/weekly_practice_sessions.htm

🌍 National: Buddhist Coalition for Democracy (Wednesdays at lunchtime):
https://www.buddhistcoalitionfordemocracy.org/series/bcd-weekly-meditation-group/

👣 All are welcome!
Local in-person options include:
The Buddhist Temple off W. Jefferson in Springfield -- free and available by appointment with a monk on-site who offers instruction in both walking and seated silent meditation:
https://chanmyayusa.org/
(217) 726-9601

🚶🏾‍♀️ Saturday morning Zen at the Universalist Unitarian congregation in Springfield, starting at 8am.
https://prairiezen.org/Affiliates.html

List of Top Guided Meditations 267,200 Guided Meditations, Talks and Music Tracks. Browse the most popular and newest tracks from the largest collection of free guided meditations online. Listen and Explore now for free.

The book that finally told me it was okay to be a mess

I picked up Start Where You Are on a day when everything felt hard. You know those days when you’ve snapped at someone you love, avoided a difficult conversation, and then spent the evening scrolling through social media feeling like everyone else has life figured out except you.

I expected a book about compassion to make me feel calm and enlightened. Instead, Pema Chödrön did something far better: she looked at my chaos, my impatience, my secret fears, and she said, “Good. Start there.”

This isn’t a book about fixing yourself or ascending to some perfect, zen-like state. It’s a gentle, radical invitation to stop running away from your own life. Pema teaches that the very things we hate about ourselves our jealousy, our anxiety, our short temper are actually our greatest teachers. She calls them “raw material for awakening.”

What made me weep (in a good way) was her chapter on “No Such Thing as a True Story.” She explains how our brains constantly craft dramatic narratives about why we’re unlovable or why someone wronged us. And then she whispers that we don’t have to believe those stories. Reading that felt like someone unclenching a fist I didn’t know I’d been holding for thirty years.

The most relatable part? Pema doesn’t demand you meditate for an hour a day or move to a monastery. She asks you to simply pause the next time you feel angry or sad, and breathe. That’s it. Right where you are in the grocery line, in traffic, in the middle of an argument. She gives you permission to be a beginner, to fall down, and to start again. And again. And again.

If you’re tired of pretending you have it all together, if you’re exhausted from trying to outrun your own difficult emotions, read this book. It’s like a warm cup of tea from a wise, laughing friend who has seen it all and still believes in your goodness.

Start Where You Are won’t change you overnight. But it will change the way you talk to yourself tomorrow morning and sometimes, that small shift is everything.