Zen Peacemakers

Synchronized Gatherings Across Sites of Nazi Persecution and Genocide

Zen Peacemakers invites our Affiliates, European Peacemakers, and friends to join in a shared act of remembrance across Europe.

This is a shared practice held across distance — a way for people in different places to enter the same field of remembrance, presence, and bearing witness.

Participants may gather at one of the suggested locations, or name another local site during registration: a camp, sub-camp, transit site, memorial location, rail site, or nearby place of historical significance.

Peacemakers Circle

Join The Lotus Institute’s Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward and Emanuel Ward, son of Dr. Larry Ward, for an intimate gathering centered on Morning Night, Larry’s posthumously published collection of poetry.

Wednesday, July 29th
12:00 PM US Eastern

WAY OF COUNCIL

Council is one of our most important core Zen Peacemaker practices. We share Council during our Bearing Witness retreats almost every day. In Council, we come together in a small group in a profound way. We create a shared liminal space that is safe, confidential, and perhaps sacred. We each listen and speak from the heart, encountering and experiencing one another gently and with awareness. We are not solving problems, debating issues, or making plans. We are making a healing space for each of us to hear and be heard, see and be seen.

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Wednesday, July 29th - Way of Council
Saturday, August 1st - The Way of Council with Aus-NZ Peacemaker Council
Tuesday, August 11th - The Way of Council with Kineret Ando Yardena
Monday, August 17th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers Council
Friday, August 21st - Women Only Council

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

Hello Family!

Our dear Lakota relative, Violet Catches, would like to invite Zen Peacemakers from all around the world to join on the Fourth Friday of the month at 1:00 pm US Eastern Time, to offer prayers for peace. Participants will be encouraged to offer prayers from their faith tradition, culture, and in their language.

In peace & gratitude-

Michel Engu Dobbs

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008592778

TAKING ACTION

Equality across gender is not just policy—it is lived dignity.

Through the Three Tenets, we practice:

Not-Knowing: Releasing assumptions about gender roles and identities.
Bearing Witness: Listening to the realities of women, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ people.
Taking Action: Supporting advocacy, shelters, and empowerment programs.

Daily Practice: Notice your language, bias, and choices. Practice equality in small daily encounters.

Get Involved: Connect with organizations advancing gender equity and safety.

Learn more here: https://zenpeacemakers.org/taking-action-home/taking-action-gender-equality

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Experience a connection with your personal landscape through the transformative power of online meditation sessions with the Zen Peacemakers. Whether you're part of a local sangha or other spiritual community, we invite you to join us in this virtual space where we can gather across geographies and time zones.

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

‘It’s just my opinion, man’, as Bernie would say. We all have our opinions about Roshi Bernie Glassman. To some of us, he is the stern head monk at Zen Center of LA; to others, he is the socially engaged Buddhist who built up the Greyston Bakery and Foundation. To others he is the founder of Zen Peacemakers International and the instigator of bearing witness plunges on the city streets and at Auschwitz and to others he is the clown, the founder of the Order of Disorder. He is all of these and more. As the stories in the book show, he is Bernie, the mensch, who spent his life feeding the hungry ghosts of society and teaching that Zen is to realize the oneness and interconnectedness of life.

-Gerry Shishin Wick, grateful Dharma brother and disciple of Roshi Bernie

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

Bernie Glassman: What happens when we bear witness in Auschwitz-Birkenau?

Zen Peacemakers — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:03:04 GMT

From Why Bernie Kept Going Back to Auschwitz-Birkenau article adapted from writing by Zen Peacemakers founder Bernie Glassman about his returning to Auschwitz-Birkenau year-after-year, and the purpose it has served for both him and other peacemakers.

Every year since 1994, Zen Peacemakers have traveled to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a Bearing Witness Retreat. We spend a week sitting by the train tracks in the death camp, meditating and reciting the names of people who died there.

There, we practice three Core Tenets: letting go of our fixed ideas; bearing witness to joy and suffering, and loving actions.

At Auschwitz, it is not hard to let go of fixed ideas

The place itself, with its endless gray skies overlooking miles of barbed wire and crumbling extermination compounds, is so terrifying that no matter how much we prepare for the visit, no matter how much we’ve read about it or pondered, it overwhelms us.

Ruins of Barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Even if you’ve seen the exhibits more than once and have even walked several times down the endless railroad tracks that once brought so many to their end, there’s one thing you can still count on:

Your expectations, your preconceptions, your most basic belief systems concerning love and hate, good and evil, will be annihilated in the face of Auschwitz.

In fact, after seeing the endless photographs of dying camp inmates and the high piles of their belongings pillaged by the Nazis, and after visiting Birkenau and viewing the remains of that meticulous technology developed for the purpose of mass extermination and genocide, we stop thinking altogether.

As writers and philosophers have already said, there’s no language for Auschwitz.

I can only add, there are no thoughts, either. We are in a place of unknowing.

After walking through Auschwitz and Birkenau, there is an end to thought. We are numbed. All we can do is see the endless train tracks on the snow, feel the icy cold of a Polish winter on our bare hands, smell the rotting wood in the few remaining barracks, and listen to the names of the dead.

At Birkenau we don’t sit in silence, we chant names. First, we sit in a large circle around the railroad tracks, at what was once the Selection Site, directly opposite the crematoriums. A shofar blows to start the meditation period, and then four different people, each sitting at a different point on the rim of the circle, begin to chant the names of those who’d died at Auschwitz. The names come from official lists compiled by the SS. They’re also provided to us by various retreat participants, obtained from memory, family, and friends.

Chanting Names at the Selection Site

The Book of Names installation in Block 27 created by Yad Vashem commemorating over 4,800,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust

We are a global group, so the names are chanted by American, Irish, Dutch, Italian, German, Swiss, Israeli, Polish, and French voices. The names themselves are also from a multitude of languages. Everyone gets their turn.

Across the large circle, we hear the names. Sometimes one resembles the name of a co-worker back home, or of a friend. Sometimes the chanter pauses. She’s come across a name that’s exactly like her own. For telling names is like telling stories.

When we recite the name out loud, dead bones come to life, the bones of men, women, and children from all over Europe. They lived, some grew up, some married, some had children, and all died.

Their names become our names, their stories, our stories.

That is what happens when we bear witness.

~ Bernie Tetsugen Glassman

Join us in Bearing Witness this November

This year, Zen Peacemakers from all over the world and all walks of life - Jews and Poles and Germans, Palestinians and Israelis, Buddhists and Christians and Atheists, descendants of victims and descendants of perpetrators - will gather again in Auschwitz-Birkenau to read the names, hear the stories, and bear witness to the joy and suffering of life together.

Scholarships are available to support those from a wide range of backgrounds and means in attending.

We invite you to join us.

Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau
November 15-21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Learn more and register here

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE PEACEMAKER JOURNAL:

Remember

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:07:29 GMT

Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness with Native Americans (July 2026)

Remember

Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

“Remember.” Copyright © 1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo.

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

Hello Family!

In peace & gratitude-

Michel Engu Dobbs

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008592778

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Synchronized Gatherings Across Sites of Nazi Persecution and Genocide

Zen Peacemakers invites our Affiliates, European Peacemakers, and friends to join in a shared act of remembrance across Europe.

This is a shared practice held across distance — a way for people in different places to enter the same field of remembrance, presence, and bearing witness.

Peacemakers Circle

Join The Lotus Institute’s Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward and Emanuel Ward, son of Dr. Larry Ward, for an intimate gathering centered on Morning Night, Larry’s posthumously published collection of poetry.

Wednesday, July 29th
12:00 PM US Eastern

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

TAKING ACTION

Spiritual traditions are many, yet the divisions we experience are not only between them, they are also within us, in the ways we hold views and define what is “true” or “other.” Through the Three Tenets, we begin here. Not-Knowing invites us to loosen our attachment to fixed ideas about religion and belief. Bearing Witness brings us into direct relationship with the practices, rituals, and lived experiences of others. Taking Action arises within this encounter, not from agreement, but from staying present in difference.As we engage across traditions, in dialogue, shared practice, or collaboration, we begin to notice our own assumptions, our preferences, our subtle habits of separation. In that moment, there is an opportunity to remain present and meet one another more openly.This may look like participating in interfaith initiatives, building relationships across traditions, or working together to address shared needs. The work is not about resolving difference, but about how we meet it.
Learn more here: https://zenpeacemakers.org/taking-action-home/taking-action-interfaith

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

Learn more about the retreat, scholarships, and registration here.

Why Go to Auschwitz?

Zen Peacemakers — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:07:28 GMT

From Letter to Bernie Glassman about Auschwitz Retreat ~ from Natalie Goldberg

In June 2011 Bernie Glassman brought another group to Auschwitz to Bear Witness. A hundred and fifty of us traveled from all over the world to attend.

Six months before the trip great terror haunted me in the night. Unnamed, unconscious fears.

When I taught in Houston I went to the Holocaust Museum there. As I walked along the aisles of the exhibit I was concentrated, analytic. Good information, I thought, for my trip. And when it was done, I burst out the front door, literally ran to a chocolate shop and ate three ice creams right in a row. There was no way I could wrap my head around the material. I had taught it. But I had always kept it at a distance.

Three months before the retreat I was giving a keynote at a conference in Washington, D.C. I spent six hours at the grand Holocaust museum there. I went alone. Again, I was concentrated, took in every detail in the way I can as a writer, even-minded. The moment I left, the experience left me. I did not think of it once during the conference.

Home, six days later, I woke up trembling, full of anxiety.

Finally, by three in the afternoon, I surrendered, not trying just to get through my day, I turned on the computer and turned to the pain. My hands ran across the keys, my eyes closed, I shook and sobbed.

My adored grandfather escaped the pogrom in Russia by coming to America in the early Twentieth Century but they hadn’t stopped looking for us. I was sure now they knew where I was and were coming to my door in Santa Fe any minute. They were climbing over the fence, no place to escape; as I wrote I kept glancing out the window. Any minute now – my whole body felt this, I would be taken away. I completely believed it as fact.

My family never spoke about pogroms. I was born in 1948 when the horror of the German concentration camps was just coming out. None of it was ever mentioned in my family but like serum, the panic was injected straight into my veins, unconscious, undigested. Going to the museum in Washington made it come alive.

Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus who have been selected for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau walk toward the gas chambers. | source

When I finally arrived at Auschwitz, I realized I knew this place.

I’d carried it in me all my life and though no known relatives had died there, all the murdered beings we could feel in the tall late spring grass were my people. And I, too, had died there.

I was not separate.

I kept repeating to myself, this is the darkest of the dark.

Unexplainable, inconceivable and yet it happened.

Zen Peacemakers walk along the railroad tracks to the Selection Site at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The bookstore at Auschwitz was full of memoirs, accounts of survivors, histories of World War II, what happened to Jews in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Denmark, Slovenia. We brought back piles of books, videos of what was seen when the camps were freed by the Russians. We wanted to know, to understand, to make sense – but there was no sense.

I thought reading about King Leopold [and his atrocities in the Congo], Rwanda, what the British did to the Mau Maus, had readied me. But the [Nazi] Germans had taken genocide to an industrial level. They used every part of the Jews. Even their ashes were shipped to Germany to fertilize their fields.

I came home and lived in the world of the camps. I gave talks about our experience. I told people that we need to also understand the guilt and shame of the Germans and the suffering of war.

And then one day as I was embroiled in thoughts, some daily controversy, I heard someone across the room mention Auschwitz. The word went through me and love spontaneously flooded my whole body, legs, chest, knees, arms, whole face lit up.

Auschwitz had become synonymous with love.

Dare I say that?

I no longer carried all the cremated Jews unconsciously around with me. I acknowledged them and gained strength from them. The Germans weren’t my enemy. I was free. No horror couldn’t be faced.

Everything Bernie said about going to Auschwitz is true. The words are not separate from the experience. It all bleeds together. I thank him for having such a large vision of what [life] can be.

Join us in Bearing Witness in Auschwitz this November

This year, Zen Peacemakers from all over the world and all walks of life will gather again in Auschwitz-Birkenau to bear witness. Jews and Poles and Germans, Palestinians and Israelis, Buddhists and Christians and Atheists, descendants of victims and descendants of perpetrators will all sit in the same silence, share the same meals, read the names aloud, and bear witness together.

Scholarships are available to support those from diverse backgrounds and means in attending.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness Retreat
Oświęcim, Poland
November 15-21, 2026

Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, writer, and painter. A student of Zen Buddhism for 24 years, she trained intensively with Katagiri Roshi for 12 years, and is ordained in the Order of Interbeing with Thich Nhat Hanh. Natalie teaches writing workshops nationally based on the methods presented in Writing Down the Bones. Her other books include Wild Mind; Long Quiet Highway; Banana Rose; and Living Color.

Plunge

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:32:10 GMT

得失是非，一時放卻。
Gain and loss, right and wrong—
release them all at once.

Photo by Liana S

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Synchronized Gatherings Across Sites of Nazi Persecution and Genocide

Zen Peacemakers invites our Affiliates, European Peacemakers, and friends to join in a shared act of remembrance across Europe.

This is a shared practice held across distance — a way for people in different places to enter the same field of remembrance, presence, and bearing witness.

Peacemakers Circle

In 1986, I was first introduced to the phrase, “Taking your practice off your cushion,” by Thich Nhat Hanh. That has been a wonderful koan to me for the past 40 years. A year later I began studying Japanese Psychology. Naikan Therapy offers a path to questioning the stories we carry with us and seeing our relationships with others through a different lens. In our time together, and through stories, maxims and poetry, I hope to share with you ideas and principles from Japanese Psychology and explore, in dialogue, whether, and how, this might fit into your own life and spiritual path in the Zen Peacemakers tradition.

Wednesday, July 15th
12:00 PM US Eastern

Gregg Krech has been studying and teaching Japanese Psychology for 39 years. He is the author of five books including “Tunneling for Sunlight: Living Wisdom from Buddhism and Japanese Psychology to Cope with Difficult Times”. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and on Public Radio. He is the Director of the ToDo Institute in Vermont.

Peacemakers Circle

Join The Lotus Institute’s Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward and Emanuel Ward, son of Dr. Larry Ward, for an intimate gathering centered on Morning Night, Larry’s posthumously published collection of poetry.

Wednesday, July 29th
12:00 PM US Eastern

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Friday, July 17th - Women Only Council
Monday, July 20th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers Council
Wednesday, July 29th - Way of Council

Core Training

Bernie Glassman articulated the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers early in the evolution of the organization. But these three, simple, profound, vows or commitments can also be taken as a complete practice for our life:

I will embody Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
I will Bear Witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
I will take Loving Action arising out of not-knowing and bearing witness.

We can practice and manifest our true selves in every situation and with everything that arises, using the Three Tenets. This is a lifelong practice, one we never complete on our hourlong session we will present and describe the Three Tenets and have time to take your questions.

Duration: 60 minutes - Format: Presentation

TAKING ACTION

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

There’s great power in the place where life and death come together.

Zen Peacemakers — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:24:06 GMT

From Long Long Ago: Reflections on How It All Started by Eve Marko

I accompanied Bernie Glassman to Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1994, before anyone conceived of a bearing witness retreat at the site of the concentration camps.

[During that first visit,] I experienced a profound act of letting go. Certain things changed radically afterwards, first of which was my relationship to German people and the German language. But that was only a beginning.

That, too, was the day I heard Bernie speak out his resolution to do a retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau and bring others with him. It would be an opportunity for people to engage with others about their relationship to this place. And not just with others, but also with Others, with those who personified their fears and hatreds.

Twenty years [now thirty] have come and gone, twenty years of personal narratives from many different people, including different narratives from the same people as they’ve come back again and again. Some are stories about being Jewish and losing members of your family in the camps; some are about being German or Polish, about being gay or Gypsy. Many participants have only a tangential relationship to what took place at Auschwitz, but they too have their stories about the things that have marked their lives.

Execution Wall at Auschwitz 1

German participants have talked about the secrets in their families; Poles talked about the silence in theirs. Palestinians and Native Americans have inveighed against the loss of their land, Rwandans wept about their own massacre. Who hasn’t had her story of loss—a son, a daughter, a parent, a future? Who hasn’t been blamed? Nazis, Germans, Poles, Israelis, Europeans, Americans, President Clinton, Saddam Hussein, and yes, even Jews. What hasn’t been expressed during these retreats? Anger, rage, self-righteousness, indignation. It’s so easy to be offended, especially by superficial opinions that barely seem to scratch the surface, or sudden laughter and giggly gossip by people who for the moment forget they’re standing in the middle of the world’s biggest cemetery.

Certain words came up often, like healing and transformation. You don’t come to a giant cemetery for healing, a participant raged one year. I agree, but nevertheless, it can find you.

Ash Pond at Birkenau

What started out twenty years ago as mourning my own dead, grieving for what happened to the Jews of Europe, became over time something quite different.

Meeting this place is meeting my own self.

There is great power in the place where life and death come together.

How do you meet this place, I’ve asked myself each November, year in and year out. Each time the answer has been different. For meeting this place is meeting my own self in the form of Auschwitz.

Don’t do this work for yourselves or for the people who come, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement, said back in 1996 when Bernie talked to him about that first retreat. Do it for the souls that are there.

Right now it’s no longer just the past that calls out to me from the ruler-straight railway tracks and the remains of chimneys. Rather, the past has reached its tentacles to shadowy corners of our present and our future, too, giving Auschwitz, with its stones and rubble, a timeless quality. But it is no abstraction.

Something there is deeply present and continues to cry out, warn, remonstrate, implore, and summon forth our energies again and again.

Join us in Bearing Witness in Auschwitz-Birkenau this November

Zen Peacemakers will gather in Auschwitz once again this November to bear witness, sitting at the Selection Site, chanting the names of the dead, sharing in both silence and council. Together, we will meet ourselves in this place and listen to what it has to teach us.

Join us in Bearing Witness in Auschwitz. Learn more and register here.

What unlocks us?

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:02:54 GMT

“What unlocks us? What opens up deep traumas that I believe go way back before our parents’ stories, before our childhood, even before our birth? Therapists can help us deal with issues of our lifetime, but what about the karma of history, the fears of multiple generations? How do we finally confront streams of fear and hate that seem as old as time?” ~ Eve Marko

Photo by Ethan Bouffard-Roy

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Synchronized Gatherings Across Sites of Nazi Persecution and Genocide

Zen Peacemakers invites our Affiliates, European Peacemakers, and friends to join in a shared act of remembrance across Europe.

This is a shared practice held across distance — a way for people in different places to enter the same field of remembrance, presence, and bearing witness.

Peacemakers Circle

Ben Connelly will present stories and lessons from a wide variety of Buddhist and Interfaith work as part of the nonviolent response to the violence brought by federal officers to the Minnesota community in 2026.

He will tie these lessons to a variety of Buddhist teachings and practices and to long lineages of practice in countering state violence and creating collective liberation.

This offering will include a variety of modes of dialogue and meditation practice.

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups, and works with multi-faith groups focused on social and climate justice. Ben is the guiding teacher at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara, Mindfulness and Intimacy, Vasubandhu's "Three Natures", and Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.

Peacemakers Circle

Wednesday, July 15th
12:00 PM US Eastern

Gregg Krech has been studying and teaching Japanese Psychology for 39 years. He is the author of five books including “Tunneling for Sunlight: Living Wisdom from Buddhism and Japanese Psychology to Cope with Difficult Times”. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and on Public Radio. He is the Director of the ToDo Institute in Vermont.

Peacemakers Circle

Join The Lotus Institute’s Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward and Emanuel Ward, son of Dr. Larry Ward, for an intimate gathering centered on Morning Night, Larry’s posthumously published collection of poetry.

Wednesday, July 29th
12:00 PM US Eastern

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Friday, July 17th - Women Only Council
Monday, July 20th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers Council
Wednesday, July 29th - Way of Council

Core Training

I will embody Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
I will Bear Witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
I will take Loving Action arising out of not-knowing and bearing witness.

Duration: 60 minutes - Format: Presentation

TAKING ACTION

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

Listening Creates Belonging

Zen Peacemakers — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 06:01:16 GMT

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, we shares the story of Jennifer Dohrn — midwife, activist, longtime student of Zen, and a person whose life has been shaped by the simple, radical practice of listening.

At the heart of this episode is the birthing center she helped build in the South Bronx of New York.

Created for women and families who had often been pushed to the edges of healthcare, the center became more than a medical facility. It became a living response to the community around it.

This is an episode about what becomes possible when we truly listen to the people around us — and allow that listening to guide our action.

If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.

Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.org

We invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.

Show Credits:

Speaker: Jennifer Dohrn
Interview Conducted by: Ewa Orczykowska
Recording Date: January 17, 2025
Hosts: Jim Hōden Fricker
Audio Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

The Places We Are Afraid to Go

Zen Peacemakers — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:02:02 GMT

For thirty years, each November, Zen Peacemakers have gone to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place that has become a monument to intolerance. We come to sit. To face what most of us spend our lives turning away from.

We call this bearing witness.

Shortly after the 20th anniversary of the first bearing witness retreat in Auschwitz, Roshi Bernie Glassman shared what drew him to this place:

The first time I went to Auschwitz, when I walked into Birkenau, I could just feel all the spirits crying out, wanting to be remembered. And so right away I said, I’ve gotta come here and sit and be with those spirits.
It struck me, pretty much right away, that there were all kinds of spirits there. That was a place many Jews were killed, but gypsies and Catholics and intellectuals and gays and people with handicap — so many different kinds.
I felt like I should try to bring as many different kinds of people there to be together, and to see how we can deal with each other.

Jews and Poles and Germans, Buddhists and Christians and the unaffiliated, descendants of victims and descendants of perpetrators — all sitting in the same silence, sharing the same meals, reading the same names aloud.

A place that holds everyone

In Buddhism, Bernie noted, the word for compassion carries two meanings at once: one is compassion as we usually understand it, and the other is removal of fear.

We all talk about the interconnectedness of life. The oneness of life. But if we look carefully at ourselves and see how many aspects of life we shy away from or won’t come in contact with, and then try to figure out why — I think the biggest reason is fear.
What I found for myself was, I needed to go to places where I didn’t want to know what was going on, where I felt I had to stay away, or I was afraid of it. And so those are the places I went.
I think that there’s certain things that we’re afraid of and we stay away. So we’re not in touch with that part of life.
Our work in compassion is to remove fear.
So we go to Auschwitz.

Photo Credit : Peter Cunningham

Going beyond fear

In a council group at one of the retreats in Auschwitz sat a German woman whose grandfather had been SS at the camp. She had waited fifteen years to come, afraid she would meet a Jew or a Pole. In the same group sat a man from Krakow who had waited ten years, afraid he would meet a German. They had each spent most of a lifetime avoiding the other.

After four days, they were hugging.

The spectrum of life that each of them could touch had widened enormously.

We do the same in street retreats, where people who would normally cross the road to avoid someone who is homeless instead spend days on the street and learn to ask a simple question: How are you? What’s your name? And also when we sit in the Black Hills with Lakota elders, and listen as they share about boarding schools, beatings, and the graves of children.

We begin in Not-Knowing, setting down our certainty about a place, a history, a person. We Bear Witness to whatever is arising and meet it just as it is. And then, from that intimacy, Taking Action arises – the hug after four days, the name remembered, the ability to respond with love instead of fear.

To go beyond the fear and to celebrate in the diversity of life — that’s beautiful. - Bernie Tetsugen Glassman

Join us this November

We invite you to join Zen Peacemakers in Auschwitz-Birkenau for the Bearing Witness Retreat this year. We will sit together on the selection site, read the names in remembrance, share silence and council and song, and let this place do what it has done for thirty years: open us to one another, and to the parts of life we are most afraid to meet.

Join us in Auschwitz this November. Learn more and register here.

PEACEMAKERS PODCAST

Bernie Glassman and Krishna Das - On Bearing Witness at Auschwitz/Birkenau

A place that holds everyone

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:23:00 GMT

“We all talk about the interconnectedness of life. The oneness of life. But if we look carefully at ourselves and see how many aspects of life we shy away from or won’t come in contact with, and then try to figure out why — I think the biggest reason is fear. Our work in compassion is to remove fear.” ~ Bernie Glassman

Calligraphy by Kazuaki “Kaz” Tanahashi

In Buddhism, Bernie noted, the word for compassion carries two meanings at once: one is compassion as we usually understand it, and the other is removal of fear.

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Synchronized Gatherings Across Sites of Nazi Persecution and Genocide

Zen Peacemakers invites our Affiliates, European Peacemakers, and friends to join in a shared act of remembrance across Europe.

This is a shared practice held across distance — a way for people in different places to enter the same field of remembrance, presence, and bearing witness.

Peacemakers Circle

He will tie these lessons to a variety of Buddhist teachings and practices and to long lineages of practice in countering state violence and creating collective liberation.

This offering will include a variety of modes of dialogue and meditation practice.

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups, and works with multi-faith groups focused on social and climate justice. Ben is the guiding teacher at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara, Mindfulness and Intimacy, Vasubandhu's "Three Natures", and Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.

Peacemakers Circle

Gregg Krech has been studying and teaching Japanese Psychology for 39 years. He is the author of five books including “Tunneling for Sunlight: Living Wisdom from Buddhism and Japanese Psychology to Cope with Difficult Times”. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and on Public Radio. He is the Director of the ToDo Institute in Vermont.

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Tuesday, June 30th - Way of Council
Tuesday, July 7th - The Way of Council - Eldering without Children
Friday, July 17th - Women Only Council
Monday, July 20th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers Council
Wednesday, July 29th - Way of Council

Core Training

I will embody Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
I will Bear Witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
I will take Loving Action arising out of not-knowing and bearing witness.

Duration: 60 minutes - Format: Presentation

TAKING ACTION

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

Love as It Is Given

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:06:48 GMT

Photo by Claire Chang

Nurtured by Love

by Shinichi Suzuki
Excerpt from Gregg Krech

Life was wretched in Japan right after the end of World War II. The winters in Matsumoto are severe, and there are days when the temperature falls to 13 or 18 degrees below zero centigrade. On one of those days my sister returned from an errand, and, as she shook off the snow, she said, “In all this cold, there is a wounded soldier standing on the bridge down by Hon-machi, begging. He is standing there shivering in this driving snow, and nobody is putting any money in the box at his feet… I wanted to invite him in to sit in our kotatsu in our warm room and give him some tea.”

I immediately replied, “You merely wanted to?”

She answered yes, and suddenly ran out into the street. I made the room warmer, stirred up the fire in the kotatsu, got out some cookies somebody had sent us as a gift, and waited. About thirty minutes later my sister came back with the white-clad, wounded soldier. “This lady insisted…” he began to explain.

“You are very welcome; do come in.” Koji and I urged him into the kotatsu with us, and we sat and talked about all sorts of things. Finally he asked me for the second time, “Why are you so kind to me?”

“My sister happened to see you,” I replied, “and insisted on inviting you in.”

“It’s the first time anyone has… and today was so cold and miserable,” he said.

He told us about his experience in the war, and how he was going from place to place collecting money for the wounded soldiers, and we talked and talked for three hours, until he got warm again. He then got up, saying he had to go to Nagano. At the front door, in spite of his protestations that I already had been far too kind, I put some money in his box, saying jokingly that it was just compensation for causing him to lose a half day’s business, and anyway it was not his own personal box and so he had no right to refuse.

Afterward, my sister said to me, “You taught me an excellent lesson.” Indeed, it was our first exercise in “If you want to do something, do it.”

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Peacemakers Circle

He will tie these lessons to a variety of Buddhist teachings and practices and to long lineages of practice in countering state violence and creating collective liberation.

This offering will include a variety of modes of dialogue and meditation practice.

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups, and works with multi-faith groups focused on social and climate justice. Ben is the guiding teacher at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara, Mindfulness and Intimacy, Vasubandhu's "Three Natures", and Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.

Peacemakers Circle

Gregg Krech has been studying and teaching Japanese Psychology for 39 years. He is the author of five books including “Tunneling for Sunlight: Living Wisdom from Buddhism and Japanese Psychology to Cope with Difficult Times”. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and on Public Radio. He is the Director of the ToDo Institute in Vermont.

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Core Training

I will embody Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
I will Bear Witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
I will take Loving Action arising out of not-knowing and bearing witness.

Duration: 60 minutes - Format: Presentation

TAKING ACTION

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team

Song of Dharma Nature

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:25:19 GMT

Seal of the Huayan
One Vehicle Dharma Realm

The “Song of Dharma Nature” consists of thirty lines, each with seven classical Chinese characters. These characters are arranged into a maze-like grid… Like a rolling wheel of Dharma, the characters of the poem begin in the middle of the diagram and through a winding path make their way in a general clockwise motion to arrive again in the middle, where it all began.

Excerpt from Inside the Flower Garland Sutra: Huayan Buddhism and the Modern World ~ Ben Connelly

Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat

Auschwitz-Birkenau is not an easy place to approach,
especially when you are being called,
to make whole.

November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland

Peacemakers Circle

He will tie these lessons to a variety of Buddhist teachings and practices and to long lineages of practice in countering state violence and creating collective liberation.

This offering will include a variety of modes of dialogue and meditation practice.

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups, and works with multi-faith groups focused on social and climate justice. Ben is the guiding teacher at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara, Mindfulness and Intimacy, Vasubandhu's "Three Natures", and Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.

WAY OF COUNCIL

UPCOMING COUNCILS (click on title to learn more & register)

Thursday, June 18th - Eco-Council
Friday, June 19th - Women Only Council
Monday, June 22nd - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers - Council
Tuesday, June 30th - Way of Council

Core Training

I will embody Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
I will Bear Witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
I will take Loving Action arising out of not-knowing and bearing witness.

Duration: 60 minutes - Format: Presentation

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

Participants will be encouraged to offer prayers from their faith tradition, culture, and in their language.

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008592778

TAKING ACTION

✨ Explore the Taking Action initiative — discover how you can serve, connect, and be inspired by the work already unfolding in your communities.
👉 Explore More

❤️ Your gift helps bring the Three Tenets to life.
👉 Donate Here

ZAZEN

Join us for these online meditation sessions and experience the profound benefits of collective mindfulness. The Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.

Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO HERE

HAIKU

Monthly Haiku Page
Please participate in our Haiku Poetry Challenge

OFFERING

The Bernie Koans

Edited by: Ken Byalin, Francisco "Paco" Lugovina, Christopher Panos

Thank you for reading this week's Zen Peacemakers newsletter.

We look forward to connecting at upcoming events, on social media, and via email.

With gratitude,

The Zen Peacemakers Team