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.

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.

Learn More - Click Here

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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

Reserve your Spot

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

Reserve your Spot

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)

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

Reserve your Spot

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

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.

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.

Learn More - Click Here

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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)

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

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

Reserve your Spot

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

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.

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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)

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

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

Reserve your Spot

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

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.

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.

Reserve your Spot

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

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)

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

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

Reserve your Spot

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

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.

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

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

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.

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.

Reserve your Spot

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)

Friday, June 19th - Women Only Council
Monday, June 22nd - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers - Council
Tuesday, June 30th - 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

Reserve your Spot

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

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.

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

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

THE FACE I SEE EVERYWHERE

Why Barbara Wegmüller Returns to Auschwitz

There is the face of a woman, looking at me, ever since I met her eyes for the first time. She is looking at me in one of the pictures in a memorial hall in Auschwitz I, the original camp. The photo shows her as she is waiting with her children and a group of women at the selection site. Her face shows disgust, fear, distress, and she seems to know what will happen to her and her children as she looks into the camera.

Her face appears so clearly in my heartmind. I see her face when I am listening to the stories of a woman living in Kongo today, giving a interview to a western journalist. Also in the family arriving as refugees, exhausted, on the shores of Italy, coming from Eritrea. I see it in the activist couple who escaped from a prison in Turkey. From the mother whose whole family was killed, now speaking out at the tribunal in Den Haag, telling what happened to them during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I see her face as well in the women remembered at the Ravensbrück museum, and in the faces of my friends who still treasure the key to their house in Palestine that they had to leave so long ago.

Bearing Witness at Auschwitz has made me much more aware, personal and political. I feel the energy of this woman as my own, when I stand for human rights, writing letters to bring refugees to a safer place, open my door to people who escaped from dangerous places, and when I beg for relief projects for people in need.

I also follow the call to just listen, to listen to the voices of all the courageous people who join in a group with the wish to drop deeply into the essence, what it means to be a human among humans, looking at what we are as individuals and as a collective.

The retreat also gives me the gift of listening to the voices of the earth, of the sky and the wind. This deep listening reminds me of my duty, to take my place humbly in the circle of life and be present and open for what is, moment by moment.

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.

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)

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

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

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.

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

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

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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

Can we bear to look at what we have not confessed to ourselves? Can we hear what we do not know? Can we stir the ocean with the broken stick of our aspirations? Can we free all creations?

No one answer, can hold the truth of a good heart. Thus, we stopped in our Council practice when it was our time to send our voice, to speak what we did not know and could not understand, and to listen to many voices
and many broken hearts. ~ Joan Halifax

BEARING WITNESS RETREAT

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.

PEACEMAKER CIRCLE

Zen Caregiving Project

Wednesday, May 27th, 12:00pm US Eastern Time, Zoom

Zen Caregiving Project, formerly known as Zen Hospice Project, was founded in 1986 to address suffering in San Francisco. Rooted in Zen Buddhist tradition, they began training volunteer caregivers to serve dying residents at two sites of service. ZCP nurtures caregivers and those they care for by teaching skills rooted in mindfulness and compassion while fostering connections. Join Executive Director, Roy Remer to learn more about this important work.

Register Here

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)

Tuesday, June 2nd - Way of Council
Friday, June 19th - Women Only Council
Monday, June 22nd - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers - Council
Tuesday, June 30th - Way of Council

A PRAYER FOR PEACE

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.

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

TAKING ACTION

Illness, aging, and dying are not separate from life—they are life.These moments ask something of us: to stay present where we might otherwise turn away. Through the Three Tenets, we begin here. Not-Knowing invites us to release our ideas about what this time should look like. Bearing Witness brings us into direct contact with vulnerability, grief, and care—just as they are. Taking Action arises within this intimacy, in how we show up moment by moment. As we sit with those who are ill, dying, or grieving, we begin to notice our own fear, our discomfort, our impulse to fix or withdraw. In that moment, there is an opportunity to not turn away, and remain present—to meet life as it is.

✨ 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

ENTER HERE

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

PURCHASE HERE

One reason I’m drawn to these charnel-ground-like practices is that they simply accentuate what we all deal with day-in and day-out in our lives. In this type of practice I am able to bring mindfulness and awareness to the suffering of the world and bear witness to it. We all experience charnel grou…

When I am bound inside my own skin and others are bound inside theirs, I have to defend and protect myself from them.
And when I do place myself among them, I must do it carefully, which is hard work, because I am often hurt, opposed, and thwarted by others.
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