Dear friends, our annual Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau is just over two months away. Join us!
Bernie Glassman and Krishna Das met soon after the 2015 Native American Bearing Witness Retreat in the Black Hills and shared about the practice of Bearing Witness and their personal moving experiences of the retreats in South Dakota USA and Auschwitz-Birkenau Poland.
BERNIE: So 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, and then try to figure why. I think the biggest reason is fear.
KD: I had a lot of fear before my first retreat.
I thought, how am I gonna deal with this? Just the fear of going, being in that place where so much suffering happened and so much torture and so much inhumanity was manifest.
It was, I just didn’t know what was gonna happen to me, you know?
To go, and go through the process and the practice of being in the camp — it was very freeing from that fear that I had.
Just on that simple level.
And then to be talking about fear, how much fear there must have been in the camp at the time during the war. It was extraordinary…
I remember when you gave me those eight lines to work on from The Gates of Sweet Nectar, the actual translation as you gave it to me, the last line was “all of your sorrow, I make it mine,” which is the Bodhisattva taking on the sorrows of the world.
So when I brought that to you, you said, “Oh, I want the joy too, you got to put that in there.” So I changed it to “your joy and your sorrow.” It’s more inclusive…
That first time I was in Auschwitz, I had my harmonium with me because I had been singing in Europe. I took it into the women’s barracks and I sang Gopala, Gopala, which is the child Krishna. And I felt [the women spirits] felt such joy from that, because they were remembering their children and the love that they had for their children. That was a very beautiful experience, completely unexpected.
BERNIE: I think that’s the beauty of the Bearing Witness, is that what comes out is never really what is expected. There’s no planning it.
KD: Yes, there’s no planning it.
BERNIE: We just open, bearing witness and letting it be.
From ”What Shall I Sing to You” A Conversation with Krishna Das & Bernie Glassman
Join us.
Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau
November 15-21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
Zen Peacemakers from all over the world and all walks of life will gather again in Auschwitz-Birkenau this November to bear witness to the joy and suffering of life together. We invite you to join us.
Learn more and register here
and/or
support the retreat and the diversity of those attending through scholarships by donating here
