Instructions on Not Giving Up (an excerpt)
Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
- Ada Limón
NOTE FROM GEOFF’S KITCHEN
Dear Peacemakers,
Friday, Feb. 20th, our Lakota Elder relative Violet Catches and Roshi Michel Engu Dobbs led a one-hour Prayer for Peace virtual gathering. We had a wonderful and engaged turnout.
Violet shared the background of the Chanupa, a sacred, ceremonial pipe used by the Lakota and other indigenous peoples of the Americas to connect the physical world with the Great Mystery, then she sang and prayed in Lakota.
Others offered prayers for peace from various spiritual traditions, in English, German, Arabic, Portuguese, by flute and in other languages.
We concluded by reading the 39 names of those who have died in the past thirteen months due to ICE activity.
We plan to continue this gathering, meeting by Zoom at 1:00 pm (1300 h) US Eastern time on the fourth Friday of each month.
Please join us via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008592778 and bring your prayers for peace.
Kind thanks, palms lightly touching,
Geoff Shōun
BEARING WITNESS RETREAT INFO SESSION
BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
Bearing Witness to Racism in America
Montgomery & Selma, Alabama | April 23–28, 2026
This retreat is not about standing at the edge of history to change the world. It is about allowing the experience to change us — to see ourselves as the other,
and the other as ourselves.
Alumni often tell us that returning to this retreat opens new layers of insight, responsibility, and compassion — both personal and collective. If this work continues to call to you, we warmly invite you to join us again, or to share this offering with others in your community.
PEACEMAKERS PODCAST
✨ 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
PEACEMAKER CIRCLE
Taking Action
Wednesday, March 4th, 12 pm Eastern Time, Zoom
Our third tenet is taking loving action from not knowing and bearing witness. This vow makes Zen Peacemakers unique. This is how we engage and reach out with helping hands to relieve suffering in our troubled world. Please join us to share your work, your project, and your own Taking Action with others.
Perspective + Empathy; Learning Beyond Your Own Lens
Wed., March 18th, 12:00 pm US Eastern Time, Zoom
Empathy helps us feel, but perspective helps us understand. This mini chat with T. Marie King explores why real learning requires both.
Jishu Memorial: Ox Class Revisited with Nancy Mujo Baker & Roshi Ken Byalin
Saturday, March 21st, 12 pm US Eastern Time, Zoom
March 20th is the anniversary of the passing of Roshi Sandra Jishu Angyo Holmes (1941-1998), the co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order and Zen priest of the White Plum Asanga. Her contribution to the Zen Peacemaker vision still reverberates today as we honor her life and service.
CORE TRAINING
Core Training: The Three Tenets with Sensei Jim Daikan Bastien
Monday, March 9th, 12 pm US Eastern Time, ZOOM
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 in our hour-long session. We will present and describe the Three Tenets and have time to take your questions.
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)
Wed., March 11th - Way of Council with Roshi Paco Genkoji
Tues., March 24th - The Way of Council with Kineret Ando Yardena
Mon., April 20th - The Way of Council with Annie Myoshin Markovich
ZEN PEACEMAKERS AFFILIATE PROGRAM
Reclaiming Peace, An Online Course Inspired by Etty Hillesum
Thursdays | 19:30–21:30 (Palestine/Israel Time)
Dates: March 5–26, 2026
We are living through a time of deep transition. Political realities, abuse of power, and ongoing injustice challenge us — as peace workers and as human beings. Many of us feel anger, grief, exhaustion, or helplessness, and yet still carry a quiet longing to contribute to a more humane world. Finding inner peace in such times is no small thing.
This course is an invitation to pause, listen inwardly, and reconnect with the sources of strength that sustain real peace work: inner freedom, spiritual resilience, solidarity, and compassion.
FEATURED WRITING
Minneapolis
February 2026 ~ Michel Engu Dobbs
Last weekend, I met fellow Zen Peacemakers- Roshi Eve Marko, Mary O’Connor, Ken Daigu Hillman, and Rinzai teacher Cristina Moon in Minneapolis, and we joined hundreds of Buddhists, clergy, activists, thousands of Minnesotans, and joined activities in response to the two-month-long invasion and occupation of their city, dubbed Operation Metro Surge. We were very graciously and generously hosted by Ben Connelly and his sangha at the Minnesota Zen Center.
The first night, we ate dinner together, a block away from where Alex Pretti was killed two weeks earlier. As we arrived, members of a Neighborhood Watch group surrounded an unidentified black SUV parked across the street and checked its license plates to ensure the occupants weren’t ICE agents. The hyper awareness and vigilance of the people we met was a testament to the horror and grief they’ve been subjected to, as about four thousand of their friends and neighbors have been detained, often violently, often in spite of their immigration status. These people have seen the killing of two people trying to stop those abductions, and the shooting of a man resisting detention. They’ve watched as their neighborhoods have been overrun by young, heavily armed, and belligerent men, driving around too fast in big black SUVs, running stop signs, and …
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














