After great pain a formal feeling comes —
After great pain a formal feeling comes — The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs; The stiff Heart questions — was it He that bore? And yesterday — or centuries before? The feet mechanical go round A wooden way Of ground or air or Ought, Regardless grown, A quartz contentment like a stone. This is the hour of lead Remembered if outlived As freezing persons recollect The snow — First chill, then stupor, then The letting go.
RETREATS
In just a few weeks, Zen Peacemakers from all walks of life will gather at the site of the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. We go for the same reasons now as we did at the first retreat: to bear witness to humanity.
Registration closes soon!
Join us in bearing witness this November.
Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat
November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
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Scholarships are available
contact us at retreats@zenpeacemakers.org
PEACEMAKERS CIRCLE
Reflections of an Interspiritual Contemplative Christian
with Stephen Hatch
Wednesday, October 21st
12:00 - 1:30 US Eastern
In this talk, Stephen Hatch, a practitioner of Christian Mysticism for 45 years, reflects on his multi-faceted spiritual journey.
His path began with a Baptist upbringing, led to training with Father Thomas Keating and an identification with the wisdom of Christian Mysticism, and then to embracing Protestant Mysticism, including the Quaker heritage of the Pennsylvania Brintons on his mother’s side. He has developed a Nature-based Contemplative Christianity, which he calls Wilderness Mysticism.
PEACEMAKERS CIRCLE
Bernie Glassman Memorial: “Bernie on the Street”
Saturday, October 31st
12:00-1:30 EST
A Panel Discussion with Sensei Jorge Koho Mello, Sensei Mikko Ijäs, Sensei Joshin Byrnes, and Jürgen Lembke.
Join us to celebrate Bernie Glassman’s life and legacy through a discussion of his groundbreaking work with Street Retreats. Together, we’ll explore how this practice continues today and what its future might hold.
All are welcome to join us in remembering Bernie and reflecting on this living practice of bearing witness.
PEACEMAKERS CIRCLE
Bearing Witness to Oneness: Cops, Convicts and Council
Wednesday, November 4th
12:00 - 1:30 PM US Eastern
This Peacemakers Circle brings a freewheeling conversation with the leadership team of Beyond Us & Them, an organization rooted in the practice of council that has been bridging divides and creating pathways to connection for more than a decade.
Beyond Us & Them Executive Director Jared Seide will be joined by Lyndon Barber and Mitch Highley for this conversation, each of whom came to this work through council itself — Lyndon after a seventeen-year career with the Los Angeles Police Department, Mitch from inside Ironwood State Prison, where he was serving a life sentence. Together they embody council's capacity to shift perspective beyond us and them. Join us for honest stories and open conversation.
CORE TRAININGS
The Three Tenets with Sensei Jim Daikan Bastien
Monday, November 16th
7:00-8:00 PM EST
Bernie Glassman articulated the Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers early in its evolution. These three simple, profound vows or commitments can also be taken as a complete practice for our lives.
Not-Knowing: I will embody Not-Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas.
Bearing Witness: I will bear witness, opening my heart to the joy and suffering of life.
Loving Action: I will take loving action arising out of Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness.
Through the Three Tenets, we can practice and manifest our true selves in every situation and with everything that arises. This is a lifelong practice—one we never complete. During this hour-long session, Sensei Daikan will present and describe the Three Tenets, followed by time for questions.
ZEN PEACEMAKERS SERIES
Aging: Renewing the Mystery
A Monthly Gathering with Roshi Eve Marko
2nd Tuesday of each Month
Aging: Renewing the Mystery is a monthly Zoom gathering investigating themes and issues many of us face as we get older. Topics include forgiveness, fear of dependence, illness and death, simplicity, regret, loneliness, the changing faces of love, and others that come from participants.
We are also offering an “Aging Council” the 4th Wednesday of each Month.
Open to everyone.
Oct 28th: Peacemakers Council - Aging Council with Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe
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 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)
Oct 28th: Peacemakers Council - Aging Council with Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe
Nov 2nd: Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers with Dr. Iris Dotan Katz
Nov 7th AEDT: The Way of Council with Aus-NZ Peacemaker Council
Nov 20th: Women Only Council
A PRAYER FOR PEACE
Hello Family!
Our dear Lakota relative, Violet Catches, invites Zen Peacemakers from all around the world to join on the Fourth Friday of each 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
Fourth Fridays at 1:00pm EDT
Join: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008592778
MEDIA LIBRARY
New Peacemaker Circle Videos
A Life Translating China’s Mountain Poets:
A Conversation with Red Pine
In this Peacemaker Circle on October 7th, translator and author Bill Porter (Red Pine) recounts how he began studying Chinese after receiving a Columbia fellowship, struggled through intensive coursework, and was influenced by a monk in New York Chinatown and later monastic life in Taiwan.
Art, Activism, and the Practice of Peace:
A Conversation with Poet Jane Hirshfield
Renowned poet, essayist, and translator Jane Hirshfield joined Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe earlier this fall in September for a Peacemaker Circle on art-making, activism, and compassion, including readings of her poems.
ZEN PEACEMAKERS AFFILIATES
NEW AFFILIATE SPOTLIGHT
Mountain Cloud Zen Center
Our mission is to awaken, liberate, and protect all beings.
What we do: Mountain Cloud Zen Center is a lay Sanbo Zen practice community dedicated to awakening, liberation, and reducing suffering through Zen practice and compassionate engagement with the world. Founded in 1985, the Center offers zazen, teachings, sesshin, community practice, and programs that integrate contemplative practice with social and ecological responsibility. Its recent Ecodharma Residency brings Buddhist practice and the Three Tenets—Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action—into direct relationship with environmental and social crises, while land stewardship workshops put these principles into practice through care for local trees, soils, trails, and ecosystems. Across its programs, Mountain Cloud emphasizes loosening fixed identities, deepening connection with others and the natural world, and allowing skillful action to arise from attentive, compassionate presence.
Where we are: Santa Fe, United States, and online.
Learn more at mountaincloud.org
Zen Peacemakers is a network of independent organizations on five continents dedicated to realizing our oneness and relieving suffering through contemplative social action. Together, our collective commitment to interconnectedness and compassion ripples outward far beyond ourselves, transcending all boundaries and transforming lives.
TAKING ACTION
The Earth sustains all life. Caring for her is caring for ourselves.
With the Three Tenets, we respond:
Not-Knowing: Meeting the climate crisis without rushing to easy answers.
Bearing Witness: Spending time in threatened places and feeling their truth.
Taking Action: Joining efforts in conservation, regeneration, and climate justice.
Daily Practice: Walk gently, reduce waste, honor the land beneath your feet.
Get Involved: Volunteer with reforestation, clean water, or climate advocacy groups.
Learn more here: https://zenpeacemakers.org/taking-action-home/taking-action-environment
✨ 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 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. Zen Peacemakers are here to support you on this transformative journey.
Monday - Friday
10:00 - 10:40 am US Eastern
MORE INFO 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
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
Maybe go to Gaza next year? Meanwhile, in Aushwitz, I hope you meditate on how the victims of abuse so easily become the perpetrators. That is the "great lesson" for our era.