Picture her saying:
You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world ...
- #9 from Sonia Sanchez’s Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman, poetry foundation
BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
Ehani wichoun ikxoyagya woechun
Connecting with our Ancestors Way of Life
Join Us for the Native American Bearing Witness Retreat
July 15 – 20, 2025
📍 Hot Springs, South Dakota
We invite you to participate in the Native American Bearing Witness Retreat, a profound opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with the history, wisdom, and resilience of Indigenous communities.
This retreat is an immersive experience guided by the Zen Peacemakers' Three Tenets—Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action.
Together, we will:
🔸 Hear from Lakota elders and community leaders about their traditions, history, and contemporary challenges.
🔸 Visit significant historical and cultural sites, engaging in deep reflection and dialogue.
🔸 Participate in Council, Ceremony, and Bearing WItness practices to foster connection and understanding.
🔸 Cultivate an open heart through direct experience and presence.
This retreat is open to all who wish to engage with Indigenous perspectives through deep listening and shared humanity. Space is limited—register now to be part of this transformative journey.
🔗 Learn more & register
We hope to see you there.
Zen Peacemakers
Our mission is to realize our oneness and relieve suffering through contemplative social action.
www.zenpeacemakers.org
WAY OF COUNCIL
Council is one of our most important core Zen Peacemaker practices. We share Council during our Bearing Witness retreats most 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 or 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, April 18th - Women Only Council
Thursday, April 24th - The Way of Council with Bobby Chowa Werner
Monday, April 28th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers with Dr. Iris Dotan Katz
PEACEMAKER CIRCLES
EARTHING: A 5-Part Series on Not Squandering our Planet
Fourth Session (All Are Welcome): Thursday, April 3rd, 3pm Eastern Time, Zoom
Join Kathleen Hoêtsu Battke for EARTHING: Confident beyond Hope- Council as a Wake-Up Space
The space beyond hope
I abide, fully present.
despair turning green
Whatever you do, how enthusiastic or hopeless, confident or desperate you may be: In times of massive transformation as we experience now, it is crucial to have a warm and safe place to go to, where there’s community, slowing-down, listening and sharing. And where you may abide in a space beyond hope, in spacious not-knowing without losing your determination to act.
After a short introduction we’ll explore the possibilities that the Way of Council offers for environmental activists, and we may experience the powerful energy of this transformative heart-mind practice in a short guided Council sharing.
Curative Path - Healthcare Workers Integrating the Three Tenets Practice: A 5-Part Workshop Series
with Roshi Roland Yakushi Wegmueller, a Medical Doctor, Iris Hoka Dotan Katz, a Clinical Psychologist, and Martin Pradel, a Clinical Family Therapist and Social Worker
First Session: April 8th, 3:00-4:30pm US Eastern Time, Zoom
“Bearing witness has to be done by first entering the state of not knowing. That is, you are not entering a situation with the feeling that you know what to do, but entering it completely as a child, just being there to listen and to feel with every bone, with every cell, with every hair of your body. By feeling what’s happening, letting the ingredients of the situation arise, you can take those ingredients to create a healing meal.” - Bernie Glassman
This 5-Part Workshop Series is an offering to people who are engaged in healthcare professions including:
Medical - medical doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, and midwives
Mental Health - psychologists, social workers, nurses, and occupational therapists
Alternative Medicine - homeopathy, Chinese & Japanese medicine, shiatsu, and hospice chaplains
The workshops will explore and discuss the practice of The Three Tenets; Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Loving Healing Action, and its embodied application to our professional healthcare context, and thus, build connections and a community of healthcare workers across our One and Diverse world. Participants will be provided home work practices to support integration of The Three Tenets.
FILM SERIES
Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
(On-Demand March 13 - April 12)
Cost: $5.49 via KINEMA, proceeds go towards supporting our Bearing Witness Retreats
The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter. Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished county with a vicious history of racist terrorism. In a county that was 80 percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper without power. This isn’t a story of hope but of action. Through first person accounts and searing archival footage, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County.
Purchase a ticket via KINEMA here:
https://kinema.com/events/lowndes-county-and-the-road-to-black-power-omeamw
AFFILIATE EVENT
Dear friends,
I'm glad to share that the registration for our Retreat in Brazil is open.
With the dedicated service of a little group of Brazilian volunteers - including Sandra and Marcelo, participants from Cohort 1 - we organized a beautiful program. In this 2025 edition of the Retreat, we will have the opportunity to listen to many more voices and to learn from many places linked with the tragedy of slavery and racism in Brazilian history. At the same time, we will share the richness of the Afro-Brazilian culture, alive and vibrant in the social reality of Bahia, the state of Brazil where the Retreat will happen.
Please, have a look at the website of the newborn Brazilian Zen Peacemaker Circle, and, if you feel the calling, give us the joy of receiving your Presence in our Retreat.
Thanks for your attention and support.
Jorge Koho Mello
on behalf of the CZPBR
AFFILIATE ANNOUNCEMENT
To strengthen our planetary network, ZP will feature newly affiliated groups. Join HERE to explore some of the offerings of the organizations affiliated with ZP, and visit here for a full list of these groups. Following is an introduction to the Sangha for Ukraine
Sangha for Ukraine
Compassion for Ukraine Mission: The Compassion for Ukraine community maintains a daily gathering to open our minds and hearts, and radiate compassion to all who are suffering as a result of the invasion and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Our daily practice is based on traditions and practices of Buddhist meditation and mind training, with a focus on the practice of tonglen. In addition to our practice, we bear witness to the impacts of the war and learn from our Ukrainian friends about their experience and concerns, and about Ukrainian history and culture. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
TAKING ACTION - Prison Outreach
Letter Writing Campaign
Compassion Prison Project has been told by several prison residents that nothing brightens their day more than hearing their name called during mail call.
They have also heard from letter writers on the outside that their lives have been deeply enriched by the relationships they’ve cultivated with the incarcerated men and women with whom they communicate. Expressive writing can be therapeutic and healing and can also cultivate a sense of belonging and connection.
CPP is always looking for volunteers to join their letter writing campaign. Please fill out the volunteer form and let them know that you’d like to write to someone living in a prison.
CPP is a grassroots, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
May we fulfill our vows to free and save all sentient beings.
JOIN ZEN PEACEMAKERS TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PRISON OUTREACH
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
Peacemakers Podcast—a space where compassion, action, and deep listening come together. Presented by Zen Peacemakers, this podcast explores the transformative power of the Three Tenets: Not-Knowing, Bearing
Witness, and Taking Action.
Join us as we engage with activists, spiritual leaders, and people just like you who embody the principles of peacemaking in their lives and work. Through their stories, we uncover the challenges and insights that arise when we step into the unknown, witness suffering, and respond with wisdom and love.
Whether you're a longtime practitioner or new to these teachings, we invite you to listen deeply, reflect, and discover how peacemaking can become a way of life.
Let’s walk this path together.
Listen Here: https://voice.zenpeacemakers.org/s/podcast
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