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 grounds in our lives. Especially between our ears, where the “rush hour”-like traffic of discursive thinking, conflicting emotions, raging desires and aversions is perhaps the ultimate charnel ground, and where our practice comes home to in the end. - Fleet Maull
BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat
Since 1996, Zen Peacemakers have returned to this place to practice bearing witness in the presence of history, grief, silence, memory, and the deep human tendency toward separation and othering.
November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
PEACEMAKER CIRCLE
Please join Zen Peacemakers for An Unexpected Reconciliation Journey, an interview and presentation with Peter Sternberg and Maura Sternberg, hosted by Kathleen Hôetsu Battke.
This gathering invites us to listen deeply, bear witness, and consider how embodied practice can open unexpected pathways toward healing.
Wednesday, May 20th
12:00pm US Eastern Time
Duration: 90 minutes
Format: Presentation, followed by Q&A
AFFILIATE EVENT
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.
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)
Monday, May 25th - Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers - Council
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.
FRIENDS OF ZEN PEACEMAKERS
The Sacredness of Life , An Online Course Inspired by Etty Hillesum
Thursdays, June 4, 11, 18 & 25, 2026 · 19:30–21:30 Palestine/Israel Time
This course asks one of the most radical questions of our time: how do we hold the sacredness of life when life itself is under threat?
Etty Hillesum was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943, at the age of 29. She witnessed deportations, humiliation, and the systematic destruction of her people — and yet she refused to let horror have the final word. Not out of denial, but out of a profound and hard-won devotion to life in its fullest sense. She teaches us that to affirm the sacredness of life in the darkest of times is not weakness — it is an act of the deepest courage and the deepest faith.
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
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









