“The Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz is grounded in the three tenets articulated by Roshi Bernie Glassman: not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action.
Not-knowing means arriving without fixed ideas, without the armor of certainty. Bernie used to say it is like entering as a child, with every bone, every cell, every hair of your body open to what is actually there...
From that open ground, bearing witness becomes possible. A dissolving of the distance between the one who looks and what is looked at... I let it enter me. I do not protect myself from it.
And from bearing witness, loving action arises. The action is not something we bring to the retreat. It is something the retreat gives birth to…
The ground of that place still speaks.
As long as I am able, I want to be someone who listens…”
— Rabbi Eva Sax-Bolder
Dear friends, our annual Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau is just two months away.
Register now and make your travel plans to join us!
Scholarships are available,
and guidance for Raising a Mala to support travel and retreat costs.
Zen Peacemakers Auschwitz-Birkenau
Bearing Witness Retreat
November 15 - 21, 2026
Oświęcim, Poland
support the retreat and diversity of those attending through scholarships by donating here
Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, and the Jewish heart of a Zen practice
Rabbi Eva Sax-Bolder is returning for the fourth year as ‘rabbi-in-residence’ at the Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz-Birkenau this November. In this article, she shares her experience with the Three Tenets — Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, Taking Action — at the heart of our approach to peacemaking.
Rebus
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.
How can I enter this question the clay has asked?
_
Source: Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2001)
Join Zen Peacemakers on Tuesday, September 29th for a Peacemaker Circle with poet Jane Hirshfield
Art, Activism, and the Practice of Peace:
A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield
Tuesday, September 29th
1:00 PM US EASTERN
Both Zen and art-making are practices of transformation. They broaden seeing, soften understanding, and expand the field of our actions and speech. Join Poet Jane Hirshfield and Geoff Shoun O’ Keeffe for a dialogue about art-making and activism, the ways that creative heart-mind increases compassion, and the perennial question of meeting the difficult with tenderness, humility, and courage.
Jane will also read some of her poems and there will be time for question and answer with the group as a whole.
Jane Hirshfield is an American poet, essayist, and translator and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, known as one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for the biosphere and recognized as writing some of the most important poetry in the world today. Her award-winning work through collections poems, essays, newspapers and literary journals has been translated into over fifteen languages.
PEACEMAKERS CIRCLE
How the Buddhist Sangha Organized Itself to Support Ukraine
Tuesday, September 23rd
12:00 PM US EASTERN
The presentation will involve a story about how we as a Buddhist community gathered spontaneously out of fury and compassion from the very first days of war told by a few active members, by Ukrainian volunteers through short videos, and from a Ukrainian singer whose town, Kherson, is almost destroyed.
PEACEMAKERS CIRCLE
The Long Conversation:
A Life Translating China’s Mountain Poets, with Red Pine
Wednesday October 7th
12:00 PM US EASTERN
Bill Porter, known to many readers as Red Pine, describes translation as a conversation with the dead — a phrase that also became the title of a documentary about his life and work. Every poem is a person who once stood somewhere, saw something, and wrote it down. The translator’s task is to come close enough to hear them, then let them speak.
In this Peacemakers Circle, Bill will share from that long conversation: the Zen hermit Stonehouse, the eccentric Han-shan of Cold Mountain, and other poets he has spent decades translating and accompanying. Each poem carries its own story — the poet’s life, the mountain where it was written, and the difficult, intimate work of carrying its meaning into English.
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.
ZEN PEACEMAKERS SERIES
Aging: Renewing the Mystery
A Monthly Gathering with Roshi Eve Marko
2nd Tuesday of each Month
Aging: Renewing the Mystery will be a monthly Zoom gathering investigating themes and issues many of us face as we get older. Topics will 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 Tuesday of each Month.
Open to everyone.
Sept 22nd: 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 5th: Mental Health Professionals & Caregivers with Dr. Iris Dotan Katz
Oct 16th: Women Only Council
Oct 27th: Peacemakers Council - Aging Council with Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe
A PRAYER FOR PEACE
Hello Family!
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.
In peace & gratitude-
Michel Engu Dobbs
Zen Peacemakers Affiliate
NEW AFFILIATE SPOTLIGHT
Mountain Cloud Zen Center
Our mission is to awaken, liberate, and protect all beings.
Zen Peacemakers is a network of independent organizations on five continents. Each of them came to this work on their own path; introducing them is how the network becomes visible to itself.
What they 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: Santa Fe, United States, and online.
mountaincloud.org
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 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