ZEN BLUES, ZEN SCHMOOZE
BY Zen Master Bernie Glassman
A monthly series.
beginning Saturday April 3
9:30am to 11:00am
Bernie Glassman, Founder of the Zen Peacemakers, will give a monthly talk, relying mostly on Q&A and dialogue. This will be a back and forth between participants and him about Zen, life, and becoming a Shmoo. Serious inquiries welcome, as well as basic questions that have nagged you all your life: Is coffee compatible with serious practice? Is there a difference between being on the Way and being in the Way? Can Mensch be gender-neutral? What ever happened to the Dharma According to Groucho? I’ve realized twoness instead of oneness--am I close?
Zen Blues, Zen Schmooze, a rare and wonderful opportunity to encounter the Dharma in its original Brooklyn flavor, begins on Saturday morning, April 3, 9:30 am.
Optional Dana (donation) will be requested on behalf of the teacher.
NOVEMBER 1-5, 2010 AUSCHWITZ BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
To read descriptions and/or to register, please click here. This retreat includes Youth from Israel, Palestine, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, USA, and other countries.
First Major Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism
August 9 to 14, 2010
at the Mother House of the Zen Peacemakers in Montague, MA
Zen Master Bernie Glassman is a world-renowned pioneer in
the American Zen Movement. He is a spiritual leader, published author,
accomplished academic and successful businessman with a PhD in Applied
Mathematics. Bernie currently teaches at the Maezumi Institute and at the Harvard
Divinity School. He is the founder
of the Zen Peacemakers.
Bernie Glassman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. His parents
were immigrants from Eastern Europe and he grew up in a Jewish family
with a strong socialist orientation. After graduating from Brooklyn
Polytechnic Institute, he went to work for McDonnell-Douglas in
California in 1960 as an aeronautical engineer, concentrating on
interplanetary flights. He also obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics
from UCLA in 1970. He is married to Sensei Eve Myonen Marko and has two children, Alisa and Marc Glassman and two grandchildren.
Zen Training and Teaching
In 1967, Bernie began his Zen studies with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi,
Founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. He became a Zen
teacher--Sensei Glassman--in 1976. In 1980 he founded his own Zen
Community of New York in the Bronx, New York. He started the Greyston
Bakery, at first staffed by Zen students, as a livelihood for the
Community, and then made it a vehicle for social enterprise in Yonkers,
3 miles north (see below). In 1995 Bernie Glassman received inka, or the
final seal of approval, from his teacher and became known as Roshi
Glassman. During that year and in 1996 he served as Spiritual Head of
the White Plum Lineage, comprising hundreds of Zen groups and centers in
the US, Latin America and Europe, as well as the first President of the
Soto Zen Buddhist Association of America.
His Dharma Family includes dharma teachers, zen priests,
zen preceptors, zen entrepreneurs, Christian clergy, Rabbis, Sufi Sheiks
and multi-faith peacemakers.
Social Enterprise
Bernie became a social entrepreneur in 1982, articulating a vision
that socially responsible businesses can have a double bottom line:
generating profits and serving the community. The Greyston Bakery was
the first such venture, but it was merely one piece of a larger socially
responsible business model which he developed, known as the Greyston
Mandala (the Sanskrit mandala can be loosely translated as circle of
life), a network of for-profits and not-for-profits working together to
improve the lives of individuals and the larger inner city community of
southwest Yonkers. Greyston, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on
June 11, 2007 (during which time it will honor its founder), provides
permanent housing, jobs, job training, child care, after-school programs
and a host of other supportive services to a large community of formerly
homeless families, advancing the principles of empowerment, empathy, and
responsible action. Its main components are:
Greyston Bakery. Founded in 1982 in the southwest
corner of Yonkers, a poor neighborhood beset by high unemployment,
violence and drugs, the bakery began to hire people that conventional
businesses had deemed unemployable It trained its employees in bakery
crafts and soon they were producing some of New York's most expensive,
high-end cakes and tarts sold in the city's fanciest eateries. In 1990
it began to produce brownies for Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and its
revenues shot up dramatically. Since its humble founding, the bakery
grew into a successful $6 million business with more than 75 employees.
Its hiring remains to this very day "First come, first served," and much
of its profits are recycled into seed money for its sister
not-for-profits, thus making the entire network more sustainable and
financially independent.
Greyston Family Inn. This is
Greyston's housing and support services arm. Since 1986 it has
developed hundreds of low-cost permanent apartments for homeless
families, a large child care center, and tenant support services as well
as after-school programs, providing wraparound support to families
trying to come out of the cycle of unemployment, homelessness, and
public assistance.
Maitri Center and Issan House. Opened
in 1997, Maitri is a medical center serving 150 people with
AIDS-related illnesses. It was among the first facilities in the
country to provide alternative care therapies to people with HIV/AIDS.
Issan House provides housing for many of Maitri's patients.
The entire Greyston Mandala (as of 2007) hires 175 people and serves at least 1200
men, women and children annually in southwest Yonkers. Its model of
integrating for-profits, not-for-profits, and spirituality has been
studied by many other nonprofits and cities across the country as well
as in universities. Bernie Glassman served as Founder and President/CEO
of Greyston from 1982 till he left it in 1996.
Spiritually-Based Social Action
and Peacemaking
In January of 1994, while leading a bearing witness retreat in
Washington, DC, on the occasion of his 55th birthday, Bernie decided to
create the Zen Peacemaker Order, for Zen practitioners dedicated to the
cause of peace and social justice. Subsequently, the concept was
broadened to become an international, interfaith network called the
Peacemaker Community, stressing the integration of spiritual practice
and social action through Three Tenets:
Not-knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe;
Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world; and
Loving action for ourselves and the world.
Together with his wife and co-founder, Sandra Jishu Holmes, Bernie
left Greyston in the end of 1996 and became President of this large
community of spiritually-based activists. He took a leave when his wife
died in 1998, but from 2000 till 2004 he continued serving as President,
devoting his energy to developing the Peacemaker Community and
supporting various social action and peacemaking projects in Europe, the
Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. This organization is
now known as Zen Peacemakers.
In 2004 Bernie Glassman began to develop a training campus to teach
people the skills of spiritually-based social enterprise and peacemaking
called the Maezumi Institute, in Western Massachusetts.
Awards
Bernie was awarded the Ethics in Action Award by the Ethical Culture
Society of Westchester and the E-chievement Award by Toms of Maine. He
was named Man of the Year by the Westchester Coalition of Food Pantries
and Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Business Week in 1993. He is a
founding board member of the Social Ventures Network, a network of
businesses committed to social change, and continues to serve as one of
its spiritual leaders. In 2007, he was honored as a Purpose Prize Fellow given to
those over 60 with the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, come
up with new solutions, and make lasting changes
Publications
Bernie is the co-author, with Rick Fields, of Instructions to the
Cook: A Zen Masters Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower,
April 1996), and the author of Bearing Witness: A Zen Masters Lessons
in Making Peace (Bell Tower, May 1997) and Infinite Circle: Studies in
Zen (Shambhala Publication, 2002).
For more information on his books and on films made about him, please link here.
Photo History of Bernie
Prepared by Peter Cunningham (Most Photos by Peter)