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A Way of Service: Expanding our Service

The Zen Peacemakers are developing three new service initiatives:

  • Training and internships for practitioners toward certification as Socially Engaged Buddhist Mentors or ordination as Socially Engaged Buddhist Ministers
  • Zen Houses, a new model of residential Zen service center and training site, devoted to socially engaged Buddhism, where the residents will run social service projects and social enterprise businesses
  • Partnerships with other agencies.

training in socially engaged buddhism

The Maezumi Institute will offer a five-month residential training program in socially engaged Buddhism beginning in the fall of 2008. The curriculum will cover four areas of spiritual practice - Zen training, financial and managerial skills, service methods, and communications. Study at the Institute will be followed by a six-month residential service internship in a Zen House. Upon completion of requirements in the two phases of study, students will be eligible for either certification as a Socially Engaged Buddhist Mentor or for ordination as a Socially Engaged Buddhist Minister.

The Harvard Divinity School (HDS) invited Roshi Bernie Glassman to serve as an adjunct faculty member and teach courses in the Buddhist Arts of Ministry beginning in the fall of 2007. HDS students may specialize in Buddhist ministry in the Masters of Divinity program at HDS, and then go on to receive further ministry training with the Zen Peacemakers Order, at the Maezumi Institute, to achieve Ordination as a Zen Peacemakers Minister. Christian students of many denominations have long sought ordination from religious institutions that recognize HDS training as part of their academic preparation for ministry, but the current HDS graduating class contains the first students who will go on to receive lay ordination from a Buddhist order.

"Zen Peacemakers have a groundbreaking project to create Buddhist-inspired service centers in impoverished areas of our society. Their program to train practitioners in socially engaged Buddhism to live and work with those communities is of great interest to the Master's of Divinity program at Harvard Divinity School. Students in this program majoring in Buddhist ministry have been connecting to the Zen Peacemakers' projects and there is considerable excitement at the school for the prospects that such collaboration holds for the future."
- Janet Gyatso
Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies
Harvard University

zen houses

greyston

Zen Houses are a new model of residential Zen service center and training site, devoted to socially engaged Buddhism. The Houses will be initiated by groups of Zen practitioners who choose to live among and serve the people who fall between the cracks of our society, and whose needs - economic, social and spiritual - often remain unmet.

Zen Peacemakers will open the first Zen Houses early in 2009. They will be located in underserved urban and rural areas.

Daily life in a Zen House will be regulated and focused on service in the projects sponsored by the house. Each Zen House will develop its own social service projects and structure its programs, schedules and staffing based on the needs of the community being served. The supervision and training of staff and interns at the House will be supplemented by advanced workshops and retreats offered at the Maezumi Institute.

appalachia_zendo

Services will be delivered from a holistic, dignitybased perspective. They will offer training that provides the skills and tools necessary to empower people to hold market-wage jobs and move toward economic self-sufficiency. Each House will also network with existing service agencies.

partnerships with other agencies

The success of the Greyston Foundation in Yonkers was based on its holistic approach. The Zen Peacemakers are working to partner with other agencies to develop similar holistic approaches to help reduce homelessness, unemployment, poverty, and the recidivism of newly released inmates. This unique model integrates social service efforts and social enterprise businesses to create vocational training, support services, permanent housing and market-wage jobs for underserved populations.


177 Ripley Road | Montague, MA 01351 | Phone: (413) 367-2080 | 2007 Zen Peacemakers