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Zen Peacemakers: Who We Are
Founder: Bernie Glassman
President: Paul Genki Kahn
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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. Glassman currently teaches and travels, giving talks
and workshops on spiritual practice, socially responsible business and
international peacemaking. He is the founder and spiritual director
of the Zen Peacemakers.
Personal and Education
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. Currently Bernie has two grown children and one
grandson.
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 Glassman
Prepared by Peter Cunningham (Most Photos by Peter)
Zen Master (Roshi) Paul Genki Kahn is President and Vice-Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemakers. He has been selected by Zen Master Bernie Glassman to succeed him as Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemakers after a four-year transition period.
He is a Dharma Successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman, Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemakers and first successor of Taizan Maezumi, Roshi.
Genki was ordained by Maezumi Roshi as a Novice Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 1975, and received Final Vows as a Priest from Roshi Dennis Genpo Merzel.
Genki began dedicated yoga and meditation practice in the 1960s. In 1970 he entered residential Zen training with Aitken Roshi in Hawaii. He transferred to the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1972 to become a monk and priest under Maezumi Roshi, served as his personal attendant, and was the Director of Training there. In 1980 he came to New York with Roshi Bernie to establish the Zen Community of New York and what has become the Greyston Mandala.
For the past 25 years Genki has had a private psychotherapy practice and has designed and administered public and private mental health programs for disadvantaged people in New York and New Jersey. All of these programs have included yoga and meditation. He has served on state and county mental health committees. He pioneered quality treatment for persons with severe and persistent mental illness who also had drug and alcohol addictions. During the crack wars in the South Bronx in the early '90s, he created the MICA Program at Fordham Tremont Community Mental Health Center, that today still treats over 100 people daily.
He is married to Jocelyn Myoen Kahn and has two children, Langston Shodo Kahn and Nia Merica Kahn.
By clicking on the Director's name you can see their full bio.
Bernie Glassman is a world-renowned pioneer
in the American Zen Movement and a leading creative
figure in socially engaged Buddhism. He is the founder
and co-spiritual director of the Zen Peacemakers. He
has extended Dharma practice from the meditation
hall to the arenas of social service, business,
environmental stewardship and conflict resolution. He
has been honored with numerous ethics, service and
achievement awards.
Chairperson and Tresurer: Dharma Holder Chris Panos
Chris Panos, a Dharma Holder in the Zen Peacemakers,
is currently a founder and principal of Fundamental
Investment Advisors. Over the past 25 years, he has
founded several other successful businesses. Chris founded the Bay Area Peacemaker Circle, has been extensively involved with Tibetan refugees, and serves as Board President of Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco.
Vice Spiritual Director and President: Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
Paul Genki Kahn began Zen training with Aitken Roshi. He transferred to the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1972 to become a priest under Maezumi Roshi, served as his personal attendant, and was the Director of Training there. In 1980 he came to New York with Roshi Bernie to establish the Zen Community of New York. He is also Spiritual Director of High Mountain Crystal Lake Zen Community in Wyckoff, NJ,
For the past 25 years Genki has had a private psychotherapy practice and has designed and administered public and private mental health programs for disadvantaged people in New York and New Jersey. He has served on state and county mental health committees. He pioneered quality treatment for persons with severe and persistent mental illness who also had drug and alcohol addictions.
Eve Myonen Marko is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and currently the resident teacher at the Montague Farm Zendo, the Motherhouse Zendo of the Zen Peacemakers. With her husband and teacher, Roshi Bernie Glassman, she co-founded Peacemaker Circle International, which linked and trained spiritually-based social activists and peacemakers around the world. During that time she helped develop coalitions of Civil Society activists in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. During the 1980s she worked in the Greyston Mandala, a Buddhist-inspired network of for-profits and not-for-profits in Yonkers, New York.
She was a long-time member of the Zen Community of New York, which founded the Greyston Mandala organizations in Yonkers, New York. She was critical in the organization’s progress and developed resources and funding for Greyston Family Inn and Greyston Foundation. Marko was also Executive Director for the Music For the World Foundation, which funds and advocates on behalf of music education programs in American schools.
Jim worked for 17 years at Father Flanagan’s Girls
and Boys Town, in Boys Town, Nebraska.
In 1990, Jim founded Girls and Boys Town of New
England. Jim has served as the Director of Child and
Adolescent Residential Services for McLean Hospital,
Director of Family-Based Services for the Northeast
Center for Youth and Families,
Executive Director
of the Kolbourne School, Senior Administrator at Alternative
Behavioral Services, and Vice President of Residential Services at
Brightside for Families and Children.
He has published numerous research articles, has presented at
national, regional and local human service conferences, and has
served on numerous child welfare, mental health and educational
boards.
Kodo began sitting in 1985. After a few years of practicing alone at home with the guidance of Dharma books, she ventured out and found a sitting group led by Sister Richardson. She received Jukai in 1994 and Priest Ordination in 1996 from Roshi Jishu Holmes. After Jishu's death, Kodo continued her practice with Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, from whom she received Preceptor Transmission in 2002 and Dharma Transmission in March 2006.
Kodo is African-American and was raised in the deep South. She has worked most of her life as a clinical social worker practicing psychotherapy and is now retired from that profession.
Cheryl A. Giles is the Francis Greenwood Peabody Professor of the Practice in Pastoral Care and Counseling at Harvard Divinity School Dr. Giles is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in providing culturally competent care to underserved populations. She has extensive experience in the treatment of children, adolescents, and families with significant mental illness, high risk behaviors, and traumatic stress. Her primary research interests are identifying the role that trauma and health care disparities play in developing healthy adolescents, and exploring the spirituality of GLBT youth. She is a past member of the Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. Currently, she is member of the Board of Directors of Greater Boston PFLAG.
Dr. Giles has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1996. She teaches courses in Buddhist Ministry at HDS where she is actively involved in mentoring students who are interested in socially engaged Buddhism.
Bill is a Zen Teacher and Priest
and President of the Board of Directors of High Mountain Crystal Lake
Zen Community.
He is a psychiatrist, a graduate of the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine Medical School (1978) and Psychiatry Residency Training
Program (1982). He has had an active career in clinical, academic
and research psychiatry, the Training Director of the Bergen Pines
Psychiatry Residency Program from 1997-2000, has authored
scholarly publications and been the recipient of several awards,
including the 1996 Psychiatrist Recognition Award from the New
Jersey Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He is the leader of a
Spirituality and Psychotherapy Study Group,
a member of the American Psychiatric Association Committee on
Religion, Spirituality and Psychotherapy, and the Immediate Past
President of the New Jersey Psychiatric Association. He is currently
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the NYU School of
Medicine, and Director of the Outpatient Research Program at
Nathan Kline Psychiatric Research Institute in Orangeburg, New
York, and maintains a private practice in Bergen County.
Sheila Jinen Hixon is a Zen Teacher and a Founding
Multi-Faith Peacemaker in the Zen Peacemakers.
She has been a guiding force in the Zen Peacemakers
and has played a major role in the development and
planning for the House of One People in Montague
Massachusetts.
She serves on the board of Tricycle and her family’s charitable foundation.
Francisco "Paco" Genkoji Lugoviña is a Buddhist priest
and founder of the Hudson River Peacemaker Center
- House of One People in Yonkers.
Paco has launched several successful housing
development businesses since 1968. Paco served as
Chairman of the State of New York Mortgage Agency,
was Bank Regulator on the New York State Banking Board for nine years, and was Chairman of the National Hispanic Housing
Coalition. He is a founder of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and
served on numerous business, philanthropic, arts and service
organization Boards.
Fleet Maull, M.A., Ph.D. candidate, was a senior student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and is an ordained priest and Sensei (Zen Teacher) in the Zen Peacemakers. Fleet currently serves as the Director for Peacemaker Community Colorado and Co-Director of Colorado Peacemaker Institute.
Fleet is the founder of the Prison Dharma Network and the National Prison Hospice Association, which promote contemplative spirituality and compassionate end-of-life care for inmates. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Naropa University. In addition, he works as a management consultant and executive coach.
Kathe McKenna is Executive Director of Haley House, Boston, which has been serving the poor and indigent for 40 years. Haley House has a residential staff and provides free food at its South End soup kitchen, and operates low-income housing, a quality bakery and a café.
Pat Enkyo O'Hara is the Co-Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemakers Sangha and Abbot of Dotoku-ji / Village Zendo. Enkyo's focus is on true self-expression, peacemaking and
HIV/AIDS activism. She holds a Ph. D. in Media Ecology and taught
Multi-media at New York University for over 20 years.
Christopher S. Queen, PhD is Lecturer on the Study of Religion and the Dean of Students and Alumni Relations for Continuing Education in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He earned degrees in the history and phenomenology of religion from Oberlin College, Union Theological Seminary, and Boston University. His publications include Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, with Charles Prebish and Damien Keown), Engaged Buddhism in the West (Wisdom, 2000); American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship (Curzon, 1999, with Duncan Ryuken Williams); and Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (SUNY, 1996, with Sallie B. King). He is working on a book profiling the Indian Dalit ("untouchable") followers of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who have converted to Buddhism since 1956, and a critical study of Ambedkar and the sources of socially engaged Buddhism.
Alan is a Soto Zen priest and teacher in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He was ordained by Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1989. Alan is Vice-Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center in California. From early 1991 through the end of 2001, Alan was Executive Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Alan is one of the founders of Think Sangha, a group of Buddhist-activist intellectuals and writers. He continues to work as a social activist around national and international issues of peace, human rights, structural violence, and the development of a Socially Engaged Buddhism. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for nearly 40 years.
The ZPO Co-Founders, Sandra Jishu Holmes and
Bernie Glassman along with the Founding Teachers spent
about one year refining the Precepts and creating the
ZPO Rule. Jishu and Bernie decided to create a role within
the Zen Peacemaker Family for Preceptors (lay or clergy.) These Preceptors would put extra effort
into the study and actualization of the Rule.
Grover Genro Gauntt
Sensei Genro Gauntt
Sensei Grover Genro Gauntt, is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker
Order and a dharma successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman. He started
studying with Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1971
serving as Board Chairman there from 1987 to 1997. After the passing of
Maezumi Roshi in 1995, he worked closely with Bernie and started
serving full time as Executive Director of the Peacemaker Community in
early 1997. He studied at the University of Southern California and at
the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA in
finance. Feeling that his path was to unfold from a lay perspective, he
pursued a professional career in real estate and finance forming
Western Property Research, a real estate consulting firm that operated
from 1984 to 1997. He has two sons, John and Parker. Baptized as a
Congregationalist and raised as a Presbyterian., his interfaith studies
have led him to explore Native American traditions and Sufi Muslim
practices. Further interfaith plunges will include Jewish and Catholic
retreats.
Joan Jiko Halifax
Roshi Joan Halifax
Roshi Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher,
Zen priest, anthropologist, and author.
She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of
Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and
is Director of the Project on Being with Dying.
For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work.
A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice
for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism.
In May, 2005 she
became a Spiritual Director, in
Training with Roshis Bernie Glassman and Pat Enkyo O'Hara, of the Zen Peacemakers.
She is Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops
programs on meditation for prisoners.She is founder of the Ojai
Foundation, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and
has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers
around the world.
She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School.
She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman.
Eve Myonen Marko
Sensei Eve Marko
Sensei Eve Myonen Marko is a dharma successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman and a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Through her numerous writings and her role as one of the leaders of the Order’s annual bearing witness retreats at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she has made the teachings of Zen in the areas of peacemaking and love accessible to a broad audience.
Eve has written and edited numerous articles about the Zen Peacemakers and its member activists, and also collaborated with Roshi Bernie Glassman in the writing of Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Instructions on Making Peace, which was published by Random House in 1998. She has also written biographies and mystery books for children, published by Waldman Publishing.
She was a long-time member of the Zen Community of New York, which founded the Greyston Mandala organizations in Yonkers, New York. She was critical in the organization’s progress and developed resources and funding for Greyston Family Inn and Greyston Foundation. Marko was also Executive Director for the Music For the World Foundation, which funds and advocates on behalf of music education programs in American schools.
Wendy Egyoku Nakao
Roshi Egyoku Nakao
Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, was born Wendy Lou Nakao in Honolulu,
Hawaii, around the middle of the last century. Of Japanese-Portuguese
ancestry, she grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii. She attended the
University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where she received a
BA in East Asian Studies and an MA in Librarianship. In Seattle in
1975, she began sitting on a dare. "Somebody bet me fifty dollars
that I couldn't sit still and keep quiet for a week. I accepted the
challenge and did a
seven-day Zen sesshin. It was absolutely horrible, but I was hooked."
After three years of zazen in Seattle, Egyoku moved to the Zen Center
of Los Angeles in 1978 to study with Taisan Maezumi Roshi. She was
ordained by him in 1983, and served as his Head Monk in 1988. During
her training at ZCLA, she served in various capacities, including as
Editor of The Ten Directions and the Center's Chief Administrator. She
was Maezumi Roshi's personal assistant at the time of his death, in
1995.
In 1996, she received Dharma Transmission from Roshi Bernie
Glassman, Maezumi Roshi's first dharma successor, in Yonkers,
New York. At Roshi Glassman's request, she returned to ZCLA as the Head
Priest and Teacher in 1997, and was installed as the third Abbot of
ZCLA in 1999.
Both Roshi's temple and teaching lineage comes through Maezumi Roshi,
whose background was unusual in that he was a Soto priest who studied a
Rinzai koan system. The orientation of her Dharma Transmission teacher
Roshi Glassman in social action and peacemaking is also a major factor
in her evolving teaching style.
A founding member of the Zen Peacemaker Order, Roshi has a strong
commitment to rooting practice in our flesh and bones and the myriad
forms of our contemporary culture.
Roshi Enkyo is a Zen Priest and certified Zen Teacher in the Soto
tradition. She studied with John Daido Loori Roshi of Zen Mountain
Monastery and Taizan Maezumi Roshi of the Zen Center of Los Angeles/Zen
Mountain Center. She is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order.
In 1997 she received Shiho (dharma transmission) from
Roshi Bernie Glassman and in June, 2004, she received inka
from him in an empowerment ceremony held at the Mother House of
the Zen Peacemaker Family in Montague, Ma.
ZP Co-Spiritual Directors Roshi Enkyo and Roshi Bernie
In May, 2005 she
became Co-Spiritual Director, with Bernie Glassman, of the Zen Peacemakers.
Enkyo's focus is on true self-expression, peacemaking and
HIV/AIDS activism. She holds a Ph. D. in Media Ecology and taught
Multi-media at New York University for over 20 years.