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General Information: Overview: Press Clips: Springfield Homeless

Helping the Homeless
by Pat Cahill
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Republican Newspaper, Springfield MA

Nobody with a conscience can ignore the homeless. Their misfortune is heartbreaking. But it's hard not to resent the panhandling and the sanitary issues. Sometimes the homeless feel like a threat.

What can be done about the situation? That's the question people have been asking in Springfield, where, a few years ago, a 46-year-old homeless Vietnam veteran froze to death at the doors of Symphony Hall.

Enter Bernie Glassman of Montague, a Brooklyn-born Zen master, or "Roshi." He has some ideas on the subject. And, given his track record, it's a good idea to pay attention.

Glassman is a spiritual teacher with his feet on the ground.

His connection to Western Massachusetts is the Maezumi Institute in Montague, which he opened last year to serve as the study and training center for a group called the Zen Peacemakers.

The multi-faith institute has Hindu chanting on Mondays, Vespers on Wednesdays, Shabat and Islamic services once a month. It also trains social activists in such areas as hospice and conflict resolution.

Sound other-worldly? Meet the other side of Bernie Glassman. Over the past 24 years, this astute fund-raiser and businessman has put together a corporation called the Greyston Mandala, whose operational budget is $14 million.

About $5 million a year comes from his Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, N.Y., the most famous aspect of his work.

"Our cakes are sold at gourmet food shops, in restaurants and over the Internet," Glassman explains. "We're known for out triple chocolate mousse, for lotus flowers that are hand-made from buttercream.

"Our cheesecake got rated as 'Best in the New York Area' by the New York Daily News," says Glassman with relish. He has large brown eyes and an almost shy way of expressing himself.

"Our cakes have been served at the White House," he says.

Three of Ben and Jerry's top-selling ice cream flavors use Greyston ingredients, adds Glassman.

So how rich is he? He's not. "I do feel rich," he says with a grin. "I just don't have a lot of money."

The Greyston Mandala is devoted to rehabilitating the poor and homeless in Yonkers.

"We bake for the rich to feed the poor," says Glassman.

The bakery provides about 75 jobs at a time for the formerly homeless. It has helped hundreds of them over the years. Glassman also turns to the poor to staff other aspects of the Greyston Mandala.

They include people just out of prison, people who have been through substance abuse programs, people who want to get off the welfare rolls.

"Running a profitable business," says Glassman, "does more good than running a charity."

Profits from the bakery, along with grants and private donations, fund Greyston's network of support programs, including housing, after-school programs, counseling, day care, a clinic and other benefits that keep workers from slipping back into the homeless population.

The child care center in turn brings in its own funding, as does the clinic, which is funded by Medicare.

The Greyston Bakery has a tough-love approach, says Glassman. Its workers start out as apprentices. Half of them drop out. Addicts are usually gone in a week because they spend their first paycheck on drugs.

"We have 'open hiring' every other Wednesday," Glassman explains. "Our policy is to hire anybody and train them. If they don't work out, we fire them. It's a 'hard-love' situation. The people who fire them will be their peers. They self-select.

"By 1997, after 10 years of our program, we had zero percent recidivism."

Many employees of the bakery have gone on to other jobs in the industry, says Glassman.

Greyston has become a case model for study at Harvard and Yale Universities, as well as many others, he says.

Now Glassman is turning his attention to Springfield. He says he is guided by three principles. "First, we approach the situation with complete openness," he says. "Second, we look at all the ingredients. Third, we create a plan for the work."

In Springfield, part of his strategy was to live briefly with the homeless on the streets. He and 11 others met for a rainy three-day "street retreat" in May, dividing into small groups and sharing food and sleeping quarters with the homeless.

Did his wife worry about him being out there? Hardly. Glassman's wife, Eve Marko, is the one who organizes their street retreats, both here and in Europe. She has also practiced conflict resolution in Ireland and the Middle East.

The couple have been doing street retreats as a part of Zen practice for 20 years. Glassman used to be Marko's Zen teacher.

Also on the Springfield retreat was Jim Bastien of Sunderland, a Zen student for 25 years and president of the Zen Peacekeepers at the Maezumi Institute.

To some, the retreat may sound like a stunt or an adventure. Marko, who is herself a Zen teacher, tries to explain. Part of its function is research. But more than that, it's a matter of "bearing witness."

The idea is to feel what the less fortunate feel, to walk in their shoes. Even though she knows she is not homeless, says Marko, she is able to experience homelessness in her bones - "on the cellular level rather than the brain level," she says.

She further explains that the goal of Buddhism is to achieve a sense of "oneness" with the universe. She puts it this way: "Everything is me, so I'm going to take care of everything as though it's me."

One thing that surprised Glassman and his group about Springfield was the emptiness of downtown streets on the weekend. In the daytime there was almost nobody around except the homeless. (Because of the check-in time at the York Street Jail shelter, they missed the weekend nightclub crowd in the Worthington Street area after dark.)

The few people who do venture out get nervous because the presence of the homeless is more pronounced, says Marko.

Another thing that stood out in Springfield was "the camaraderie of the street people themselves," says Glassman. "In many other places, there's much less interaction among the homeless. Here there was a community that took care of each other - and took care of us."

That's useful information to him. At Greyston, part of the challenge was to bring diverse groups together. Here, the community feeling is already in place, he says.

The key to success like that of the Greyston Bakery, says Glassman, is creating the right business. "In Yonkers, I spent six months deciding what would be an appropriate business," he says.

In this city, "I have some sense of the people who are homeless, but I don't yet have a sense of the needs of Springfield." That's what he's working on now. "I feel ready to jump in and start running," he says.

His life has not always been that of a Buddhist Zen master and economic visionary. Glassman, 67, grew up as the youngest of five children in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood that was heavy on social consciousness. Concern for others, he says, "is in my blood."

He has a Ph.D in applied mathematics from UCLA and was an aerospace engineer for MacDonnell Douglas.

He began studying Zen in 1958 and became a novice priest in 1970. In 1976 he gave up his prestigious job in the aerospace industry to devote himself to teaching Buddhism, and became a leader in the New York Zen community.

He founded the Greyston Mandala in 1982. Five years later, once it was financially stable, he decided to focus his attention on the homeless.


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