The Maezumi Institute is the major study/practice center of the Zen Peacemakers, offering training paths, study programs, and hands-on internships. There are four study/practice tracks:
Roshi Bernie Glassman has served as abbot of three very large Zen centers in the United States and through his successors, has founded a lineage of many teachers and many more Zen centers, groups and circles. But his biggest challenge has been to teach the Dharma outside the meditation hall, in the worlds of business, social action, conflict resolution, and environmental stewardship. This work calls for the creation of new upayas, or skillful means, that bring people to directly experience the interconnectedness of all life within the context of everyday behavior. It calls for new structures, new earth forms. The Maezumi Institute is a learning and practice center that supports the work of Zen Peacemakers. A 10 month-long Resident Program with a focus of serving in the inner-city is beginning in April, 2008. Residents study with some of the great contemporary leaders and teachers in each study center. Workshops are also open to any one interested in exploring the relationship between Zen as a spiritual practice and the manifestation of that practice in the world of social action. The Institute is located in Montague, Ma on a property endowed by nature with great beauty -- typical New England foliage, a small river and abundant wildlife. The Institute is the site of the House of One People that was born out of a rustic old barn. The weather-beaten boards, the wide plank floors and the beautiful beams and pillars of the old barn survived the metamorphosis to grace the newly unfolding House of One People with an elemental simplicity - stunning and remarkable. The House of One People is a place for multi-faith practice. A safe place for the practice and exploration of different religious traditions. The Maezumi Institute is a place where people contribute their insight, experience, and aspirations, and are in turn inspired and energized to effect change in their personal and social spheres. The possibilities of what we bring back to our communities thus increase in direct proportion to the networks, resources, and interconnectedness forged at the Institute. The mission of the Maezumi Institute is to bring dharma practice and teachings into all our life paths and to create new structures and techniques to help us realize that life as it is, in all its manifestations, is our own basic awakened nature. A major theme of the Institute is expressed in the Japanese phrase "gyogaku funi" or "practice and study are not two." We express this with the term "study/practice".
In Gratitude In memory of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Roshi,
Playing freely in self-fulfilling and Maezumi Institute Faculty Photos Prepared by Peter Cunningham (Most Photos by Peter)
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Bernie's Zen
The Dude Abides