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BEARING WITNESS
NEWSLETTER FOR WESTERN SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISM - SEPTEMBER 2009
To submit articles, profiles or information on past or present activist-practitioners, trainings, employment or volunteer opportunities or projects in Socially Engaged Buddhism, send to: Editor
To subscribe to our free Online Newsletter for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism, please link here.
To view our Directory for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism, please click here.
PROFILES
Each month we will be adding profiles below. All profiles (from previous newsletters and more) can be read by clicking on Directory of Groups and Activists
SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISTS
Vanya Palmers
Animal Rights
Romiti / Rigi, Switzerland
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES June 2009 (Inaugural issue)
Developing the Zen House Movement
Ken Byalin develops Charter School
Profiles include: Peter Matthiessen,
Appalachia House July 2009
Dalai Lama/Glassman Dialogue
Directory for Socially Engaged
Buddhism
Saul Alinsky/Bernie Glassman
Comparison
Zen House Internship
Profiles include: Mark Mininberg and
Alternative Energy August 2009
Christopher Queen on Fourth Yana
James Bastien on Health & Healing
Profiles include: Joanna Macy, Lama Makransky, Paula Green, Michel Dubois, Margaret Wheatley
Dear Friends,
I was so inspired accompanying Bernie to Frankfurt where he dialogued with the Dalai Lama on Socially Engaged Buddhism. Bernie is deeply revered and widely known in Europe. Wherever we went, people came up to us to say how much his books and service organizations had influenced them. Major teachers of Zen and Buddhism present at the conference greeted him lovingly, including Sogyal Rinpoche, Ani Choying Dolma (the Singing Nun of Nepal), Fr. Willigis Jäger and Sylvia Wetzel. He and Matthieu Ricard became fast friends, and the Dalai Lama asked Bernie to a conference he is holding in Vancouver next month.
Bernie, Matthieu, Singing Nun
The invitation to the conference was coordinated by Dharma Holder Paul Schwerdt, director of Bambushain Sangha, Aachen, Germany. He also translated and printed our brochures in German at his own expense. Our itinerary, travel, meetings and movements were totally and beautifully orchestrated by Heinz-Jürgen Metzger. He has worked with Bernie for many years and understands Bernie's language and meanings intimately, so he got permission to be Bernie's translator for the panel at the conference. We were assisted by a wonderful team: Clemens M. Breitschaft, who got a press pass to photograph Bernie and the panel, and contributed the Frankfurt photos here; Gabriele Nachtschatt and Monika Brunner, who handled public relations for us.
To read a synopsis of Bernie's dialogue with H.H. Dalai Lama, Fr. Anselm Grün and Gerd Scobel, click here.
Please help promote the cause of Socially Engaged Buddhism by
sharing this URL with friends, associates, sangha members and groups you think would be interested. Click on the line below, "Send mail using your own address book".
Melody Ermachild Chavis is a member of the Berkeley Zen Center, and former board member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and a founding member of BPF's prison project.
As a private investigator for 20 years, she works to defend people charged with capital crimes or who have been sentenced to death. Altars in the Street: A Courageous Memoir of Community and Spiritual Awakening, chronicled her efforts to reclaim her own battle-scarred, crack-infested neighborhood. Melody also authored Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afganistan. She has served as co-chair of the Berkeley Community Partnership for Substance Abuse Prevention and has been honored by the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women for her outstanding contribution to the community.
Read her inspiring address, "Talk on the Theme of Justice," which she gave at a BASE (Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement) retreat in November, 2000.
ZEN PEACEMAKERS
JUNE 2010 AUSCHWITZ BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
Bernie Glassman to return to Auschwitz for a Bearing Witness Retreat: June 7 to 11, 2010.
Filling up fast. To register or read description click here.
Genro's Plunges
Sensei Grover Genro Gauntt, a dharma successor of Zen Master Bernie Glassman, has adopted plunges as a primary practice. He has a lay Street Ministry, conducting Street Retreats and other Bearing Witness Retreats around the world. For more about this, read The Grasshopper That Didn't Get It.
Genro began studying with Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1971, serving as Chairman of the Board there from 1987 to 1997. After the passing of Maezumi Roshi in 1995, he worked closely with Bernie, 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. His commitment to interfaith practice has led him deep into Native American and Sufi Muslim traditions.
SYMPOSIUM FOR WESTERN SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISM
August 9 to 15, 2010 Save the Dates!
To read more about the Symposium, link here. Link here to Secure a place at the Symposium.
Honoring Robert Aitken & the Pioneers Who Followed
PARTIAL LIST OF PRESENTERS:
Melody Chavis, Bernie Glassman, Paula Green, Joan Halifax, Paul Haller, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Paul Genki Kahn, Stephanie Kaza, Sallie King, Noah Levine, Peter Matthiessen, Fleet Maull, Mayumi Oda, Pat Enkyo O'Hara, Frank Ostaseski, Christopher Queen, Reggie Ray, Richard Reoch, Matthieu Ricard, Alan Senauke, Anne Waldman, Margaret Wheatley, Jeff Bridges,* Ellen Burstyn,* Richard Gere,* Daniel Goleman.*