The Zen Peacemakers is a diverse network of socially engaged Buddhists, currently including the formal structures of the Zen Peacemakers International,[1] the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Zen Peacemaker Circles,[2] many affiliated individuals and groups, and communities formed by Dharma Successors of Roshi Bernie Glassman. It was founded by Bernie Glassman and his second wife Sandra Jishu Holmes in 1996, as a means of continuing the work begun with the Greyston Foundation in 1980 of expanding Zen practice into larger spheres of influence such as social services, business and ecology but with a greater emphasis on peace work. Eve Marko, Bernie Glassman's third wife, is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Zen Peacemakers have developed from the White Plum Asanga lineage of Taizan Maezumi.
Although Zen Peacemakers are associated with the White Plum Asanga lineage, founder Bernie Glassman did not envisage it as an organization bound by traditional Japanese SōtōZen practice. Bernie Glassman has said:
Maezumi Roshi was not carrying out the tradition of the Japanese Soto sect when he came here. The Soto sect of Japan was not carrying out the traditions of Chinese Zen. You have to be careful with the word 'traditional.' We honor a lot of eccentric people.[3]
Likewise, although within the lineage, the Zen Peacemaker Order was not formed as part of the White Plum Asanga organization. Links between the two organizations are now distant; despite being named as heir to the presidency of the White Plum Asanga in Maezumi's will, Glassman ceased attending the annual meetings of Taizan Maezumi's dharma heirs within a few years of his former teacher's death.[3] According to the author James Ishmael Ford, as of 2006 Glassman has "transferred his leadership of the White Plum Asanga to his Dharma brother Merzel Roshi and has formally 'disrobed,' renouncing priesthood in favor of serving as a lay teacher and leader of what is now called the Zen Peacemaker Family."
Greyston Foundation
Activities of the Zen Peacemakers originated in Yonkers, New York with the opening of the Greyston Bakery, its most well-known and prosperous project, in 1982.[4][5] Its projects eventually united under the auspices of the Greyston Foundation, a network of community development companies and non-profit organizations based in the inner city. Greyston Family Inn opened in 1991, on proceeds from the sale of Greyston mansion. It provides permanent housing for homeless people, with a child day-care center amongst services available for residents. Currently, there are three buildings, providing fifty housing units. Other projects include the Greyston Garden Project, five community-run gardens established on neglected properties. In 1992 Greyston Health Services was formed, primarily to provide services for poor people with HIV/AIDS. In 1997 Issan House opened, named after Issan Dorsey a ZenRoshi who had died from an AIDS-related condition in 1990. It provides thirty-five permanent housing units for people living with both HIV/AIDS and mental illness or chemical dependency.[6] The Maitri Day Program within the building provides a variety of health and rehabilitative service to 150 people with HIV/AIDS from the local community. As one of the first 'welfare to work' programs in the US, in 2004 Greyston had an annual budget of over $20 million and received numerous government grants. At Yonkers, they occupy the former Ethan Flagg House-Blessed Sacrament Monastery, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.[7]
International
In 1996 Bernie Glassman - with his wife Sandra Jishu Holmes - officially founded the Zen Peacemaker Order, later the Zen Peacemaker Circle and currently Zen Peacemakers. According to professor Christopher S. Queen, "The order is based on three principles: plunging into the unknown, bearing witness to the pain and joy of the world and a commitment to heal oneself and the world."[8]
Zen Peacemaker projects have included a Paris soup kitchen for immigrants and non-violence efforts in the Palestinian territories, with joint Israeli-Palestinian peaceful coexistence projects in Israel. Zen Peacemakers in Poland established 'Nonviolent Communications Training and Practice' in the national public school system and opened an AIDS hospice. The Auschwitz project brought together families of the Holocaust survivors and the descendants of those who ran the camps to '"bear witness to the horrors of war" during retreats at the site of the former German concentration camp in Poland.[9] In the United States, Zen Peacemakers have campaigned for prison reform, provided hospice care and worked with the poor in both inner-city and rural areas.[10]
Zen Peacemakers have 70 affiliate centers in 5 Continents and 12 Countries. Countries with groups affiliated to Zen Peacemakers include Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK. In the United States affiliates include the Upaya Institute and Zen Center led by Joan Halifax in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Elders and Spiritual Directors
The founder Roshi Bernie Glassman has served as the spiritual director of Zen Peacemakers from its inception. In May 2005 Roshi Enkyo Pat O'Hara was ratified as Co-Spiritual Director by the Zen Peacemaker Board. Rami Efal serves as director of the Zen Peacemakers International organisation, acting as a 'hive' to collect and share ideas for the widespread community. In Europe, Cornelius Collande, Barbara Wegmueller, Michel DuBois, and Frank De Waele are among the elders of the Zen Peacemakers community and the Auschwitz Bearing Witness retreat. For the Zen Peacemaker Circles, the current coordinator in Europe is Kathleen Battke, who succeeded Barbara Wegmueller in the role, and in America, the longest-serving elder in Circle practice is Jeana Moore.
Zen Peacemaker Sangha
The structure of Zen Peacemakers is, like the Greyston Foundation, somewhat complex and also like Greyston is described as a mandala. The mandala is based on the Five Buddha Families with the intention that the organization addresses needs in all aspects of life. The Zen Peacemakers Sangha (ZPS) is a branch of the Zen Peacemakers Order. It is an association of groups founded by or led by seniors empowered by Bernie Glassman or groups who practice Zen and socially engaged Zen. The ZPS is a forum for sharing the diverse methods of practice, service and teaching within the Zen Peacemakers Order for the purpose of education and personal development as practitioners and teachers.[11]
The Mother House
Formerly sited in Montague, Massachusetts, in the United States, the Mother House was the study and practice center of the Zen Peacemakers. The approach of the institute is based on the Japanese concept gyogaku funi, or "practice and study are not two".[12] It provides various training paths, study programs, and hands-on internships. The Mother House hosted various programs including the Montague Farm Zendo, the Montague Farm Zen House and a residence program.
The Mother House was foreclosed on in 2011 and sold to a private owner in 2012.
Training and Spiritual practices
The training of the Zen Peacemakers is grounded in traditional Zen practice - meditation, retreats, liturgy, personal study-relationships with empowered teachers - and also explores new forms and structures. Council circle, Nonviolent Communication, international Bearing Witness retreats, and "plunges" - immersing oneself in unfamiliar situations, often connected with social action, which requires the participant to let go of what they know and responds in new ways - have come to form core elements of the training throughout the network of practitioners. Glassman trained in clowning as a personal plunge, visiting war zones, and performing for the children. In his later years, Glassman disrobed from the priesthood to develop lay zen practice, following the tradition of his heart teacher Koryu Osaka Roshi. Together with his third wife Eve Marko, he empowered lay zen preceptors, and Eve Marko worked on a new set of "householder koans". Lay and circle forms of liturgy such as the Gate of Sweet Nectar, Glassman's translation, and elaboration of the traditional Japanese Kanromon ceremony of feeding the hungry ghosts, came to be explored and shared with the community. At the heart of the Zen Peacemakers approach is the conviction that service and social action are themselves zen practice, together with the challenge to develop new 'upayas' (tools) to meet each new situation.
Formulations of spiritual principles specific to the order include "The Sixteen Practices of a Zen Peacemaker", comprising the "Three Refuges", the "Three Tenets" and the "Ten Practices" of a Zen Peacemaker[13]
Zen Peacemaker Circles
A few years later, we formed something called Peacemaker Circle International, dedicated to creating networks of spiritually-based social activists. Not just networks, but coalitions. And not just coalitions, but circles. We had done a lot of direct services – building homes, taking care of kids, taking care of the sick, creating jobs for people. What we noticed is that if we just did this one thing, each of us could only do so much. Even if each of us did a wonderful job, it was still just that one job. Now, how do you take care of the poor? How do you take care of people who have AIDS in Africa when all you can do is just one job? So you need to change the game. Instead of always competing with everybody for money or recognition and all of the politics that NGOs and not-for-profits engage in, why don't we spend some of that energy to start linking – linking and creating a real force for social action that's made up of all of us working together? If somebody says, "What is Buddhist about this?" I would ask, "How do you define Buddhism?" If it's about awakening to the oneness of life, then this is a real way to do it. Working together is a wonderful way to wake up to this oneness. So we started bringing this work to different countries. We started in Europe. Then we went to the Middle East. And then we started in Latin America ... We introduced this model of organizing interlocking circles and began planning how these different groups could work to help each other, instead of working separately.[14]
In the early 2000s, Bernie Glassman and his third wife Eve Marko worked with circles of spiritually minded activists around the world to develop a consensus-based model for social action and interfaith spiritual practice. Initially called Peacemaker Circle International, they later became known as Zen Peacemaker Circles.[15] The interfaith strand of the Zen Peacemakers was influenced by Bernie Glassman's friendship with Sufi teacher and radio host Lex Hixon,[16] his appreciation of the Jewish renewal leader Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and his many Christian zen students and successors. Zen Peacemaker Circles were established globally, presenting a model of zen practice that replaced the traditional role of 'Zen teacher' with innovative communities of practitioners learning from each other and sharing ideas between Circles. Decision making used the approach of Sociocracy, and Bernie Glassman created two new community roles of Steward and Circle Dharmaholder to support the model. The 'circular transmission' experiment was largely abandoned after the loss of the Mother House in 2011, although Zen Peacemaker Circle training continues in the UK,[17] Germany and the US. In other communities, the tools of Circle practice, especially Council circle have been incorporated into traditional zen training, to give a voice to students,[18] for social action[19] and for governance[20]
Dharma teachers are often schooled in the dharma, in delivery, but not in community decision making. Traditionally organizations have been run on a hierarchical model, with one or two people making all the decisions. How inspiring to have processes that can engage entire groups. The circles of decision-makers are an image of interdependence. Interdependence should be reflected in the organization of organizations. How to continue to realize and express the project of interdependence? The inherent interconnectedness of all life.[21]
Street Retreats
'Street retreats', excursions by Bernie Glassman and others into the streets for days at a time to live amongst the homeless, have become a feature of Zen Peacemaker practice.[8][9] Author James Ishmael Ford writes, "...'street retreats,' for instance, moves sesshin into the streets: participants eat in soup kitchens, and, if they know they're not displacing homeless people, sleep in homeless shelters or, otherwise, sleep in public places. Zazen takes place in parks and dokusan in alleys."[22]
Socially Engaged Buddhism
As a leader of Socially Engaged Buddhism, the Zen Peacemakers publish Bearing Witness, a free monthly online newsletter. The socially engaged practices of Zen Peacemakers is aimed at extending Dharma beyond the meditation hall to the worlds of business, social services, conflict resolution and environmental stewardship. Socially Engaged Buddhism has frequently led to new models of practice, allowing Buddhists to addressing the needs of individuals and communities in disadvantaged areas. The Zen Peacemakers' way is intended to "illuminate all life as a boundless meditation hall".[23]
Appraisal
Religious historian Richard Hughes Seager writes "The Zen Peacemaker Order ... has the potential to rival Thich Nhat Hanh's groups and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship as a force in American activism".[24]
Richard Dudley Baker is an American Soto Zen master, the founder and guiding teacher of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Buddhistisches Studienzentrum (Johanneshof) in Germany's Black Forest. As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. He remained abbot there until 1984, the year he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an ongoing affair. Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States.
Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi was a Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest who substantially contributed to development of Zen in the USA.
Anne Arundel Hopkins Aitken was an American Zen Buddhist, in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. She co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959 together with her husband, Robert Baker Aitken. She purchased both of its properties: the Koko An Zendo and Maui Zendo. Honolulu Diamond Sangha has been considered "one of several pivotal Buddhist organizations critical to the development of Zen" in western countries. Anne Aitken was also one of the original founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
Dennis Merzel is an American Zen and spirituality teacher, also known as Genpo Roshi.
Bernie Glassman was an American Zen Buddhist roshi and founder of the Zen Peacemakers, an organization established in 1980. In 1996, he co-founded the Zen Peacemaker Order with his late wife Sandra Jishu Holmes. Glassman was a Dharma successor of the late Taizan Maezumi-roshi, and gave inka and Dharma transmission to several people.
Hakuun Yasutani was a Sōtō priest and the founder of the Sanbo Kyodan, a lay Japanese Zen group. Through his students Philip Kapleau and Taizan Maezumi, Yasutani has been one of the principal forces in founding western (lay) Zen-practice.
White Plum Asanga, sometimes termed White Plum Sangha, is a Zen school in the Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi lineage, created by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi. It consists of Maezumi's Dharma heirs and subsequent successors and students. A diverse organization spread across the United States and with a small presence in Europe, the White Plum Asanga
[I]ncludes teachers who represent the spectrum of styles to be found to American Zen—socially engaged Buddhism, family practice, Zen and the arts, secularized Zen, and progressive traditionalism."
Robert Edward Kennedy is an American Jesuit priest, professor of theology, psychoanalyst and Zen rōshi in the White Plum lineage.
Upaya Institute and Zen Center is a center for residential Zen practice located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and founded by Joan Halifax Roshi. The center focuses on integration of Zen practice with social action, with traditional cultivation of wisdom and compassion in the Buddhist sense. It also provides service in the areas of death and dying, prison work, environment, women's rights and peace work. According to the Upaya website, in 2002 Joan Halifax founded the Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order. A non-profit organization, Prajna is a new Buddhist Order in the lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, the Zen Peacemaker Order and White Plum Asanga.
Charles Tenshin Fletcher is a British-born American Zen teacher.
Yokoji Zen Mountain Center is a year-round Zen Buddhist training and retreat center located in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California. It is a 160 acres of sacred Native American land and wilderness.
Enkyō Pat O'Hara is a Soto Zen priest and teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage of Zen Buddhism.
Gerry Shishin Wick is a Soto Zen roshi, author, oceanographer and abbot of Great Mountain Zen Center in Berthoud, Colorado, which he founded in 1996. He is one of the twelve Dharma Successors of the late Taizan Maezumi, receiving Dharma transmission and a Denkai from him in 1990. Prior to it, for 24 years he underwent Zen training with Maezumi, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and Sochu Suzuki Roshi. He remained the president of White Plum Asanga, a Zen school in the Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi lineage, from 2007 to 2014.
Below is a timeline of important events regarding Zen Buddhism in the United States. Dates with "?" are approximate.
Village Zendo is a combined Soto and Rinzai Zen practice center in lower Manhattan. Originally located in the apartment of Enkyo Pat O'Hara, who founded the zendo in 1986, the Zen center took up the majority of space in O'Hara's apartment. Village Zendo is a practice center of the White Plum Asanga and Zen Peacemaker Circle, the former founded by O'Hara's teacher Taizan Maezumi and the latter by Bernard Glassman.
Merle Kodo Boyd (1944–2022) was an American Zen Buddhist nun. She was the first African-American woman to receive Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, as a Dharma heir of Wendy Egyoku Nakao in the White Plum Asanga. Receiving transmission in March 2006, she founded and led the Lincroft Zen Sangha in New Jersey that is currently part of the Zen Peacemaker Circle established by Tetsugen Bernard Glassman and his wife Sandra Jishu Holmes.
The Prison Mindfulness Institute is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 with the mission of supporting prisoners and prison volunteers in transformation through meditation and contemplative spirituality in prisons. The organization provides books and resources through its "Books Behind Bars" program, publishes books on prison dharma through their Prison Dharma Press, and offers a facilitator training for prison volunteers called "Path of Freedom." The organization supports prisoners in the study and practice of contemplative traditions and mindfulness awareness practices. It is an affiliate of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the Zen Peacemakers.
Zen was introduced in the United States at the end of the 19th century by Japanese teachers who went to America to serve groups of Japanese immigrants and become acquainted with the American culture. After World War II, interest from non-Asian Americans grew rapidly. This resulted in the commencement of an indigenous American Zen tradition which also influences the larger western (Zen) world.
New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care is a Soto Zen practice center in Manhattan. It was founded in 2007 by Zen teachers and monks Koshin Paley Ellison and Robert Chodo Campbell. In addition to Soto Zen Buddhist practice and study, NYZC offers training in end-of-life care for medical professionals, carepartners, and those who are dying. Since the Zen center was founded, the priests and their students have worked with over 150,000 people. New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care offers the first fully-accredited Zen Buddhist Clinical Pastoral Education program in the United States.
Koryū Osaka (1901-1985), birthname Koryū Matsumoto, was a Japanese lay Zen-teacher who taught Taizan Maezumi the Inzan koan-curriculum.
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