Bearing Witness A Zen Master's Lessons in Making Peace

The founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order outlines ways of making peace through stories of people who have made peace with themselves through self-honesty and compromise

In January 1994, as Zen teacher Bernie Glassman marked his fiftieth year, he did something special, founding the Zen Peacemaker Order. This order would comprise a community of activists, both organized and individual, and would provide them with a center from which to share stories and information. Yet, most important, the order's core would be spiritual--a universal spirituality. Glassman, who has been very active in social service activities, founding entrepreneurial ventures in economically blighted communities as well as spearheading the founding of some of this country's first AIDS hospice centers, is not new to spiritual action. He brings a centered, even, and balanced perspective to what one might do to better the current state of social affairs. Through the people Glassman meets and ordains as Peacemakers, the reader gathers a sense of what it means to devote oneself to the universal task of making peace with the here and now and, most important, past. Raul Nino