Instructions to the Cook: Living a Life that Matters, by Bernie Glassman and Rick Fields (Hardcopy) $15.00
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Based on a 13th-century Japanese manual of the same title, this guide to modern-day Zen practice also details the history of Glassman’s work in the world. An abbot of Zen communities in New York City and Los Angeles, Glassman is also the founder of the Greyston Mandala, a network that includes a commercial bakery, apartments for the homeless and other not-for-profit community development projects in Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. In Zen Buddhist tradition, the preparation of a meal is used as a metaphor for leading a meaningful life. Glassman and Fields (coauthor of Chop Wood, Carry Water) detail the five main “courses” of life: spirituality, study, livelihood, social action, and relationship and community Most widely recognized of the Greyston ventures is the successful bakery. Besides being a teacher of Zen and a noted social activist, Glassman is a pragmatic businessman. His description of how he and others who work with and for the jobless and homeless of Yonkers dealt with government agencies, banks, suspicious residents and the vagaries of the marketplace will satisfy the appetites of readers whose interest is as much in business practice as in Zen practice. In setting out his guidelines for conducting business, e.g., establishing self-directed management teams and sharing success with the community, Glassman occasionally strikes an imperious tone (reflecting the authority invested in Zen leaders), but the menu he offers is fresh, appealingly presented and thought- provoking.
Bearing Witness, by Bernie Glassman and Eve Marko (Hardcopy) $22.00 To order from the Zen Peacemakers Gift Shop
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Zen practitioner and non-profit community developer Bernie Glassman offers powerful teaching stories that illustrate ways of making peace one moment at a time. Each chapter focuses on an event or person and demonstrates how a particular peacemaker vow is put into practice. Through these stories and Glassman’s personal testimony we come to understand the essence of peacemaking.
Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen by Bernie Glassman To order from the Zen Peacemakers Gift Shop, (Hardcopy) $19.95;
(Paperback) $13.95
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In Infinite Circle, one of America’s most distinctive Zen teachers takes a back-to-basics approach to Zen. Glassman illuminates three key teachings of Zen Buddhism, offering line-by-line commentary in clear, direct language:1. The Heart Sutra: the Buddha’s essential discourse on emptiness, a central sutra of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.
2. “The Identity of Relative and Absolute”: an eighth-century poem by Shih-t’ou His-ch’ien, a key text of the Soto Zen school.
3. The Zen precepts: the rules of conduct for laypeople and monks.His commentaries are based on workshops he gave as Abbot of the Zen Community of New York, and they contain within them the principles that became the foundation for the Greyston Mandala of community development organizations and the Zen Peacemaker Order.
Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers are frequently on the road working to bear witness, wage peace and inspire hope in the corners of the globe touched by war, poverty and genocide.
Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peace Makers are returning for the 17th year to the old site of the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Oświęcim, Poland.