Core training: The Way of Council with Kathleen Hoetsu Battke

Council is one of our most important core Zen Peacemaker practices. We share Council during our Bearing Witness retreats most every day. In Council we come together in a small group in a profound way. We create a shared liminal space that is safe, confidential, and perhaps sacred. We each listen and speak from the […]

Using the Empty Chair to Move Beyond Us-and-Them Thinking

In a season of vitriol, council with an empty chair may help us all win. Updated April 23, 2024 |  Reviewed by Gary Drevitch At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood did something unusual: he spent over 12 minutes speaking to an empty chair as if it were then-President Obama. Commentary flooded social media and dominated news […]

Leaving Prison Behind: A Council Before I Go

Please join Roshi Eve Marko and Jared Seide, Exec Director of Center for Council, in a dynamic conversation about Leaving Prison Behind: A Council Before I Go. This new illustrated novella chronicles the journey of Ray, a fictionalized participant in a council-based program for incarcerated people.

I kept showing up…

by Judith Haran   After staying at home for over two years during the pandemic with only a silent spouse and my cats, I was in desperate need of contact with the human race. I’d retired from my job as a psychiatrist in 2019. I had been on the ZPI mailing list for a long […]

Listening from the Heart – Where Compassion Begins

Join Jared Seide for a conversation about Center for Council and its work building council-based programs that foster compassion in prisons, community-based organizations, hospitals, schools, and police agencies. Jared will talk about the evolution of the organization’s work and what has led to the publication of his new book: Where Compassion Begins: Foundational Practices to […]

ZPI SHORT Listening from the Heart – Where Compassion Begins

Jared Seide joins us for a conversation about Center for Council and its work building council-based programs that foster compassion in prisons, community-based organizations, hospitals, schools, and police agencies. Jared will talk about the evolution of the organization’s work and what has led to the publication of his new book: Where Compassion Begins: Foundational Practices […]

Where Compassion Begins

Introducing a new book by Jared Seide, Executive Director of Center for Council: Where Compassion Begins: Foundational Practices to Enhance Mindfulness Attention and Listening from the Heart (2021).     Where Compassion Begins is an invitation to build the muscle of compassion, through exercises and practices that enhance our capacity to listen from the heart and, […]

The Way of Council

The Way of Council is a core practice with the Zen Peacemakers, along with meditation, the Three Tenets, and social action. It is a staple practice in our Bearing Witness retreats. The Circle invites individuals to come together in a dedicated and sacred space, to tune into one’s personal and collective truth, and to the land and nature taking part in the circle.