Prayers on the Plum Tree: Sensei Engu Dobbs’s Reflection on the Zen Peacemakers Native American Plunge August 2017

SOUTH DAKOTA, USA. Each day we sat in a large circle and began and ended our meetings by smudging with sage smoke, offering tobacco, and listening to Lakota songs and prayers. Listening deeply and bearing witness to the grief of others tends to be hard, hard practice…But if we’re able, more or less, to stay with the grief…The result is often a powerful and surprising feeling of joy.

Summary Report on the 2017 Zen Peacemakers Native American Summer Programs

SOUTH DAKOTA, USA. In August of 2017, thirty non-native American Zen Peacemakers conducted two weeks of programs as another step in an years-long-arc of developing relationship and appreciation with the Lakota of South Dakota. Both weeks were based on and held by the Three-Tenets of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Taking Action…

100,000 Fires to Feed: Roshi Michel Dubois’ Twenty years of Homelessness Ministry in Paris

PARIS, FRANCE. Roshi Michel Dubois, founder and teacher at Zen – A Way of the Heart center in Paris,  describes how spending a night among the homeless of Dusseldorf gave rise to a social enterprise serving its 100,000th meal this year to the homeless in Paris. Michel has engaged with bearing witness retreats for years, and his experience in Auschwitz, Bosnia-Herzegovina and with the Lakota on Turtle Island give a wider context to his ministry.

The Face I See Everywhere: Why Barbara Wegmüller Returns to Auschwitz

OSWIECIM, POLAND. “There is the face of a woman, looking at me, ever since I met her eyes for the first time. She is looking at me on one of the pictures in one of the memorial halls in Auschwitz I, the original camp. The photo shows her as she is waiting with a group of women and her children at the selection site. Her face shows disgust, fear, distress, and she seems to know what will happen to her and her children as she looks into the camera.”

Barbara Wegmüller, a Zen Peacemaker Roshi and Bearing Witness retreat Spiritholder (facilitator), responds to the question of why she’s been coming back to bear witness at Auschwitz for nearly 20 years.

Retracing the Path of Bullets

   A Report from a Seventeen-day Pilgrimage in Sweden, Bearing Witness to the Effects of the Arms Industry on Communities, Veterans, Refugees and Caregivers. By Pake Hall, ZPO Member (Top photo by Lennart Kjörling. All other photos by Pake Hall) SWEDEN. During the summer of 2015, forty individuals undertook a pilgrimage from Gothenburg harbor to the […]

Diversity Fundraiser, Auschwitz 2016

  Celebration of diversity has been a hallmark of the Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness Retreats and in particular in Auschwitz-Birkenau, once a symbol of extreme intolerance towards others. Through the years the Zen Peacemakers hosted there countless nationalities, faith and ethnicities. In 2015, our large community collected donations to bring Lakota Native Americans, Croats, Bosniaks & […]

Resonance is Everywhere

By Roshi Eve Myonen Marko Photo of Grandmother Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance (left) by Peter Cunningham Originally appeared on Eve’s blog on 7/6/2016   The Facebook page for the Bearing Witness visit to Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota during the last week of this month has been closed, made accessible only to those people […]

Orlando and The Call of Connection

Hello, my name is Rami Efal. I have recently entered the role of executive director of the Zen Peacemakers, Inc., founded by Roshi Bernie Glassman and the container for his teachings, the ZP Bearing Witness retreats and the Zen Peacemaker Order — an international community of spiritual practitioners and social activists based on the ZP’s Three Tenets: Not-knowing, […]