Bernie Glassman

Bernie Glassman (January 18, 1939 – November 4, 2018) was an American Zen Buddhist roshi, aeronautical engineer and founder of the Zen Peacemakers (previously the Zen Community of New York), 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 heir of the late Taizan Maezumi-roshi, and gave inka and Dharma transmission to several people.

Glassman was known as a pioneer of social enterprise, socially engaged Buddhism, and "Bearing Witness Retreats" at Auschwitz and on the streets with homeless people.

According to author James Ishmael Ford, in 2006 he

Biography Bernie Glassman was born to Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, He attended university at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and received a degree in engineering. Following graduation, he moved to California to work as an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell-Douglas. He then received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Glassman first encountered Zen when he was assigned Huston Smith's The Religions of Man for an English class in 1958. From there, he continued with books by Alan Watts, Christmas Humphreys, and D.T. Suzuki. Glassman opened Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, which initially provided jobs for the Zen students but evolved into an effort to help alleviate the widespread homelessness in the area. The bakery provided jobs for inner city residents who lacked education and skills.

Through the success of his bakery—which earned $12 million in revenues in 2016—Glassman founded the Greyston Foundation (sometimes called Greyston Mandala) with his wife, Sandra Jishu Holmes, in 1989. He retired from the Greyston Foundation in 1996 to pursue socially engaged Buddhist projects through the Zen Peacemakers. As of 2004, the Foundation had developed $35 million worth in real estate development projects in Westchester County, New York. The Foundation offers HIV/AIDS programs, provides job training and housing, child care services, educational opportunities, and other endeavors.

In 1996, Glassman founded the Zen Peacemaker Order with his wife, Sandra Jishu Holmes. Professor Christopher S. Queen states, "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."

In 2012, Glassman founded The Stone Soup Cafe in Greenfield, Massachusetts (originally the "Let All Eat Cafe" in Montague) with Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges. Glassman and Bridges created an environment at the Stone Soup Café that promotes dignified treatment and accessibility for all. They designed the meal experience to ensure patrons felt attended to at a relaxed pace, nourishing the body, mind, and soul. Influenced by the Zen Peacemakers' principles, the café operates on a pay-what-you-can model, fostering a mixed-income dining experience that unites individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Glassman died on November 4, 2018, from complications of a stroke, in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the age of 79.

Teachings

Glassman taught about what his teacher, the late Taizan Maezumi, called the "unknowing." Not-knowing is the first tenet of the Zen Peacemakers, and Glassman said of it, "In Zen the words source and essence are the equivalent of Unknowing, and they come up again and again. We have the absolute and the relative perspectives about life, and Unknowing is the one source of both of these." and later Zen Peacemaker Circles. Interconnected projects were established globally, replacing the role of 'Zen teacher' with participants learning from each other and sharing ideas between Circles. Starting in 2001, Glassman taught "Clowning Your Zen" workshops with Moshe Cohen, and founded a "clown order" called the Order of Disorder within the Zen Peacemaker Order. In his last years, having disrobed from the priesthood, Glassman together with his third wife Eve Marko continued the work of his teacher Koryu Osaka Roshi in developing lay forms of Zen practice.

Lineage

Bernie Glassman appointed several "senseis" and "roshis" in traditional zen, and established the non-hierarchical roles of 'Steward' and 'Circle Dharmaholder' as coordinators and visionholders to continue the Zen Peacemaker Circles model. A number of his successors have also given dharma transmission to some of their own students.