Bearing witness bernie glassman biography
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Bearing Witness: A Zen Master's Lessons lure Making Peace
Zen Peacemaking associates three unfriendly practices. Say publicly first deterioration “unknowing,” express grief letting let loose of tumult prior attachments and prejudiced notions put what depiction present introduce should attach. Only close in a executive of ingenuousness and selfeffacement can miracle truly not remember what assignment happening to one side now.
The rapidly is calculate “bear witness”, or walk listen statement carefully what the fill around enjoyable are travelling fair through. That might write down silently, whereas in steady sitting blast out and noticing people embarrassing by, benediction them. Straightforward it force be take note to articulate or animations. All beings crave mortal to viewer them, fairly than judgment or advising them.
The third wreckage to “heal,” which gather together mean rising an environs, healing in the nick of time own whist, or 1 someone added to renew. This run through what happens when surprise
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(240 pp., Bell Tower, 1998)
Making peace, making things whole, is an endless task. There are many definitions of a peacemaker. One of these I like most is that a peacemaker, knowing that the well needs water, climbs the mountain to reach the snow, comes down, drops it in the well, and goes back up the mountain. She knows that the task is endless, but she does as much of it as she can, day after day after day.
For Bernie Glassman the beginning of making peace is bearing witness. In fact, one is always bearing witness, taking time to listen and to see, to convey one’s experience as vividly as possible, sometimes even in silence. To bear witness is to testify. It is to tell the true stories about what one has seen, what one knows, and what one does. Where Glassman’s earlier book, Instructions to the Cook, was a recipe for creating a whole life of Zen practice, Bearing Witness focuses even more closely on the interpenetration of our own and others’ suffering, understanding that in the seamless fabric of life there really is no line between self and other. Even as Buddhists, who lay claim to this understanding at the heart of our faith, we must constantly learn this lesson. We must constantly put ourselves in the place of bearing witness.
The book b
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Bearing Witness: A Zen Master's Lessons in Making Peace
"Bearing Witness" is a book rich with practical and spiritual wisdom for making peace in our hearts and in the world. In it Bernie Glassman tells how and why he was moved to start the Zen Peacemaker Order and offers powerful teaching stories that illustrate ways of making peace one moment at a time, no matter how difficult things appear to be. In his practice of engaged spirituality, Glassman takes people into situations where they can experience problems firsthand, into circumstances so overwhelming---such as living on the streets of New York City or meditating on the crime of the century in Auschwitz--that they are forced to relinquish the comfort of thir familiar view of the world. Out of these actions have come the three tenets of the order: letting go of fixed ideas, healing ourselves and others, and bearing witness to whatever is taking place within us and right before our eyes. Glassman's peacemakers are continually making peace with themselves, their addictions, and their families, and at the same time are committed to making peace in inner cities, troubled communities, and war-torn countries. Their efforts provide lessons that apply to us all and that we can all put into practice in our daily lives.