[Jewish] Great program on Contemplative Practice and Social Justice Thursday Night

[Steven Nathan]

*Contemplative Practice and Social Action*

Zen Master Roshi Bernie Glassman is internationally known as an 
initiator in the second evolution of Western Buddhism. This development 
is characterized by taking spiritual practice beyond the confines of 
Buddhist institutions to integrate it with social action. He is the 
founder and spiritual director of the interfaith group, Zen Peacemaker 
Order.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939, of Jewish immigrant parents from 
Eastern Europe, Bernie has a PhD in Applied Mathematics from UCLA and 
worked for McDonnell-Douglas on interplanetary flight as an aeronautical 
engineer. He studied Zen with Taizan Hakyuyu Maezumi, Roshi, founder of 
the Zen Center of Los Angeles, and in 1980 founded the Zen Community of 
New York in the Bronx. He started, as a livelihood for this Community, 
the Greystone Bakery producing high-end cakes sold in some of New York's 
fanciest eateries, and then made the Bakery a vehicle for social 
enterprise. His vision was for socially responsible businesses to have a 
double bottom line: generating profits and serving the community.

The Greyestone Mandala he founded network of profits and not-for-profits 
working together to improve the lives of the inner city community of 
southwest Yonkers. Greystone advances the principles of empowerment, 
empathy, and responsible action and provides the permanent housing and 
jobs for many deemed conventionally unemployable, job training, child 
care, after-school programs and one of the first facilities to provide 
alternate care therapies to people with HIV/AIDS. Among his awards is 
Social Entrepreneur of the Year from Business Week in 1993. Bernie is 
developing his social enterprise work in Massachusetts with Entrepreneur 
Joe Sibilia and Springfield sheriff Michael J. Ashe by co-founding the 
PathMakers Partnership to serve the homeless and formerly incarcerated 
in Hamden County and to bring them out of the welfare system and into 
community.

His published books include Instruction to the Cook: A Zen Masters 
Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower, April 1996) with Rick 
Fields, Bearing Witness: A Zen Masters Lessons in Making Peace (Bell 
Tower, May 1997) and Infinite Circle: Studies in Zen (Shambhala 
Publication, 2002). There have been many books written about, and films 
documenting, his work.


This event is on Thursday, November 8th, 2007.
It is held at : FPH Faculty Lounge
This event starts at 7:00pm.
 
This event is organized by : Spiritual Life

For more information E-mail lmnSA at hampshire.edu 
<mailto:lmnSA at hampshire.edu>
-- 

Steve Nathan

 


Steven P. Nathan

Campus Rabbi and

Interim LGBTQ Advisor

Hampshire College 
                                                           

Office of Spiritual Life -- Box SA

Amherst, MA 01002

Phone: (413) 559-6234

Fax: (413) 559-5663

snathan at hampshire.edu <mailto:snathan at hampshire.edu>


 

"The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the 
more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets 
sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern 
one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to 
me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, 
some are guilty, all are responsible."

-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

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