General Information: Overview: : A History of Service

Maezumi Roshi and Sensei Bernie (Riverdale 1981)

Roshi Bernie Glassman worked with his teacher, Taizan Maezumi Roshi from 1963 to 1980, to build one of the most respected Zen training centers in the United States, the Zen Center of Los Angeles. When Bernie left, ZCLA comprised an entire city block in downtown Los Angeles and owned a second site, the Mountain Center, in Idyllwild, CA.

Roshis Bernie and Jishu at Opening Ceremony for Greyston AIDS facility. (Yonkers 1997)

Roshi Bernie Glassman founded the Zen Peacemakers in 1980 to expand Zen practice into larger spheres of influence including, social service, business and ecology. From this effort grew the Greyston Foundation, a holistic network of community development companies and not-for-profits working in the inner city of Yonkers, New York. The mission set for Greyston was to free individuals from the cycle of poverty and public dependence. Bernie Roshi with Maezumi Roshi in Riverdal.

Today Greyston provides facilities and supportive services that include permanent housing for formerly homeless families, a childcare center, AIDS-related medical services, housing, job training,
and jobs.

One of the first "welfare to work" programs in the country, Greyston has an annual operating and capital budget of over $20 million, and has received numerous government grants at the federal, state, and local levels.

Yuri Maezumi in French Peacemakers Soup Kitchen (Paris 2006)

From 1996 to 2004, Zen Peacemakers initiated social services and peacemaking activities around the world. Zen Peacemakers fed, and continue to feed, hundreds of immigrants at a Paris soup kitchen every week. They supported nonviolence efforts in Palestine and brought Israelis and Palestinians together in Israel for peaceful coexistence projects. Peacemakers Poland established Nonviolent Communications Training and Practice in the public school system throughout the country and opened an AIDS hospice.

Presently in the United States, Zen Peacemakers work for prison reform, provide hospice care, and offer a broad range of services to impoverished individuals, families and communities in our inner cities and rural areas.