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Weekend at BernieÕs

by Trish Deitch Rohrer

Trish Deitch Rohrer visits Montague Farm, where Roshi Bernie Glassman is launching his newest venture, the Maezumi Institute. Through his many incarnationsÑfrom engineer to social activist to peacemaker to clownÑGlassman has faced the question: Is this Zen?

When Zen master Bernie Tetsugen Glassman was a little boy in the 1940Õs, he went out for a meal with his family at a diner in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. It couldnÕt have been an easy time for Glassman. They had just moved to Brownsville. His mother had died not long before, and his father had remarried just a year after that. On that particular day, though, Glassman, seven or eight at the time, had a good vision: In the middle of the meal, he looked over at a nearby booth and noticed a bunch of bums, as he calls them, arguing over what he calls the funny papers. (He looked at me dead-on as he told this story, his brown eyes neutral, his thick, silver eyebrowsÑand his beard, and his tiny ponytailÑall haywire. We were sitting on a wooden porch in northern Massachusetts, looking out over a deep, green valley, drinking coffee.) ÒI realized,Ó Glassman said (painting traces in the afternoon air with his cigar), Òthe bums were philosophers.Ó Or maybe he didnÕt say exactly that. IÕd driven up to Massachusetts earlier that day from New York City to talk to Glassman about his most recent project, the Maezumi Institute, a new school for Zen studies, peacemaking, and contemplative artsÑand a center where people of many faiths can come togetherÑand my cassette player failed to record the conversation. I discovered this while I was rounding a bend in a country road shortly after leaving Glassman at Montague FarmÑonce a famous anti-nuke commune and now the place where the Maezumi Institute is locatedÑand I went into a panic behind the wheel: How could I write about Glassman without verifiable quotes? And then, suddenly, I rounded another bend, and came upon a homemade wooden sign, nailed to a tree. This was my first vision after meeting Glassman, and I attribute it to him, as if he had painted it himself. The sign said, in messy, black, handwritten letters, ÒFree sawdust.Ó The bottom line, when it comes to GlassmanÕs work, whether it be as the founder of the Maezumi Institute, or as the cofounder of the international Zen Peacemaker community, or as the creator of the Greyston mandala in Yonkers, New York, or as the first dharma heir of the renowned Japanese Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi, is this: He is trying to help the people he comes in contact with to realize and actualize, as he says, the interconnectednessÑthe onenessÑof life. One tangible entryway into this profound and difficult realization is to dive into situations (or ÒplungeÓ into them, as Glassman puts it) that leave you in a state of what Zen practitioners call Ònot knowingÓ: You stand in the middle of any moment or situation, your preconceived notions, preferences, and labels for things obliterated. An example of a situation that throws you into a state of not knowing, Glassman says, is spending time with a person you love whoÕs dying. Another example is finding yourself living on the street with no money and no food: You have no reference points. Your world goes topsy-turvy. ÒIf youÕre truly in a state of not labeling things,Ó Glassman said to me over the phone a few weeks after our first meeting, Òthen itÕs all one. As soon as you label anythingÑI donÕt care what it isÑit becomes Ôother,Õ and youÕre not in that state of oneness anymore.Ó Glassman orchestrates, through his lifeÕs work, situations that help create a state of not knowing. He has done group meditation retreats at Auschwitz, he has lived with students on the sidewalks and in the subway tunnels of New York City, he has no doubt created chaos for the three women he has been married to over the course of his life, and for many of his more conventional Zen students who cling to the idea that the only path to enlightenment is through strict dharma study and meditation practice. ÒI donÕt like boxes,Ó he said to me that day at Montague Farm. ÒI like to tear them down.Ó Or at least thatÕs what I thought he said, before I discovered that, tape or no tape, there was going to be no simple answer to the question, Who is Bernie Glassman?

ÒI donÕt think itÕs useful to try to pin Bernie down,Ó says Joan Halifax, one of GlassmanÕs eighteen dharma heirs, and the abbot of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. ÒHeÕs a shape-shifter. He has no fixed identity.Ó ÒSo how do you relate to him?Ó I say. ÒIÕm in my mid-sixties,Ó she says, Òjust a little younger than he is. I want somebody I can talk to toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball. IÕm not interested in a relationship qualified by mutual projections.Ó ÒWhat do you mean?Ó I say. ÒOur relationship is not a typical studentÐteacher relationship,Ó she says, Òwhere the student is enthralled by the teacher. ItÕs more a path of unusual mutuality, where discovery is the primary quotient.Ó ÒDiscovery of what?Ó I ask. ÒAnything,Ó she says. ÒThe first tenet, after all, is not knowing.Ó

Glassman was standing on a dirt road, trying to light a cigar, when I pulled up. He squinted at me, and then went back to the lighter and the cigar. There was an old dog asleep in a shadow nearby, and the sound of rushing water in the distance. Otherwise, there was nothing but him and me, a ticking car, some flying bugs, the bright summer sunlight and the hot breeze through the leaves of the trees. He was wearing a blue Hawaiian-style shirt and a pair of loose-fitting gabardine pants held up by wide, yellow suspenders decorated with blue-and-red polka-dotted cows. The outfit, including Birkenstocks and socks, made him look a little like a clown (which he is), or even a bum (which he has been). But the look in his eyes was unmistakable: He is present. His eyes are calm and deep. And though thereÕs no lack of friendliness in his demeanor, thereÕs also no added friendliness either. ThereÕs no added anything, in fact: just space. Flustered by his silence, I started gabbing about someone we knew in common, but Glassman just walked slowly, slightly ahead of me, in the direction of the wooden porch, listening to what I was saying and waving me on in the right direction.

What does it mean when we stumble upon a person or a place or a thing we hadnÕt known before, and we feel home? ThatÕs how Glassman felt when, assigned the book Religions of Man by his aeronautics professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn forty-odd years before, he read Huston SmithÕs one-page chapter on Zen: He felt Òhome.Ó But this was the late fifties and there were not many Zen Buddhist practitioners or teachers in the United States yet. So Glassman, the child of non-practicing Jews and socialists, read whatever books he could find, and taught himself to meditate. Then, in 1963, after heÕd graduated from college and moved to Los Angeles to work as a senior aeronautical engineer at McDonnell Douglas (he worked on the Mars Project there, among other things), he went down to a temple in Little Tokyo to see if he could join a sitting group. What he found was an old priest who didnÕt speak any English, and a young monk. Glassman sat zazen with them, and afterwards, he asked the old priest why they did walking meditation. The old man motioned for the young monk to answer, and the young monk said, ÒWhen we walk, we just walk.Ó That was Taizan Maezumi, who would later become GlassmanÕs teacher and one of the most influential Zen masters to come to the West. But Glassman was turned off by the temple in Little Tokyo because of the language barrier with the old priest, so he didnÕt go back. It wasnÕt until four years later, in 1967, at a talk given by Yasutani Hakuun Roshi, that Glassman saw Maezumi againÑagain acting as translator. Glassman, this time impressed by MaezumiÕs English, asked if he was part of any temple in town. Maezumi told Glassman that he was just starting one, and invited the young engineer to come. Glassman went the very next day.

Seven years later, Glassman was driving to work at McDonnell Douglas with some colleagues when he had what was probably the most significant vision of his life. He was nearing the end of his six-year-long koan study (having just finished his Ph.D. in mathematics at UCLA), and there was a question lingering in his mind about reincarnation. HeÕd asked Maezumi Roshi the question, but Maezumi hadnÕt answered it. So it was in that spaceÑwhat Glassman called Òthe powerful space of the unanswered questionÓÑthat this particular vision occurred: Sitting in the back of the car going to work that morning, Glassman saw hungry ghosts everywhere. ÒThere were all kinds of people,Ó he said, his voice deep but soft, with a slightly worn-down Brooklyn accent, Òall kinds of animals, all kinds of things that were unsatisfied. At first there was a sense that they were out there, these hungry spirits. But that moved quickly into a realization that the hungry spirits were all me. That is, there was no separation.Ó ÒNo separation?Ó I asked. ÒAs one practices,Ó he said, and sighed, Òthe notion of self grows. So at some point early on the notion of self is yourself. At some point the notion of self is your family. At some point the notion of self is your community. At some point the notion of self is the world. At some point the notion of self is the universe. For me, what some people call Ôno selfÕ is equivalent to realizing and actualizing the self as larger than what you thought it was. ThatÕs what I meant when I said that the hungry ghosts were me.Ó Glassman, that day in the car in L.A., started to laugh and cry together, and couldnÕt stop. He went to his job but had to go home. He knew that he somehow had to work to feed these hungry beings who were everywhere. ÒBefore that I had thought that my life path was going to be forever in the zendo,Ó he said, Òpushing people into having realizationsÑÓ Glassman, apparently, was a very, very tough taskmaster in the zendo, using the stick hard and oftenÑÒbut this opened it up, and brought so many questions: How do you do the same kind of work in all the aspects of life?Ó He laughed, a kind of exhausted laugh. ÒIt was a lot bigger path,Ó he said. ÒAn endless path.Ó

He didnÕt eat with me the day I came to visit. He said heÕd just had some beef jerky and wasnÕt hungry. So I picked at the thick cheese sandwich with sprouts and the fruit salad served to me by one of GlassmanÕs young assistants, while Glassman drank coffee and smoked his cigar off and on. A word people use to describe him is ÒcharismaticÓÑand sometimes ÒseductiveÓÑbut I didnÕt find him that way. I found him brilliant, very gentle, and a bit weary. ÒThe actual definition of the word ÔZenÕ means Ômeditation,ÕÓ he said, sitting back and exhaling. ÒBut Maezumi Roshi defined Zen as Ôlife.Õ And life includes everything.Ó

In 1979, when Maezumi Roshi asked Glassman, by this time a priest in the Soto Zen tradition, to move to New York City and start a Zen center in an old mansion in Riverdale, Glassman imagined starting a Òmodern-day SafedÓÑa city like the ancient center of the kabbalists in Galilee, where mystics would feel comfortable creating their communities and interacting with different traditions. He imagined starting a business locally that would help pay for the Zen center, and give his students a place to practice some of what they were learning in the zendo. (ÒMy goal,Ó he said in one of his several books, Òwas to eliminate the distinctions people made between what they considered practice and what they considered non-practice.Ó) He imagined inviting the local poor to work at whatever business the center opened. But, according to Glassman, the board of trustees for the fledgling Zen Center of New York was not supportive. They felt that Glassman was there to start a zendoÑand a small business to support itÑand teach Zen. That was all. So when Glassman moved to New York with his first wife, Helen Yuho Harkaspi, and his two small children, he sent some of his students to the Tassajara Bakery in San Francisco to learn how to run a bakery. (Monasteries in Japan had always supported themselves by growing rice, and so a bakery seemed apt.) And then, in 1982, Glassman and his students opened the Greyston Bakery in one of the poorer sections of Yonkers. Over the next few years, Glassman began to see the neighborhood poor as his sangha, and he wanted to bring them into the bakery. But he knew that they couldnÕt work unless they had homes and health care for their families, and daycare for their young children. So Glassman conceived of the Greyston Family Inn, which would include apartments for homeless people, a daycare center, and an after-school program. Over the seventeen years that Glassman was at the helm, the Greyston mandala developed into one of the first genuine Òwelfare to workÓ programs in the country, including all of the above-mentioned programs as well as a medical center and housing complex for people with AIDS. Last year, Greyston, on whose board Glassman still sits, had a combined operating and capital budget of $28 million. In the process of developing this huge business, though, Glassman lost many students. ÒHe was still trying to have the Zen community,Ó says Pat Enkyo OÕHara, one of GlassmanÕs dharma heirs and the abbot of the Village Zendo in New York City. ÒAnd, quite frankly, itÕs very hard to maintain a regular sitting schedule when youÕre also trying to run a business and start a social-action network. So I think it was an enormous struggle.Ó Enkyo OÕHara adds, ÒHeÕs focused on whatÕs at hand. If thereÕs a starving person at hand, then itÕs not time to be chanting.Ó Glassman writes about this period in a not-yet-published book: ÒMany of my students left. They disapproved of how much energy we put into the bakery, saying this wasnÕt serious practice, as if serious practice was confined to the cushion. But now more than ever I felt I was finally doing what I really wantedÑworking and teaching in the area of social action, feeding the hungry spirits. I loved talk. I loved action. I loved working alongside my students, rather than preaching to them in the zendo.Ó ÒMy experience of Zen is how radical it is,Ó says Wendy Egyoku Nakao, another of GlassmanÕs dharma heirs, and the abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. ÒIt cuts through the layers and layers of conceptual thinking. It is not about the right way, the Zen way, the whatever way it needs to look in order to be ÔacceptableÕ to the staus quo. Not at all. There will always be a place for Zen masters like Roshi Bernie, whom people canÕt make sense of, who are willing to use unconventional upayas, skillful means.Ó Was he using unconventional upayas, or had he simply forsaken the dharma for activism? Fleet Maull, the founder and executive director of the Prison Dharma Network and another student of GlassmanÕs, says, ÒHe was primarily living the life of a social activist for some years. And yet he knows his stuff when it comes to the dharma. Bernie knows his stuff in his bones. He was MaezumiÕs senior dharma heir and worked with him on all the translations. I think it would be fair to say that he is one of the two best-trained Zen people in the West.Ó When I asked Glassman how he felt about the commonly held notion that heÕd left Zen for social activism, he said, ÒYeah, well, I never thought I went away from Zen.Ó Zen, of course, being everything.

In 1986, early in the tumultuous Greyston years, Glassman met Sandra Jishu Holmes, a Zen student who would later become his dharma heir and second wife. (Glassman and his first wife were divorced in 1988.) Together Holmes and Glassman built the Greyston mandala. By all accounts, Holmes worked very hard under Glassman, who was, by his own admission, as tough out of the zendo as he was in it, and his toughnessÑand stubbornnessÑtook its toll on Holmes. A colleague of GlassmanÕs says, ÒHeÕs a mathematician and an engineer. You have to remember that. So when heÕs able to solve something in his mind, the rest of it is just kind of implementation work.Ó Meaning Glassman had the big ideas, but it was his studentsÑincluding the student who was his wifeÑwho had to do the very hard work. ÒThatÕs not entirely fair,Ó that same colleague adds, Òbecause heÕs extraordinarily energetic, and worked very, very hard.Ó Holmes herself said in her journals, quoted by Glassman in his unpublished book, that he was Òlike a blast furnace. You either get shaped like fine steel, or you melt.Ó Though the couple was clearly very much in love and devoted to their work together, equality was a problem. ÒJishu was brilliant,Ó says Enkyo OÕHara, Òbut everyone would listen to Bernie. YouÕd be at a meeting, and all eyes would be on him. Jishu would have organized a whole aspect of the mandala, but there was no recognition. And so she called him on it. She said, ÔThis leads to an imbalance of power, and an imbalance of relationship in the community. What ways can we find to work with it?ÕÓ

When I ask Joan Halifax why it was that Glassman made interdependence the center of his teaching, she says, ÒWell, I think at the wisdom level, Bernie sees the truth of interdependence really closely. And at the compassion level he wants to actualize it. And at the level of reality, thatÕs both his aspiration and his shadow.Ó ÒHis shadow?Ó I say. ÒHeÕs very individual,Ó she says.

Glassman celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday in 1994 on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., with Holmes and some other students. They were doing a weeklong Òstreet retreatÓÑliving on the streets of Washington with no money, no food, no place to go to the bathroom or take a break from what Glassman called Òthe coldest winter in fifty years.Ó It was a memorable plunge. During that retreat, Glassman and Holmes came up with the idea for the next phase of their life together: TheyÕd start what theyÕd call the Zen Peacemakers familyÑan international organization of social activists devoted to Òpeacemaking and partnership.Ó The idea was that Holmes would run with the organizationÑsheÕd take controlÑand Glassman would be freed up to go off and finally train with his friend Wavy Gravy to be a clown. It took the couple three years to wrap up their work at Greyston. During that time, Maezumi Roshi died unexpectedly. Since Glassman was the only student of Maezumi to have received inka, transmission, the official confirmation from the teacher that the student has completed his training, he became the head of MaezumiÕs large and far-flung association of Zen teachers, the White Plum Asanga. But even with all thatÑand what must have been a huge sense of lossÑGlassman and Holmes packed up their things and caravanned from Yonkers to New Mexico at the beginning of 1998. They were going to live there together, in a house that Holmes loved. She was going to develop the Zen Peacemakers community, and he was going to be a clown. But six days after they arrived in New Mexico, Holmes suddenly got very sick, and four days later, after two heart attacks, on the first day of spring, she suddenly died.

Once youÕre in a state of not knowing, you can, as Glassman calls it, Òbear witness.Ó That is, you can be present for the joys and the suffering in the world around you, without separating from them in the way we normally do. And bearing witness in that way naturally leads to what Glassman calls Òloving actions.Ó These are the three tenets of Glassman and HolmesÕ Zen Peacemakers community: not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action.

Glassman gave up the position of head of the White Plum Asanga after only one year. He went into a kind of exile that lasted for the first two years after HolmesÕ death. He lived near Joan Halifax in New Mexico for much of that time, reading HolmesÕ journals, listening to the music she loved, and trying to see, finally, the world through her eyes. People came by to visit, but mostly Glassman just sat and bore witness. When he emerged, in the year 2000, it was with a beard and a ponytail and a new wife, Eve Marko, a writer and dharma heir whom Glassman and Holmes had known for many years. And he emerged without his robes. He was sixty-one years old, and, having taken the most devastating of plunges, he was changed. At the time, he wrote about his experience in this magazine, saying, ÒWhen she was still alive, Jishu had brought into our relationship certain energies that lay dormant in me. She had brought her softness, her femininity, her down-to-earth practicality and deep empathy into our life together. Now, with her death, I either had to manifest them myself or watch them disappear from my life. Jishu was not the only one to die on that first day of spring. Bernie died, too. ÒSomeone else is now emerging, someone else is coming to life. For lack of a name, I call that person Jishu-Bernie. That new human being is unfolding. I still donÕt know who that person is or what that person will do. There are many things I still donÕt know. The third tenet of the Zen Peacemaker Order is healing ourselves and others. But often I think that whatÕs really happening is more basic than that. When we donÕt knowÑwhen we let go and sit with shock, pain, and loss, with no answers, solutions, or ideas, with nothing at hand but this moment, this pain, this grief, this absenceÑthen out of that something arises. And what arises is love. I donÕt have to do anything. I donÕt have to create anything. Love arises by itself. ItÕs been there all the time, and now, when IÕm less protected than at any other moment in my life, itÕs there.Ó When Glassman came out of his retreat, he had more fully, or finally, understood his own teachings. He didnÕt want to teach anymoreÑnot in the conventional, hierarchical sense of the wordÑhe wanted to hang with his students, and talk, and listen, and learn.

Back in the 1970Õs, Maezumi Roshi spoke to his first heir about starting a Zen school. But it wasnÕt the right time, and the idea was shelved. But when Glassman got a call in 2000 saying that he could have Montague Farm for about $250,000 in legal fees, he decided to take it and make good, while he still had time, on his teacherÕs vision. The Maezumi Institute is now the main study and practice center of the Zen PeacemakersÑit is their Òmother home.Ó The Institute offers classes and long-term programs in five main areas: Zen, social enterprise, peacemaking and social action, contemplative arts, and what Glassman calls Òmulti-faith.Ó Glassman will eventually open a restaurant nearby as part of the institute, and a hotel and a school for children, all of which will serve as Greyston-like ÒlabsÓ for his programs. Maybe, eventually, Glassman says, the Institute will be another Safed. A step in that direction, for Glassman, was appointing Enkyo OÕHara as the co-spiritual director of the Zen Peacemakers family last year. Many of GlassmanÕs students agree that this was one way their teacher was beginning to honor HolmesÕ vision of greater partnership. When I asked Glassman, though, if he felt heÕd actually learned about partnership in the years since he and Holmes spoke about it, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and thought for a few moments before speaking. Finally he said, no, he hadnÕt really learned completely about partnership. He said, very seriously, shaking his head, ÒMale conditioning is a terrible thing.Ó ÒHe wants to embrace a concept of working together and listening to the community,Ó says Enkyo OÕHara. ÒAnd heÕs been trying to be active in the world and at the same time work on this issue. So how do you have an organization that functions,Ó she says, Òand at the same time is meeting the conditioning of the ego that heÕs talking about? I mean, the ego is so wonderful when it gets something done, and yet it can create harm as it does it. I think itÕs very heroic to try to work with thatÑprobably doomed to failure, but itÕs wonderful activity.Ó GlassmanÕs wife, Eve Marko, thinks for a while before she addresses the question about whether, in her opinion, Glassman has made any progress working with his male conditioning. At first she says, ÒWell, heÕs older now, so heÕs mellowed.Ó But after thinking about it for a while she comes back with a fuller answer: ÒDogen says that our practice is a spiral,Ó she says. ÒWe donÕt stay in the same place. But, at the same time, the practice is endless. I think that can be said for Bernie. Ten years ago he worked on partnership issues in one way. Ten years later his spiral has widenedÑthat is, more issues, more voices, greater levels of understanding. And heÕs still practicing. He and I havenÕt stayed in the same place, and at the same time, thereÕs no end.Ó Joan Halifax doesnÕt want to analyze GlassmanÕs difficulty with partnership: ÒHeÕs a very, very insightful visionary,Ó she says, Òand heÕs very groundless in the way that he works, which threatens people who are not secure. And I think heÕs an extremely good friend to those of us who donÕt have opinions about him that are neurotic.Ó

GlassmanÕs cigar is out again, and our coffee is cold. ÒItÕs amazing to me how often youÕve actually put your visions into play,Ó I say to him. ÒYouÕve accomplished a lot.Ó He breathes out hard and says, quietly, ÒYeah. I think so.Ó He smiles. ÒWhat do I think about it?Ó he says. ÒIt seems like, ÔIsnÕt that enough? ShouldnÕt you stop now?Õ But things keep coming up.Ó He quotes a friend, then, defining retirement as Òchanging tires.Ó I expect him to laugh, but he doesnÕt. Instead he seems a little sad. ÒSo which is it,Ó I ask him, Òdo you want to stop, or do you want to keep going?Ó ÒI want to run into things that I donÕt understand,Ó he says, Òthat I donÕt grokÑand then to bear witness to them. ThatÕs what pulls me forward.Ó The truth is that what Roshi Bernie Glassman would really like to do is disappear into the streets for the rest of his life, a philosopher bum. But his is an endless path, and he has too much to do: so much to teach, so much to learn, all that chaos to create, and still, and always, so many hungry spirits to satisfy.

Trish Deitch Rohrer is a freelance writer and the former executive editor of the Shambhala Sun. She has been a contributor to a number of publications including Elle, O: The Oprah Magazine, GQ, and Premiere. Trish lives in Brooklyn.

Weekend at Bernie's, by Trish Deitch Rohrer, Shambhala Sun, July 2006.