New Places

“… I went into the streets to live, just for about four days in the Bowery, and a few people joined me, and what came out of that four days was something I had not expected. I entered a situation that I was totally unprepared for—I had no idea of what I was getting into—and I learned a tremendous amount.

For me, part of the state of not knowing is entering into the worlds I am afraid of, entering into worlds about which I have no idea. I’m drawn to those aspects of myself that I do not understand, that I fear, that are a mystery. I’m drawn to enter that realm. If I meditate in an arena which is very familiar to me, then I find that it’s too peaceful. It’s wonderful. It’s like having a cup of cappuccino. I love to meditate. But when I go out into these arenas like the street, things arise that are tremendously important, and there comes a healing of myself and others that I would never have expected…

To me, meditation is bearing witness to the wholeness of life. It’s more than just sitting in a certain position. One of my teachers was a man named Yasutani Roshi. All he did was teach meditation and do retreats with people, week after week, and yet he would say that there are many dolls sitting in the window shops in the form of meditation. They’re not meditating. The sesshin was originally organized to get you into a place you are unfamiliar with. And how? Those sesshins were designed to overpower you, to get you out of the place where you were comfortable— to get you so tired, so worn out, that you couldn’t remain hooked up to your attachments to yourself. That’s not easy: we are fanatics about staying attached to our addiction. That addiction is strong, the addiction to the self.

In many cases we’re just trying to create a more peaceful, happier space for ourselves, and meditation is another way that we can do it. In Zen we call that space “the cave of the devil.” The role of the monitor is that if they see a person sitting in the cave of the devil, in that wonderful space, that peaceful space, they knock them out of it. It’s so beautiful to sit there, isn’t it? I love it. And by itself, it is wonderful, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough. In our evolution in this country, we have imported these wonderful techniques from the East, and we are now at the point where we know it’s not enough. The next phase is really making use of all these wonderful things we’ve learned, and to get involved in the healing of the earth, in the making whole of the human race, and not just the human race, the whole universe.

So the sesshin was created to try to get people out of the space that they’re familiar with, to get them into a space where they are not in control of the situation. In the same way, the idea of “plunges” is one of the tools of the Peacemaker Order. We ask you to plunge into a place about which you are completely unfamiliar, a place of your fears, a place of your unknown. It could even be a beautiful place: a plunge into being a clown could take you out of your usual way of thinking.

In Zen we use koans in exactly the same way. What is the hand of the buddha? One simple koan. What is a hand? Who am I? Taking us out of our concepts, our ideas of what life is all about. Koans are meant to do that and plunges also will do that. So everyone who joins our order will be doing plunges into worlds they are not familiar with. Being plunged into that space, then bearing witness. So everyone has to learn how to listen, how to dialogue, how to sit, how to receive, how to question. The answers are not important.

~ Bernie Glassman, June 25, 2017 Adapted from a talk at the conference on “Peacemaking: The Power of Nonviolence,”
Glassman, a renowned spiritual thinker and leader is recovering from a massive stroke.  The first night, he could not talk or move much of his body, he thought he was dying. His experience tells both sides of the story – the pain and suffering, the sense of fulfillment, discovery and rebirth. There were no illusions, no sugar-coating, no whining or self-pity… Bernie Glass man is man of humility, humor and quiet wisdom. He has every reason to be a bit arrogant, his story is remarkable. He has lived and is living a remarkable life. Glassman went to college, became an aeronautical engineer, then received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He first encountered Zen Buddism while studying a book in an English class in 1958, at UCLA. It altered his life. He began meditating and began studying Zen. He was a founding member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and went on to become Zen master teacher, a roshi…

In 1996 Glassman created the Zen Peacemaker Circle, an international organization dedicated to promoting peace and healing the earth. He is married to an another remarkable human named Eve Renko, a friend, writer, social activist and teacher. The two have traveled the globe promoting peace, community and equality. At various times, Glassman  and Marko have lived on the streets as a  homeless person to understand what it was like.

He does not yet have full use of his right hand or complete memory. He walks stiffly and with a cane, but he can  get up and down stairs. His condition, he says, has vastly improved in the past few months, he participated fully and actively in a wide-ranging conversation, asked and answered questions easily and clearly, smiled often and missed little or nothing. He said that he did not recognize himself after his stroke, and that he has changed – he is, say he and Eve – more emotional and this sense of re-discovery, even rebirth, is both unnerving and exhilarating. The experience, he said, was traumatic, but then his eyes lit up. "I am going to some new places," he said, smiling. "Spirituality is change. So is creativity. They are the same thing."