Part 5: “I live my life according to experiences, not according to the commentary.” This last half of the final panel traverses: projection in student-teacher relationships; how Roshi Joan’s and Bernie’s relationship has changed over the years; whether it’s true that “you can’t be friends with your students;” distinctions between resilience and “getting over yourself” in caregiving work; the disrespectful haste of consoling someone with “I know how you feel.” Someone asks Bernie, how have you...

Part 4: A song and questions. After Alan leads everyone in song, the panel takes open questions and jams. They consider: are there any restrictions on what people do with this liturgy when they leave? How does the joy in breaking boundaries dance with respect for boundaries? How do you feel about the word “death” — is it too final? Or does its definiteness highlight the sea change in whatever transformations might follow?   

Part 3: Dialogue ensues! The question of feeding hungry spirits what they want versus feeding them what they need engages many voices. This leads on to: what is the difference between bearing witness and the reflex to get rid of, to “heal?” In Bernie’s opinion Bearing Witness retreats are all about fear, going to what’s scary. In the Gate, we repeat the final Dharani so as to call out yet once more to every last, scared, unworthy hungry ghost: “please, come and eat.” At that moment we can ask...

Part 2: Feeding everyone. Bernie explains the inner logic and dramatic progression of the liturgy’s several pieces. It proceeds through loving invitations and invocations, magic work to actualize energies and feed everyone; through giving teachings; and climaxes with giving and taking the Buddhist precepts. Shingon condenses the five precepts into two: “Now I have raised the Bodhi mind;” “I am the Buddhas and they are me.” Do you feel like a fibber when you say them? That’s a live edge to...

Part 1: An open-hearted overhaul. Bernie spins a lively history of the Gate of Sweet Nectar liturgy, from an early version (mythically attributed to Shakyamuni) to Menzan’s tantric innovations to his own open-hearted overhaul. Maezumi Roshi gave Bernie remarkable permission to remake the Gate (and by extension Zen) in an American grain: “He didn’t try to get me to be like him — he wanted me to be like me.”  

Part 8:  “Everything is opinion.” In this last dialogue, Bernie — with a little help from Roshi Joan and Sensei Alan — fields questions about whether the view that “everything is opinion” closes or opens dialogue; about the Greyston model; about the five Buddha families as a model for social entrepreneurship; about assassinating Hitler.

Part 7: Q&A. The teachers complete the Q & A session.

Part 6: Feminism, liturgy, and clown noses. After a song led by Sensei Alan, the panel conducts a Q & A period to close out the day. Topics covered include liturgy, feminism, teacher-student relationships, clown noses, street retreats and the meaning of radical chaplaincy.

Part 5: The practice of zazen. Concluding the third session of the retreat, Roshi Bernie continues his dialogue with retreatants, answering questions about the stages of “bearing witness,” telling stories from the “Bearing Witness Retreats,” and discussing the practice of zazen.

Part 4: Bearing witness retreats. Roshi Bernie describes the Zen Peacemakers Order and the approach of “Bearing Witness Retreats” with homelessness in New York and genocide at Auschwitz and in Rwanda.

Part 3: Listening without preconception. In the second part of the session, Roshi Bernie talks about the actualization of an “Indra’s Net” connecting impoverished communities by responding to the various groups’ needs by listening without preconception and acting on what arises within and between. Among other cases of skillful means, he cites his own work with the homeless, near-homeless, and ex-prisoners using the Greyston Mandala to start businesses.

Part 2: Indra’s Net. After Sensei Alan Senauke opens the session with a guided meditation song, Roshi Bernie offers his opinions on “non-dual communication” on interdependence and Indra’s Net, reincarnation, koan study, the Eightfold-fold path, social activism, education, and many other images, models, and practices.

Part 1. Nonduality. Bernie-Roshi reflects on three periods of his life, each marked by stepping beyond limited “clubs” into ever wider and less sure circles of caring engagement. He speaks of nonduality as not-knowing, freedom to think and feel outside grooved categories — a state provoked both by Zen koans and by “plunges” into deeply unfamiliar circumstances. He takes several questions from the audience and confides the exciting new insight he had just yesterday. Roshi Joan prefaces...

“Have you seen The Big Lebowski?” In this final session, Bernie continues to answer questions posed by the retreat participants. One person asked: “How can one go about distributing homemade soap to the homeless without offending them?” Another person asked Bernie to talk about his transition from being an engineer to a Zen student and then on to his engaged activity through the Grayston Mandala. Another question was, “How does love fit into Indra’s Net?” To which Bernie responds, “Have you...

Being on the street. This session continues where the previous left off, with Roshi Bernie taking a number of questions from the participants. The first question concerns Indra’s net, which leads Bernie into a discussion on the possibility of escaping the space-time continuum. The next question concerns “going deeper and deeper.” Which for Bernie means going “broader and broader in that energy field.” Other questions include “how do Buddhas hate the world?” and “what does it mean to defame...

Amazing stories of forgiveness. In this Saturday afternoon session, Roshi Bernie discusses forgiveness using the Rwandan genocide as a backdrop. During a 100 day period starting in April of 1994, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutus. In light of extremely horrific, unimaginable atrocities, Bernie offers a number of amazing and beautiful stores of forgiveness. Bernie also spends some time talking about the 2014 Bearing Witness Retreat in Rwanda. The session...

Bearing witness retreats. In this session, Roshi Bernie answers questions from the audience. Questions include: “Are there Bearing Witness Retreats in Hiroshima or Nagasaki?” “What is the status of the Lakota Retreat?” “How should one work with a person that has a tremendous amount of guilt over their past actions?” “What is the hardest thing you personally had to face at Auschwitz?” “How to deal with a dysfunctional leadership board?” “Have you ever been afraid, and what then?”

Rejoice! In this Saturday morning session, Roshi Bernie opens by answering a couple of questions posed by the audience. “What is the most important element in bringing about change?” “What should you do if you don’t know what to do?” Rejoice! Bernie then moves on to the main topic of the session, the Auschwitz retreats that he founded, lead and participated in for the past twenty years. He describes the history of Auschwitz and how the original retreat came to be. His vision for the retreat...

Honoring the interconnection of life. During the second half of the final retreat session, Roshi Bernie invites the gathered retreatants to share what they will take away from their time together. Retreatants then share thoughtfully and movingly on the transformations that have taken place for them over the past two days. Roshi Bernie then wraps up the retreat by drawing attention to our ability to honor the interconnection of life with our actions.

Bearing Witness. The session begins with Roshi Joan Halifax informally reflecting on her deep affection and respect for Roshi Bernie Glassman and their long collaboration in the dharma. Roshi Bernie then shares profound teachings gleaned from his long involvement in the bearing witness retreats at Auschwitz.

Householders and sanghas. Roshi Bernie Glassman grills the audience on what one might mean by being a “householder” or by participating in a “sangha.” He then illustrates his understanding of householders and sanghas by reflecting on his long training at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, telling the story of the values he inherited, questioned, and evolved to fit the needs he saw in America and in himself.

The practice of council. How do actions arise from bearing witness? Bernie fields various questions including how to practice not-knowing in the context of running an organization. He also explores at length what it means to participate in the Zen tradition, whether it means continuing the forms as they’re handed down or innovating a series of relevant upayas (expedient means) resonant in specific contexts.

The Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Community. Roshi Bernie, with contributions from Roshi Joan Halifax, applies the practice of training in the Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Community to the current ecological crisis. Bernie also takes questions from the audience, including questions about sexual ethics in the Zen community and how to bear witness while understanding our own conditioning.

Street Retreat beginnings. Roshi Bernie looks at how humans develop what he calls “clubs” and the consequences of this behavior, applying insights from his bearing witness retreats both at Auschwitz and living on the streets. During the second half, he gives an engrossing history of how the street retreats got started and what they involve.