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Bernie Glassman

Bernie Glassman

1939 CE–2018 CE · Modern · Brooklyn (NY)

January 18, 1939 – November 4, 2018

Bernie Glassman (1939–2018) was an American Zen teacher and social activist, a dharma heir of Taizan Maezumi in the White Plum lineage, and a leading figure in socially engaged Buddhism in the West. He founded the Zen Community of New York, the Greyston network of social enterprises in Yonkers, and in 1996 the Zen Peacemakers, known for 'bearing witness' retreats at sites of suffering and for a practice framed by three tenets of not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action. He died in 2018.

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Stop 1 of 3Born

Brooklyn (NY)ברוקליןNew York, USA

What they did here

Born in 1939; trained as an aeronautical engineer before turning to Zen.

About Brooklyn (NY)

Brooklyn, coextensive with Kings County, is one of the five boroughs of New York City. It began as the Dutch village of Breuckelen, chartered in 1646, remained an independent city until it was consolidated into New York in 1898, and is today the most populous borough. Roughly a fifth of its residents are Jewish, and since the mid-twentieth century it has been a world centre of Orthodox and Hasidic life: Chabad-Lubavitch has had its headquarters in Crown Heights since 1940, Satmar is centred in Williamsburg and Bobov in Borough Park, alongside many yeshivas and Modern Orthodox congregations. Several American Buddhist teachers, among them Bernie Glassman and Bhikkhu Bodhi, were born in Brooklyn.

In Brooklyn (NY) at the same time

Sylvia Boorstein, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Lama Surya Das

Across the traditions, in Brooklyn (NY) at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Bernie Glassman’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Bernie Glassman’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(2)

Bearing Witness: A Zen Master's Lessons in Making Peace

Greyston / Zen Peacemakers (Yonkers) · 1998

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Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life That Matters

Greyston / Zen Peacemakers (Yonkers) · 1996

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