(Photo: Swami Satchidananda and Bernie Glassman Roshi at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for an interfaith program, early 1980s.)
The late great Bernie Glassman was a Zen Buddhist Roshi, interfaith and social activist. He and Integral Yoga founder Swami Satchidananda were very close collaborators and shared many platforms together.
In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Bernie Glassman reflects on 60 years of spiritual practice, recording during a three-day gathering held in 2014. Across those days, Roshi Bernie occasionally spoke from the vantage point of the first, second, and third twenty-year periods of his life — not as a formal structure, but as a way of noticing how practice matures through time. What comes through most clearly is not biography, but how the Three Tenets — Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action — continually shaped his responses to life.
Listening now, these reflections feel less like a retrospective and more like an invitation. The Three Tenets are not presented as ideas to adopt, but as something already moving in each of us — in how we meet uncertainty, stay with what is difficult, and allow action to arise from real presence. If this episode resonates with you, we invite you to support the ongoing work of Zen Peacemakers by becoming a paying subscriber. Listen here.
