Even those of us who fancy ourselves us peacemakers have ways of setting things in opposition, of making something else “other.” Maybe, Roshi Bernie taught me, that’s just the dualistic way our brains work. Isn’t it ironic that one of the oppositions I set up is peacemaking versus advocacy? Peacemaking and advocacy are different practices, different ingredients in the dance of life. Maybe, as we used to say in mental health, they are “phase-related.” Maybe advocacy is the d

The world is probably divided between the “going deeper” people and the “going broader” people. Most Zen people fall into the going-deeper camp. Roshi Bernie Glassman stood out from the Zen crowd because he championed going broader. Not that he was against going deeper. Bernie taught me to go up and down the mountain at the same time. Before I got to Zen and Bernie, both sides were there. I found my professional way to community mental health, serving some of the most exclu

I don’t remember when, but I do remember where, the locker room at the JCC where I worked out three times a week. I haven’t been there in years, but the locker room is still vivid. The scale was one of those where you moved the blocks until you got the balance point, a big block that moved in 50-pound increments, and the small block which moved pound by pound from zero to 50. My big block was always on 150. At my worst the small block was somewhere in the 30’s. That’s when I