It’s not enough to be “for” world peace. Ultimately, my peacemaking begins with me. I have to make peace with myself, with my demons, the aspects of myself which shame and frighten me, which I lock in a closet. I have to let them out of the closet. “Come and join me on my cushion.” Peacemaking grows out from that center toward what Roshi Bernie, the mathematician, called the “infinite circle,” the boundary, or perhaps non-boundary, that includes everything and everyone. Mak

Peacemaking and advocacy are different practices. In the advocate’s world, there are good guys and bad guys. The way to stop the horrors that are happening all around us is to convert the bad guys to our way of looking at the world or, failing that, by killing or incarcerating all the bad guys. Peacemakers see things differently. All of us have done bad things, things we wouldn’t do if we didn’t feel threatened. In our minds, we create bad guys and good guys, enemies and al

Another monk asked the ancient Chinese master, “What is zazen?” This time the master answered, “Zazen is everything.” This monk too was greatly enlightened, but I didn’t get it. “Didn’t you tell the other monk that zazen was nothing.” It was years before I began to understand. The Zen master gives each student the medicine he needs at the moment. I was confused by my idea of great meditators. The heroes in the Zendo were the ones during sesshin who returned to the zendo t