Peacemakers Podcast

Hozan Alan Senauke, a Soto Zen priest, teacher and musician committed to engaged Buddhism. He describes his guiding vow, “I will not abandon you,” and how it shapes bearing witness. Stories range from refugee camps to sangha dilemmas. He explores the Three Tenets—Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, Taking Action—and the challenge of staying present without rescuing.

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Zen teacher Paul Haller reflects on how the practice of Zen meets the realities of a divided world.Paul grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, a time when political conflict and religious identity shaped daily life. Neighborhoods, schools, and communities were divided, and the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities formed the backdrop of his early years. Those experiences left deep impressions about fear, identity, and the ways people come to see one another as “other.”In our conversation, Paul shares how Zen practice — and particularly the Zen Peacemakers’ emphasis on Bearing Witness — offered a way to meet these divisions without turning away. Rather than retreating from the world, the practice invites us to enter it more fully. To listen. To see suffering clearly. And to discover how compassion can arise when we stop holding tightly to fixed positions.Paul’s reflections remind us that peacemaking is not abstract. It grows directly out of our lived experience — the places we come from, the histories we inherit, and the willingness to face them with an open heart.This episode explores how practice moves from the meditation cushion into the streets, into communities, and into the complicated human realities we share.If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speaker: Ryushin Paul Haller* Recording Date: October 23, 2020* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

We see suffering.Something inside says: Do something.Another voice answers: What if I get it wrong?In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe sits down with five longtime Zen Peacemakers to explore the raw, human edge of Taking Action—the third of the Three Tenets.Not a strategy.Not performance.Relationship.From street retreats in Los Angeles to immigrant support in Seattle, from community councils in Helsinki to integrated housing projects in Vermont and New York, one thread runs through it all:Action is intimacy.Action is ceremony.Action is staying when things get uncomfortableIf you’ve ever wondered whether you’re doing enough—or too much—this conversation is for you.Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speakers: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Joshin Byrnes, Jitsujo T Gauthier, Daiken Nelson, Mikko Ijäs, and Genjo Marinello* Recording Date: September 2, 2025* Hosts: Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on Appamāda—a Buddhist teaching often translated as vigilance or heedfulness, and here offered simply as care.Speaking from a life shaped by civil rights work, caregiving, and decades of practice alongside Bernie Glassman, Joan explores what it means to stay present with moral distress without rushing toward answers. Drawing on Bernie’s teaching of Not Knowing and Bearing Witness, she invites us to let response arise not from ideology or strategy, but from direct contact with suffering—our own and the world’s.Through images of water—fluid, responsive, inclusive—and the story of Anishinaabe grandmother Josephine Mandamin carrying a single bucket along the shores of the Great Lakes, Joan points to a practice grounded in responsibility at human scale. Not grand solutions, but showing up. Not certainty, but care. Again and again.This is a conversation about conscience, community, and the small, faithful acts through which our vows are lived—moment by moment, right where we are.If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speaker: Roshi Joan Halifax* Recording Date: December 12, 2023* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

This episode of the Peacemakers Podcast features reflections from Bernie Glassman, drawn from a three-day gathering held in 2014.Across those days, 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.Join our Community Platform to learn more hereShow Credits:* Speaker: Bernie Glassman* Recording Date: 2014* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, we sit with T. Marie King in a conversation that invites honest reflection on identity, power, and how we show up in community.Rather than offering answers or analysis, this episode creates space to notice what we assume, who we may be missing, and how listening itself can become an act of care and responsibility. Rooted in lived experience and grounded presence, T. Marie’s work challenges us to slow down, brave discomfort, and allow ourselves to be changed.This conversation is closely connected to place, especially Selma and Montgomery, Alabama—cities that continue to shape the moral and emotional landscape of our shared life. It also points toward the Zen Peacemakers’ upcoming Bearing Witness to Racism in America Retreat in April 2026. This contemplative immersion is not about fixing the world, but about letting experience work on us.If this episode resonates, you are also invited to join T. Marie King for a free online Zen Peacemakers event, Perspective + Empathy: Learning Beyond Our Own Lens. Details for both the retreat and the online event can be found in the show notes.If you value these conversations, please consider becoming a paying subscriber and supporting the ongoing work of Zen Peacemakers. Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgShow Credits:* Speaker: T.Marie King* Recording Date: June 23, 2022* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

The Art of Appreciative Attention — with Poet & Teacher John BrehmAs we approach the end of the year, Geoff and I wanted to offer something a little different—something quieter, more spacious, and genuinely nourishing. This week’s Peacemakers Podcast feels like exactly that.Geoff opens with one of his own poems, a tender moment he rarely shares publicly, and we talk together about how poetry has shaped his way of slowing down and really seeing what’s right in front of us.We’re joined by our friend John Brehm, poet, teacher, and longtime companion of Zen Peacemakers, who leads us into what he calls the art of appreciative attention. John invites us to lay down the old habit of treating poems like riddles to decode, and instead approach them as living presences—something we enter, savor, and let work on us from the inside out.Through Joy Harjo, Elizabeth Bishop, Rilke, and his own new anthology The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence, John shows how poetry can dissolve the boundary between ourselves and the world, opening a gentler, more curious way of being.His teaching is beautifully simple:Notice what you love, and let that be enough.As we close out the year, we’re grateful to share this unique, heartfelt episode—an offering to help us pause, reconnect, and remember the deeper threads of our practice.Thank you for listening, for practicing with us, and for being part of this circle.If this conversation moved you, we invite you to become a paying subscriber and support the Peacemakers Podcast. You can learn more atwww.zenpeacemakers.org This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, we walk after dark with San Francisco Night Ministry, a multi-faith community offering spiritual care on the city’s streets and phone lines. No preaching, no agenda—just presence.Our guest, Rev. Trent Thornley, shares how these night walks become both an expression and inspiration of faith—moments of deep listening, compassion, and unexpected connection. You’ll also hear about their moving annual reading of names, honoring neighbors who died while unhoused.If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speaker: Rev. Trent Thornley* Recording Date: November 17, 2021* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

In this episode, two of Bernie’s dear friends—Jeff Bridges and Krishna Das—sit down with us for a funny, tender, deeply alive conversation about courage, friendship, and the love that keeps cooking long after the meal. We open with Krishna Das recalling how Bernie invited him to turn lines from the Gate of Sweet Nectar into a singable prayer—what became the beloved song “Hungry Hearts.”Recorded in 2022, not long after Jeff’s recovery, the conversation turns to “instructions to the cook”—meeting life with what’s in the pantry—and how facing illness, fear, and uncertainty can become a doorway to gratitude. You’ll hear the refrain “scary, but okay,” and a spacious exploration of how courage and fear sit at the same table.If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speakers: Jeff Bridges & Krishna Das* Recording Date: January 20, 2022* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Event Coordinators: Micka (妙心) Moto-Sanchez, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, hosts Jim Hōden Fricker and Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe sit down with Jared Seide of Beyond Us & Them to explore a simple, radical practice: sitting in a circle and truly listening. What begins as “ordinary” turns out to be transformative—calming classrooms, easing tensions in neighborhoods, helping people heal in prisons and police precincts, and weaving connection where stress and isolation have taken root.Jared traces the arc of Council from its early days in Los Angeles schools to deep work in reentry, law enforcement, and global bearing witness contexts—from Auschwitz to Rwanda. We hear how “everyone needs to feel seen and connected and valued,” and how Council offers a reliable structure for belonging—one voice at a time—embodying Taking Action, the third of the Zen Peacemakers’ Three Tenets.If this conversation moves you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to all of our content—podcasts, articles, event recordings, and more—and help sustain the work of Zen Peacemakers.Learn more at www.zenpeacemakers.orgWe invite you to support this work. Become a paying subscriber to the Peacemakers Podcast or join the Zen Peacemakers community as a member.Show Credits:* Speakers: Jared Seide * Recording Date: February 20, 2025* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker* Related Video: HERE This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit voice.zenpeacemakers.org/subscribe