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 uncomfortable

If 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.org

We 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

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.org

We 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 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.

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Show Credits:

* Speaker: Bernie Glassman

* Recording Date: 2014

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

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.org

Show 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

The Art of Appreciative Attention — with Poet & Teacher John Brehm

As 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

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.org

We 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

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.org

We 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

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.org

We 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

In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, hosts Jim Hōden Fricker and Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe welcome Seth Zuihō Segall and John Murphy to present the vision of the newly formed Buddhist Coalition for Democracy.

Seth Zuihō Segall is a Zen priest ordained in the White Plum and Zen Peacemaker Order lineages, and a retired clinical psychologist who served for three decades at the Yale School of Medicine. He co-founded the Connecticut Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in 2003 and the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy in 2025. Seth is the author of The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism (2023), Buddhism and Human Flourishing (2020), and several other books and scholarly works, and is a contributing editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

John Murphy is a longtime practitioner at the Philadelphia Shambhala Center, where he serves on its Central Governance Circle. He is also on the Board of the Secular Buddhist Network, and a founding member of the Coordinating Committee of the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy. With a career spanning senior leadership roles in both corporate and nonprofit sectors, John has guided organizations in strategic planning, fundraising, donor relations, and board development.

Together, Seth and John present a fresh and inclusive vision for the Coalition—one that invites Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, conservatives and progressives, to join in protecting the foundations of democracy with compassion, dignity, and care. Their principles are clear: free and fair elections, the rule of law, free inquiry, human dignity, and care for the planet. Their actions are wide-ranging—bearing witness, supporting the vulnerable, educating about threats to democracy, embodying right speech and nonviolence.

This conversation touches on the joy of working together across difference, the courage to remain “for” something rather than merely “against,” and the deep listening that allows dialogue to transform us.

Find out more about the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy

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.org

We 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: Seth Zuihō Segall and John Murphy

* Recording Date: September 16, 2025

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Original Video: HERE

In this new Peacemakers Podcast episode, poet and Zen practitioner Jane Hirshfield sits down with Geoff O’Keeffe for a luminous, grounded conversation about how poems—and practice—help us meet a fractured world. From her seven-word distillation of the dharma (“Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.”) to the vow that undergirds compassionate action, Jane invites us into a way of seeing that is precise, permeable, and tender.

Together we travel through themes of Questioning, Being Still, Bearing Witness, Stepping Forward, Failing, and Listening—touching poems such as “After Long Silence,” “Let Them Not Say,” “Like Others,” “Changing Everything,” and the wry kitchen-table parable of a frozen egg. Along the way, Jane reflects on why witnessing itself is a form of action, and how abiding in Not-Knowing helps keep our responses spacious and humane. We hear of fires faced (or sometimes fled), of vows renewed, and of the small, almost invisible gestures that can ripple outward—poetry as a way to not despair and to remain in love with the world.

The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, September 12, 2023)https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/715681/the-asking-by-jane-hirshfield/

Bonus Content:

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.org

We 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: Jane Hirshfield & Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe

* Recording Date: April 24, 2024

* Hosts: Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe, Jim Hōden Fricker

* Audio & Video Editing/Engineering: Jim Hōden Fricker

* Event Coordinators: Clotilde Wright, Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe

* Original Video: HERE

More From Jane Hirshfield

https://poets.org/text/blaney-making-invisible-visible (text)

New Profile/Conversations:

McSweeney's, with Ilya Kaminsky: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/jane-hirshfield

The Nation, with Wen Stephenson: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/while-this-all-over-crying/

Interviews:

EZRA KLEIN SHOWOpinion | What a Poetic Mind Can Teach Us About How to Live - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

TRICYCLE https://tricycle.org/magazine/jane-hirshfield-poetry/

ORIONOrion Magazine - Jane Hirshfield Answers the Orion Questionnaire