Ari Pliskin visited us on Saturday from the USA. He runs a project called the Stone Soup Cafe in Greenfield, Massachussets, which he calls a "pay what you can cafe". It grew out of the ideas of Zen Master Bernie Glassman, with encouragement from the actor Jeff Bridges, as an alternative to soup kitchens. Ari explained that Zen Peacemakers Street Retreats taught them that soup kitchens may be staffed by very loving people, but there is still a huge division between "us" and "them", the "helper" and the "helped". Ari's project includes everyone in all aspects - a homeless person might be serving a wealthy professional, or vice versa, and it makes no difference.
Ari explained for us some of the spiritual roots of how he set up the cafe - the link to the Zen Peacemakers' "Three Tenets": Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action, and how he uses the model of the Five Buddha Families in coordinating the business side of it.
Ari is a lovely, gentle man, and it was a plaesure to have him here to speak to us.
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