(back to list)

Greyston Foundation: A Model For Engaged Buddhism?

Nikolai Burlakoff

ABSTRACT

While some Christian charities have reached international recognition such is not the case for Buddhist charities. There is no Buddhist equivalent for World Vision, for example. There are a number of reasons for this, including historical, cultural, and the nature of institutional structures and habits. The lack of an internationally renowned Buddhist charity does not mean that charity is not part of Buddhist life. It would be hard to imagine life in Sri Lanka, Thailand or Myanmar, for example, without the involvement of the Buddhist Sangha in education and social services of those countries.

With the political and economic development of traditionally Buddhist countries of Asia in the past few decades, and the remarkable growth of Buddhism in Europe, America, and Australia new forces and attempts at solutions to a variety of social and spiritual problems are emerging. Some of the initiatives are worthy of deeper study to see if they present models that can be successfully applied elsewhere. This paper examines the history of Greyston Foundation, a Buddhist charity in Yonkers, New York.

In 1982, Roshi Bernard Tetsugen Glassman founded Greyston Bakery as a means to employ a handful of his Zen students. As the Bakery grew, Glassman and his wife, Greyston co-founder Sensei Sandra Jishu Holmes, expanded its mission to include providing jobs to residents of the neighboring inner city area. These individuals were deemed "hard to employ" due to a lack of education and skills and histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration.

Greyston has since evolved into a Yonkers-based community development organization, with an annual budget of 12 million dollars that serves the disenfranchised. Its many programs include: HIV-related healthcare, supportive affordable housing, accredited childcare, workforce development, community gardens, and others. Today, Greyston is one of the largest charities in Yonkers, New York, and remarkably for a charity in a city that is well known for its political corruption, it has retained a pristine reputation for integrity.

This paper’s intent is to examine the factors that enabled this phenomenal growth in a difficult surroundings to see how other Buddhist charities can use the experience of Greyston within their specific environments to help disadvantaged people, and to allow Buddhist practitioners to be engaged with their societies. Of particular interest are Greyston’s solution to capitalizing its charity work by creating a profit enterprise as a source of income for the zendo and the Foundation, and the effect that growth has had on the Buddhist sangha.

The paper is based on published materials, personal experience working with members of Greyston for five years, and interviews with past and present Greyston staff, as well as, Yonkers city officials.

BIOGRAPHY 

Nikolai Burlakoff was born stateless in February, 1946 in Lienz am Drau, Austria. As an ethnic Russian he spent the first years of his life in different refugee camps in Austria and Germany, as well, as a number of other temporary places of residence. Weak health resulted in two sojourns in Switzerland at ages five and nine. At the age of 11 his mother, maternal grandmother, and he immigrated to the United States, landing in New York City in January 1957. For two years, his grandmother and he lived in Shamokin, Pennsylvania near Nick’s godmother, her husband and an invalid friend. Nick’s mother remained in New York to work and support her divided family and herself. In 1959 the family was reunited in New York, and continued living there  (first in Harlem, then in Washington Heights) until 1964 when Nick left for Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

College years between 1964 and 1968 proved to be the longest stable living situation that occurred, up to that point. At Harvard he majored, first, in Government, and then, switched in his junior year, to Slavic Languages and Literatures. Among his more famous teachers in those years were: Zbignew Brezhinsky, John Fairbanks, John Finney, Samuel P. Huntington, Edward Keenan, Albert Lord, Richard Pipes, Edwin Reischauer, and, of course, Roman Jackobson. Perhaps the most famous of his acquaintances, and dorm mates, in those years, was the future Vice President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Albert Gore. In his senior year a severe illness required hospitalization, but despite that, Nick successfully finished his honors thesis (The Themes in the Works of Michail Zoschenko) and graduated cum laude. At Commencement the main speaker was the Shah of Iran.

In the summer of 1968 Nick married, for the first time, and proceeded to graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana. After a semester of graduate work he was drafted into the US Army and began his training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. During rifle training, in which he earned the Sharpshooter Badge, Nick had a crisis of conscience and applied for Conscientious Objector status within the military. As an immigrant he felt that he had a duty to serve when called, but he could not justify killing. His application was accepted on moral grounds, perhaps helped by the strong letter of support that was written on his behalf by the internationally famous folklore scholar Richard M. Dorson. He was sent to San Antonio, Texas to be trained as a medic. After graduation he was posted to Germany, where he completed his term of service.

Upon returning to the United States, Nick and his wife returned to Indiana to continue graduate work. Because of the loss of time to Army service Nick took a particularly heavy study load which resulted in a health breakdown upon completing his Master’s degree, and Doctoral course work. After a year’s recuperation, during part of which he took a large group of Vermont college students to visit the European and Asian parts of the Soviet Union, he returned to graduate work in the Department of Folklore. This time, not only did he finish the coursework, but passed his doctoral examinations. The subject of the dissertation was the work of the Russian folklorist/philologist Vladimir Propp. The highlight of this part of his life was the creation of a graduate student operated publishing entity and the publication of Folklore on Two Continents, a book of essays by an international group of prominent folklore scholars.

Soon after he become the staff folklorist at the International Center of Indianapolis—a cultural center that served the needs of more than twenty nationality groups in that city. Within six months he was appointed the Director of the Center and undertook to save the then bankrupt institution.

After the expiration of his contract Nick left the International Center and went into partnership with a friend into property management. He also established a cultural consulting business that created the opening exhibition for the Hungarian-American Foundation in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The exhibition attracted the attention of the Director of the Middlesex County Cultural Commission, who invited Nick to become the founding curator of the open-air museum East Jersey Olde Towne. Nick successfully managed a feasibility study and development plan for the Museum and wrote the first grant to the National Endowment for the Arts. Today, East Jersey Olde Towne is a successful operation that is the pride of the Middlesex County Cultural Commission.

Nick then left that post and become the Director of the New Netherland Museum and the 17th century replica sailing vessel Halve Maen. For five years he managed this, the only new successful cultural attraction in New York Harbor at that time, before moving the ship and Museum to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. After completing the move to the new site and finishing off some contractual obligations Nick left this position and took on the Directorship of a business association in the economically depressed section of Yonkers, New York. There he first encountered members of the Greyston Foundation. For five years of his work he continuously interacted with officials of the Foundation and had opportunity to see the excellence of the work that that Foundation accomplished.

In 2002 Nick’s tenure in Yonkers ended and since that time he has devoted himself to Peacework with Quakers, Buddhist studies, writing and working as a laborer to help pay bills.

He has been married for 23 years to Gail Shaw Burlakoff, and has three stepchildren and six grandchildren.

Nick’s interest in Buddhism grew out of his first encounter with a Russian lama in the Catskill Mountains of New York State at the age of 16. He began reading literature that was available at that time in English and continued his interest through college and graduate school. In 1996, after a year of practice, he joined SGI International and continued with that organization for two years. In 2002 he enrolled in the Buddhist Master’s program at University of Sunderland in Great Britain, but was not able to pursue the studies after one semester due to financial difficulties.

Besides the publication of the book Folklore on Two Continents, Nick has published translations of Russian folktales and poems, articles in folklore and religious theory, and cooking recipes. Nick has taught at Indiana University, Johnson State College, and the Free University in Indianapolis. He lectured widely including Indiana Business School, Butler University, and Rutgers University in New Jersey. He has taught courses in Russian Language, Literature, Folklore, History, and Art. His last course was given in 2007 at Amawalk Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and was entitled Buddhist and Quaker Experiments with Truth. For five years he produced a television show entitled International Indianapolis that included in its 100 episodes a Cambodian wedding ceremony, Hmong music and dance, Diwali Festival, and interviews with members of the greater Asian community in Indianapolis.

In the fall of 2007 he joined, along with forty others, the Dharma Teacher’s Course at the Chung Yen monastery in Kent, New York, taught by the Venerable Tri Hoang. As a member of this course he took the Five Precepts in the Dharma Teaching Order, and was given the Dharma name of Quang An. He immediately responded to the opportunity to accompany his teacher, the Venerable Tri Hoang, to VietNam to help in the UN Vesak celebration of 2008. Not only did he see this trip as a way to thank his teacher for sharing of the Dharma with the students, but also as a way to heal the memory wounds of 40 years standing.