The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

Social Justice Program

Case Study: Charles Lief of Greyston Foundation

Charles' Story

Charles Lief's life-long interest in community work and politics began in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. As a teenager, he coordinated youth volunteers during Carl Stokes' mayoral campaign in 1967 [Stokes was the first African American to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city]. After receiving a B.A from Brandeis University and a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law, Charles practiced law in Boulder, Colorado. In 1984, he moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he developed affordable housing, historic restorations and revitalization of old urban commercial areas in decline. Charles also has a great interest in food and cooking, and developed an award-winning hotel and restaurant in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of two cookbooks on Nova Scotia regional cuisine.

Charles began work at Greyston in 1992 as the director of the HIV/AIDS Housing and Health Care initiatives and become the first President of the Greyston Foundation when it was formed in 1994. He brings over 30 years of Buddhist practice to his perspective on the workplace. "One of the things that people in the workplace frequently miss is the opportunity to very directly and very simply experience the world that they are working in. My view is that using contemplative practices to cut through the habitual patterns that we develop as professionals or employees in an organization like this provides an opportunity for some kind of fresh view. My experience in my own meditation practice is that any opportunity to have a gap is not a bad thing."

For Charles, one of the most worthwhile parts of his work at Greyston is having the "ability to watch peoples' lives fundamentally change." He said, "When I practiced law for ten years before I was doing this, I really felt that my spiritual practice was absolutely separate from what I was doing as a professional. The idea now that there is space for that exploration to happen is pretty exciting."

In addition to his work as President of the Greyston Foundation, Charles is also a board member of the Naropa University and Chair of the Board of Shambhala International, an association of Buddhist meditation centers.

Personal Contemplative Practices

Charles became a student of the renowned Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche in 1970. His personal practice includes shamatha and vipassana meditation and various Tibetan Buddhist vajrayana practices. He is ordained as a lay teacher within the Shambhala Buddhist tradition as brought to the west by Trungpa Rinpoche and has taught in North America and Europe.

Organization Profile

Greyston Foundation
Founded: 1993 (Greyston Bakery was founded in 1982)
Sector: Community Development (social justice focus)
Location of work: Westchester County, New York
Staff size: 180 employees, 6-12 VISTA volunteers, 5-10 university interns and volunteers
Annual budget: $13 million
Contact information:
21 Park Avenue
Yonkers, NY 10703
phone: (914) 376-3900
Website: http://www.greyston.org

In 1982, Zen Buddhist teacher Bernie Glassman founded the Greyston Bakery as a means to employ a small number of his students and to explore ways to apply Buddhist principles to social change. 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.

Over the years, Greyston has developed into an integrated system of nonprofit and for-profit organizations that offer a wide array of programs and services to more than 1,200 men, women and children annually.

Greyston Foundation is the umbrella organization that coordinates and supports all the programs that comprise the Greyston Mandala of services. The Greyston Mandala is composed of

The Sanskrit word mandala means "circle" and reflects Greyston's commitment to develop services that address the needs of the whole community and of the whole person within it. Working from a mandala perspective, every part of the organization supports every other part. For example, the guiding principles of the Greyston Bakery state: "The bakery will actively integrate itself into the Greyston Mandala. Bakery management will work with the Greyston Foundation to give factory employees opportunities to take advantage of the Pathmaker, childcare, housing, and other services. In addition, the bakery will attempt to provide professional opportunities for individuals who enter Greyston through other parts of the Mandala." Revenues from the bakery help to sustain the work of the entire Foundation.

As a socially responsible entrepreneur, Greyston values healthy individuals and communities as much as it does the financial bottom line. Using the Greyston Bakery as a model, Greyston creates jobs and gives transferable skills to formerly unemployed individuals, helping them on their path toward self-sufficiency.

Employees of Greyston's programs come together for contemplative practice in various ways - small groups meet together regularly for meditation practice before or after the work day in both Buddhist and Christian traditions; meetings usually start with a few minutes of silence; council practice is sometimes used as a tool in meetings where difficult issues are discussed; and the entire organization closes down once a year for a staff retreat, during which a variety of contemplative exercises are shared.

But beyond the practices, an essential part of the Greyston ethos is being present, loving, and accepting to employees and service recipients alike. Charles told the story of woman who was a tenant in the housing program. He described her as "an extremely angry person, a single mother with a lot of issues with her children. Greyston became the embodiment of everything that was wrong, from her point of view, with her life." The relationship between the woman and the Greyston staff, as well as other tenants, became very strained. As Charles said, "We had a community that was really in turmoil." But the staff made a decision to stick with the woman and do whatever it took to keep communication open with her, even as they were honest with her about how her behavior was affecting people. It took "a couple of years of very painful work" for both staff and the woman, but through small incremental steps, she is now a leader in the community. Charles said, "It really had everything to do with the fact that people acknowledged a level of commitment that I thought was extremely impressive. These were people who, from a professional point of view, would have been totally justified in giving up on a person."

Another key aspect of the organizational culture is a commitment to reflecting on one's own challenges. Charles said, "A lot of organizations talk about taking a holistic approach to the provision of services. [But] the personal exploration, personal confronting of our own habits and neurosis is often missing. Until that work is done, I don't think you can truly have a holistic organization."

Greyston's view, according to Charles, is that "anybody who arrives at Greyston as an employee is arriving here as a part of a personal journey. We encourage people to capture that moment in time when they have actually made the transition and move from wherever they have been in to Greyston, and at the same time take a look at where their path or their journey within Greyston might lead."

The role of the Vice President of Pathmaking Services is to encourage people's exploration of their own journey. This might take the form of encouraging an employee to move on to another job, if that is in their best interest, even if the person is a very effective employee that the organization doesn't want to lose. It may also take the form of helping an employee to figure out how to integrate their personal spiritual practice into their lives at Greyston. There is no requirement that workers have a contemplative or spiritual practice to begin employment at Greyston, but the organization puts "a lot of time and effort into giving people opportunities to take a look at a more holistic view of bringing their personal issues to the workplace." There is also no pressure to adopt Buddhist teachings. Charles said Greyston tries "to encourage people [to return to] their own spiritual roots."

Greyston is now at the point where it is considering how the lessons it has learned can be of benefit to similar organizations around the country. Charles said that Greyston grew up based on the specific needs of the Yonkers area it is based in, and though it has developed some overarching principles, he notes that "you just can't clone an organization."

The core questions that Greyston strives to explore, in Charles' words, are: "How does an organization that professes to be built upon core spiritual values or values of engaged social action actually manifest? How is it any different from an organization that doesn't make that kind of overt statement?"

Key Accomplishments

Organizational Challenge: Balance between spiritual and secular

"Working in the spiritual aspect of our mission to the rest of the life of our organization has always been the challenge." With the goal of bringing spiritual commitment and contemplative practices made so explicit, Charles sometimes gets feedback that people "feel like if they are not wearing a contemplative discipline on their sleeve they are somehow feeling that they are not fully accepted here." It hasn't been a "huge issue," But Charles wants to make sure that nothing feels coercive.

Organizational Contemplative Practices

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