Each week during our Fall 2026 Membership Drive, we’re introducing you to a sangha member reflecting on what practice and community at Brooklyn Zen Center means to them. This week, meet Mary!

Missed the others in the series? Browse all Meet a Member stories →

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Mary Stone
Member Since: October 2024
Favorite BZC Program: Paula Arai’s Retreat on Healing, Online Morning
Meditation, Saturday morning program
BZC Roles: Looking forward to the Childcare Ryo and the HEAR Support
Circle. After events at the Zendo, I help with the dishes and launder
tablecloths.
Fun Fact: I am a Canadian.

My Story:

All my life, I have been obsessed with learning how social structures can promote equality, compassion and connection. As an undergraduate in Toronto, I got involved with the Women’s Liberation Movement, helped to organize consciousness raising groups on campus, protested against sexist policies, and marched on parliament hill in favor of FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND. During the summer I worked in a Canadian government program promoting participatory democracy, and when I graduated joined a new Women’s Program to promote women’s political activism. I eventually left to go to graduate school in sociology specializing in modernization. I became fascinated with how decision-making in Japanese companies was so different from the decision making in US companies — much more collaborative and inclusive, using methods such as nema washi — where you make an effort to build consensus before a new initiative. I studied Japanese and went to Japan to research the intersection of modernization and women’s participation in decision-making. In Japan, I met my husband and, later, we had a daughter who would later become a Buddhist.

Fast forward a few decades. I went back to school to become qualified as a psychotherapist. After I established a private practice, I found myself working with clients who were struggling with exploitative and toxic workplaces. It was not their fault but they had to deal with it, and in many cases could not quit. I started looking for new ways to help, and I discovered Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which was developed by a prominent CBT practitioner who was also a Buddhist teacher, Marsha Linehan. She found that some clients could not tolerate the emphasis on change in traditional therapy (it felt critical and invalidating) and introduced the concept of “radical acceptance,” where you learn to acknowledge and live with what is happening, not avoiding or escaping. DBT also emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and being present. I was intrigued to find out that Marsha Linehan initially planned to call DBT “Zen Behavior Therapy.” The concept of radical acceptance became foundational to my work and I started meditating on my own. I began feeling a strong need to be connected to a collective with a passion for social justice. Brooklyn Zen Center is just a few blocks from where I live, so I decided to give it a try.

One of the first times I went to BZC, someone talked about how everyone joins in setting up and cleaning up the Zendo; that there’s no hierarchy of tasks — all are important. We formed a circle and broke up into work groups and I found pleasure in being part of a work group. I was impressed to see a teacher drying dishes. I started to take part in the Morning Meditation. And then we had the meeting that changed everything. BZC was plunged into an extensive exploration of power and its uses and abuses, which is now extending into how to maintain a supportive collective that supports a myriad of individuals and promotes the Buddhist values of addressing suffering with social activism.

I feel excited and privileged to have the opportunity to participate in the current restructuring and self-exploration happening at BZC. I feel like all my life’s experiences have led me to this moment. I am looking forward to this year’s Ango where “We will inquire into a living, somatic, practical nonduality together, as an inherently relational, communal practice, inseparable from social liberation.”

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