“We talk about not knowing, bearing witness, and compassionate action as though they happen independently, but I think they are in deep commune with each other, moment to moment,” says dancer and choreographer Keely Garfield, who has recently begun a new job as director of Spiritual Care and Palliative Care Chaplain with Northwell Health at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, New York. “For me, dancing utilizes the same skills, and I would say that my showing up in the dance studio has a similar quality about it.” 

Born and raised in London, after Keely completed her dance studies there in the 1980s, she headed west. “The modern dance world was very much centered in New York, and I thought that I would hop along here and stay for about maybe three months, taking classes and seeing performances and really soaking in the life of a dancer. And thirty-seven years have gone by.”

This past spring in New York, Keely Garfield Dance presented The Invisible Project, which, Keely explains, was “informed by my role as a chaplain working in end-of-life and trauma. Chaplains employ a set of skills, or competencies; among them are compassionate presence, reflective listening, bearing witness to suffering, affirming strengths, facilitating expression of feelings, and meaning-making.”

Did you grow up in a religious tradition? My mother was Jewish and my father was Catholic, and there was a certain ambivalence from the beginning toward religion. And yet I so wanted to belong. My mother would ignore the High Holidays, and then, at sundown, she would frantically search for the candles and whip us off to the synagogue at the end of the street, where we would stand sheepishly at the back or outside. It was very painful. But that pain that I inherited from my elders also turned me into a spiritual seeker. I took a deep dive into Judaism here in New York; I studied the Shekhinah and Hebrew prayer through the lens of the feminine. I also spent many, many Christmas Eves at midnight mass. And I became a yogi, a yoga teacher, singing my heart out at kirtans and studying Sanskrit and Vedic philosophy and theology. And it all comes to bear when, in my work, I’m called to recite the Shema here, the Lord’s Prayer there, or the Mahamantra for my Hindu patients. It’s a grace.

I think that the first time that I really felt included, that there was a place for me to be, was when I walked into the sangha I practice with now, the Village Zendo, with our abbot, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. Like a lot of spiritual homes, it is a convening of misfits and mishaps and wonderment. I’m very happy to have found my brick-and-mortar spiritual home.

What brought you to the threshold of your brick-and-mortar spiritual home? In 2007, I started a wonderful yearlong training program called Urban Zen Integrative Therapy, learning about yoga therapeutics and Reiki and essential oils and meditation. The contemplative care part of that training was led by Roshi Joan Halifax. One afternoon, the Village Zendo joined us in this beautiful event space in the West Village. I found myself sitting next to what looked like a bunch of earnest monks in their black robes and rakusus, and I just thought: I want this. And now I’m one of those strange people in a black robe with the rakusu sitting on a cushion enveloped by silence. 

When were you ordained? In 2013, I took Jukai, and in 2021, I was ordained as a Buddhist chaplain. My teacher, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, gave me the dharma name Rakushin. It means bliss body, or body of joy. It’s descriptive: I’m a mother (my two children are the loves of my life), a dancer, a yogi—and it’s prescriptive: go out and use that, with the awareness that I too will succumb to old age, sickness, and death.

What inspired your move toward chaplaincy? A few years ago, I was working as a professor in dance at the New School, very engaged with my dance company, teaching yoga, and working in wellness, and I had no thought about a career change. Then, one day, after an Ango intensive practice retreat, friends and I were all heading for an espresso at the nearest place. In the car, my dharma sister, who was a chaplain, turned to me and said something like: have you ever thought about becoming a chaplain? And it was at that moment that I was like: I am thinking it now!

The teachers have really been key. The Rev. Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson had come to the Zendo to teach us about death and dying, I’d studied Being with Dying with Roshi Joan through Urban Zen, and had focused on caring for the caregiver with New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. So the scene was set. 

When I learned that Jinpu was leading the CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) program at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, I knew I was going. I traveled up to Poughkeepsie two or three days a week and studied with her and my wonderful CPE intern group, and then I did my residency at Mount Sinai in the middle of COVID and worked at NYU Langone. And here I am.

What are some of the joys and challenges of chaplaincy? The joys and challenges are intertwined. It’s not that one is over in yonder field and the other is over in a different field. I’m a big fan of the Zen monk poet Ryokan, who tried to cultivate throughout his life and practice the ability to see that there were no differences between himself and everything around him. There are no differences between myself and everything around me. That is both a challenge and a joy.

Also, I try to cultivate the idea of being the “reliable other.” If I can become that reliable other, it feels joyful, and it’s a challenge to become that for someone. I’m not always that for myself.

And then, I think, the struggle is very simple: being with people who are really suffering day after day, sometimes in ways that are unimaginable. How does one take that on and not become completely overwhelmed and ineffectual? And sometimes that does happen, and it’s a moment to take a step back and another step back and take some time. It’s like the Japanese saying: fall down seven times, get up eight. The challenge is to get up again for the eighth or ninth or tenth time.

Buddhist chaplains often mention the lack of a supportive structure; many of us don’t have opportunities to meet and debrief with other chaplains in person. Is this a challenge for you? Absolutely. There may be a lot of chaplains where I am, but people are busy. We know that part of the power of healing in this work is the narrative, it’s the story. We have to tell our stories too—we can’t just bottle them up or push them aside. We do need more systemic support for how we tend to ourselves as chaplains so we can keep being useful and do the work. 

For me, taking some time to go sit in the chapel and do zazen there, or sitting down on the cushion and getting quiet goes a long way. In silence you can hear the groaning of the world, right? So in my own silence I can hear the groaning, bow to it, and that enables it to move back into the stream of things.

You’ve also worked in trauma. Yes, I feel like I’ve encountered some things that will probably stay with me till the end of time, things that are horrid and cruel and violent, and this only deepens my sense of compassion. I lived down in Battery Park during the events of 9/11/2001, and I was in the World Trade Center Plaza that morning as the catastrophe unfolded. I had dropped my son at school a couple of blocks away and was taking my daughter to the mall in the World Trade Center to buy some shoes. In that moment I experienced a sense of terror, for sure, but also great despair. It was a long road back. It was hard for me to come back into a place of trust. 

I think that experience has helped me recognize in people who are traumatized, especially by violence or catastrophic events, the sense of shock and kind of severing between who you were, who you are now, and dreadful uncertainty about who you’ll become. As a chaplain, I am always sitting with who you are right now. Sometimes—like when I was one of the first responders after the Sunset Park subway shooting last year—I meet you in the ED and follow you through the ICU, stepdown, rehab, and even discharge. Again, it’s really about accompanying, about being on that journey as the reliable other. And, if I’m lucky, I can join you in reimagining who you are now and who you will become. 

A trauma victim once said to me, “My greatest fear is that this is going to make me hate people. And I don’t want to hate people, so I’m going to choose to continue to love them.” It’s weird to say, but maybe that was my journey too from my own experience with trauma and catastrophe back toward love.

Your life experiences have been so rich and varied. Has this chaplaincy chapter taught you anything new about yourself? It’s a hard question. I think this is a great practice for me at this point in my life because my essential nature is relatively fiery and flamboyant, and I think of myself as an activist. I’ll be the first one to put myself forward for something difficult or “no can do.” Taking the opportunity to learn how to be softer and more gentle, how to take a step back, how to play more with silence as love—what a wonderful opportunity to learn about that right now in my life. I certainly know how to get on a stage with a giant light over my head and leap. But learning how to sit still and listen, and to have a simple practice, is really, really something right now.

The post Dancing into Silence as Love appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“I’m a chaplain who works at the largest social media company in the world,” writes Breeshia Wade in a blog post on her website entitled “From Codes to Compassion: The Story of a Chaplain Working in Big Tech.” She describes how her chaplaincy background informs her work as a UX (user experience) content strategist at Meta, despite assumptions from others in the tech industry that the two roles are mutually exclusive. “Suffering isn’t bound by the walls of hospitals or prisons: it’s pervasive, attaching itself to everybody, at any time,” she writes. “So, chaplaincy is needed well beyond the walls of hospitals and prisons, churches and temples.

“Titles, ordination, and job tasks do not define a chaplain; chaplains are defined by their intentional awareness of spiritual suffering in every context, allowing us to truly serve all beings. Chaplaincy isn’t something we do: it’s a way of being.”

Rich with an education that spans her Southern Baptist upbringing in South Carolina, a BA in comparative studies in race and ethnicity from Stanford, an MA in religious studies and philosophy from the University of Chicago, completion of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy program, four units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), lay ordination in Shunryu Suzuki’s Soto Zen tradition, and experiences as diverse as birth doula and hospice chaplain, Breeshia is also a speaker, consultant, and teacher whose current focus is “grief-informed antiracism.” Against all odds, she still finds time to write. Her book, Grieving While Black: An Antiracist Take on Oppression and Sorrow, received excellent reviews and is now required reading in a number of graduate-level university courses. Plus, Breeshia volunteers as a hospice chaplain. Does she ever sleep? “I do,” she affirms. “That’s a different conversation.”

What does your week look like? Of late, in addition to my corporate job as a content strategist, it mostly has looked like partnerships. Working on institutional partnerships, getting proposals together, planning programming and presentations around grief-informed antiracism—that has been the bulk of my time. There’s a lot happening right now; there is no consistency in how things look.

What is grief-informed antiracism? Essentially, instead of focusing on the grief experienced by people who are suffering from systemic trauma, I focus on the fear of loss or impermanence, which is a future sort of grief. My primary audience is usually white people, but it’s applicable to any background. Attending to what we’re afraid of losing can keep us from stealing resources in the present to avoid losing them in the future. Unexplored white grief or fear of loss is what leads to concrete grief for Black people, so I focus on addressing white grief for the sake of Black liberation.

Equity is fine and dandy until we recognize, hey, equity means I don’t have access to the same things—say, the same number of jobs—because what has been privileged and seems like the norm for me is being broken up. Now, I’ve got to share opportunities with that person over there, and that’s a problem.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having things that you want to keep. I get it—everybody has that. But when that is stretched into a system where an entire group of people have created circumstances to protect their ability to live longer and more happily at the expense of everybody else, that’s where we start having issues.

If we look at systemic racism, we see the stealing of life, of monetary resources, of land, of peace, of medical care. We see the stealing of jobs. There’s this constant taking of things that are to some degree tied to our ability to live comfortably now and in the future. That’s where this concept around the fear of loss, specifically for people who experience racial privilege, comes from. 

I will also say that the experience of grief or fear of loss is applicable across space and time. It is not specific to white people. If we got rid of white supremacy today, I can guarantee you that another system would pop up to replace it. Educating people around systemic racism is important—people need to become aware—but this is more than a cognitive issue. It is fundamentally a spiritual issue.

How did you get from your studies and your different experiences to this particular sort of niche? There aren’t many people doing what you’re doing. Honestly, it’s difficult to pinpoint where, when, and how. I posted a blog recently on how Buddhism helped me come to the conclusion that antiracist work is grief work. Once I reached a certain place in my practice, this was where I wanted to be because it seemed most relevant, and not just because of what’s going on in the world and its topicality. Anti-Blackness and antisemitism are the foundations of a lot of systems of oppression in America and have been throughout its history, so that’s where I focus. 

What called you to Buddhism? First of all, I want to say that I’m still culturally Baptist. I say things that are specific to African Americans who are Baptists. I love my culturally Baptist family. I will 100 percent go to revival and a cookout, and I see no contradiction, because that is where the culture is for me.

I also find peace and solace in Buddhism. When I was 20 or 21, I was studying Mandarin, and there was a three-day intensive workshop on something called Sudarshan Kriya—the Art of Living breathing practice. I remember going to class and talking to my Chinese professor about it. She thought I was talking about zazen, which I’d never heard of. She invited me to sit where she sat, which I think was Mountain View Zen Center. Then I saw that Oakland Zen Center was holding a three-day sesshin. I showed up and said, “I want to do this.” The teacher asked, “Have you ever sat before?” I was like, “Nope.” And she said, “Maybe you should try it for a couple of hours or just come and sit with us another time.” And I was like, “Nope. I’m ready. I am here. I will do this.” So I sat sesshin for three days, and from there on, it just felt like a necessary practice.

People often ask me how I reconcile my upbringing as a Southern Baptist Black woman who grew up in South Carolina with my Zen Buddhist practice. I don’t view these things as being in contradiction. I would say that my Southern Baptist tradition gave me spiritual depth and breadth, and my Zen Buddhist practice gave me courage and a shovel to go deeper than I can ever express. 

You’re a Zen Buddhist married to a white, Jewish woman. How does your South Carolina Southern Baptist family feel about your life choices? You know, my grandma may have had a little bit of difficulty at first, but at the end of the day, the family wasn’t going to lose their relationship with me. All in all, my family tends to be forgiving of my decisions and behavior even if they may not be the decisions they would have made for me.

What was your path to chaplaincy? I did the MA and paired it with the Upaya chaplaincy program to create an MDiv equivalency. I did my first three units of CPE at Rush University Medical System in Chicago—nine months—and then I moved to Los Angeles and did the last unit through Emory’s online program.

I had some great CPE supervisors who really helped me develop my emotional and spiritual awareness. My last CPE supervisor in particular left a profound impression on me. He’s an Orthodox rabbi. I feel touched just talking about him—I cried when that group ended. I randomly tell him this—every four or five months, he gets an unexpected thank-you message for all he’s meant to me.

That said, I found working within the medical system as a queer, Buddhist, Black woman to be very challenging. In the US, both medicine and religion tend to be heteronormative, patriarchal, and racist. There are a lot of behaviors that are allowed to fly from some parties, and people like me are expected to disappear themselves in order to accommodate those behaviors. And while my own spirit was being depleted, I had to turn around and provide spiritual care for people at their most vulnerable. 

I continue to volunteer once a week as a hospice chaplain. The thing about death and dying is that it’s honest; that’s really what drew me to it in the first place. There’s no running, there’s no room to be disingenuous. You get to the core, the root of it—it’s real, you know, and it’s raw. However, because it is so deeply meaningful to me, I do not feel comfortable tying it to my livelihood full-time at this point. There have been things I was asked to do within the medical institution that I was in conflict with, and I just don’t want to be in a situation where I feel coerced. I find it important to do other work so that I can maintain a sense of integrity. 

Working with people who are in pain—whether it’s spiritual pain, trauma, pain that has roots in racial identity, or any other form—can be very demanding. What keeps you going? Having enough comfort and familiarity with my own pain. There are a lot of people who would say that they sit because it’s relaxing or they want enlightenment. I don’t sit for those things. I sit out of necessity. When I sit, it often is not pleasant. That’s cool. I’m not coming for pleasantness. I’m not coming expecting a certain outcome. I sit, and, as a human, I experience suffering. I see that suffering. I am not abandoning that suffering. Because I’m present with myself, I can be present with other people who are suffering.

The post ‘I See No Contradiction’ appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Now semiretired, Cheryl Barnes-Neff, PhD, MDiv, RN, started her career working as a neonatal intensive care nurse and is wrapping it up as a hospice chaplain, teacher, and author. Some of the volumes in between what she calls “these bookends of life” include traveling the world as staff nurse for the Up with People show in the late 1970s, discovering Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh in the 1980s, and working for a national palliative care and hospice corporation in central Florida, where she resides. Cheryl also found time to complete a PhD in philosophy and religious studies, a master of divinity, a master of Buddhist doctrine, and Harvard Divinity School’s certificate in religious studies and education. And she writes books. 

These days, one of Cheryl’s pet projects is helping nurse leaders and other health-care professionals integrate the benefits of compassion-centered care based on techniques gleaned from her decades of experience in nursing, chaplaincy, and Buddhist studies and practices. In a blog post from her website entitled “Remembering Maria,” Cheryl tells of the encounter with a hospice patient that led her to develop C.A.R.E. (Connect, Assess, Respond, Evaluate & End), a working model that gives clinicians all the elements they need to support their patients with optimal skill and compassion. She is currently rewriting her book for nurse managers entitled The Foundations of Compassion Centered C.A.R.E. to expand its relevance to other health-care professions, including chaplaincy. 

What else have you been up to lately? Well, I’m doing a lot of writing. I plan and participate in classes with a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) instructor. I’m also an assistant associate professor at Buddha Dharma University, where we offer a master of divinity with an emphasis on Buddhist studies and are creating an online Buddhist chaplaincy program. And while I’m no longer actively nursing, I am doing some online course creation and teaching for nurses.

It doesn’t sound like you’re retired at all! What brought you from nursing to chaplaincy? I got a position in a large hospice here in central Florida and just fell in love with hospice. The job was mainly quality assurance and performance improvement—we call it QAPI—and I was doing a little bit of clinical work just to keep my fingers in nursing. I was the person who knew how to find all the rules and regulations and understand how they’re interpreted. It’s not exactly the work you think of when going into nursing or chaplaincy, but understanding what the compliance needs to be is one of those necessary evils that I came to appreciate. Also, I’d kind of become the ad hoc Buddhist chaplain for our hospice. They’d say, OK, we have this Buddhist patient, can you come over and help them?

I loved chaplaincy. I went back to school and got a master’s of divinity because I wanted to go for board certification as a chaplain and didn’t have all the components. I did an extended CPE unit and assumed I would continue. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and that kind of put the kibosh on that. 

Important decisions needed to be made, and I’m very happy with how things have turned out. It was a little different than the plan, but I survived, and at this time, I’m 100 percent cancer-free. It’s all good.

I’m guessing you didn’t grow up Buddhist. Actually, I joke about accidentally being raised without a religion. We didn’t go to church when I was a little kid. We’re from Indiana, and we’d travel to Nebraska to visit our extended family over the summer. My sister and I would go to Church of God services with an uncle and his family and to Bible school and all that stuff. 

I thought I was just there as an observer—it didn’t click that this was my religious education. At one point back home, I said to my mom, “I’m like you, I’m not religious.” She was horrified that I would say such a thing! She said, “I’m very religious, what are you talking about?” “But we don’t go to church, we never talk about God or anything.” So the following Sunday we started going to a Presbyterian church.

I had a lot of questions. We had a beautiful Carnegie library in town, where my favorite reference librarian always helped me find answers. I told her I needed a religion because this Presbyterian thing wasn’t working for me. She was great—she found me some books about other religions that she thought I might enjoy. I think there was one book about Buddhism that was kind of out there. It was very literal and difficult to understand, but I found it intriguing.

Then, when I was in college at Ball State, there was a California Zen kind of guy doing meditation and talking about Buddhism, and I thought, now this I like. So I took some courses, got better books, and became very, very interested. I finished my degree, started working, and read The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. And from then on, I considered him my teacher. Early on, I had some opportunities for one-on-one meetings with Thay, but later that became impossible because of the sheer number of people who were following him. Beginning in the 1980s, I attended many of his annual retreats, and in 2003, I was ordained into the Order of Interbeing as a lay minister.

How did that fly with your family? For a long time, my mom was challenged by my practicing Buddhism. Then, when her health was failing, I sent her Thich Nhat Hanh’s book No Birth, No Death. She read it and said that it helped her more than any other book ever had. Plus, the daughter of her pastor had just come back from a mission in Thailand and was raving about Buddhism. Mom told me that Pastor Paul thought that Buddhism was just fine. As long as Pastor Paul was on board, it was all good.

Who do you sit with these days? Around 2005 or so, I started attending a Vietnamese Buddhist center here in town that holds monthly days of mindfulness and a variety of retreats. I haven’t been there in quite a while because of COVID restrictions and other things. While I have a personal practice that I am very appreciative of, during the pandemic I wanted to find a way to connect with others. Upaya Zen Center has many different programs online; they became a go-to for me. Plus, I’m always looking for ways to make sure I don’t become too insulated in my practice.

Can you tell us about a practice that helps in difficult moments? When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I continued working in hospice for a while. There’s nothing like learning you have an illness that might be life-limiting: suddenly, there’s a shift in understanding what it’s like for others. Obviously, no one can know exactly what another person is experiencing, but to really be able to sit with that possibility yourself makes a big difference when you’re accompanying someone else who’s had a life-limiting diagnosis.

Before I knew which direction the illness was going to take, my Vietnamese teacher, Sister Lieu Ha, abbess of the Vietnamese temple I was attending, told me that I needed a systematic approach and should meditate on dying, then on being dead, then on having my bones turn to powder, then on the charnel ground itself, and so on. She helped me understand that I may never have another opportunity to be in that space and do those meditations in a way that had become so real. 

Different meditation techniques, such as being with the breath and doing body scans, have been very, very helpful in different phases of my life. Otherwise, a useful exercise when you’re frustrated with patients or other people is to think: just like me. Just like me, this person wants to be free from suffering. Just like me, this person wants to be at ease. And just like me, this person is reacting to all of the things that are happening because they don’t feel at ease and at peace. When I think “just like me,” it’s very helpful with my reactivity; it reminds me to take a breath before I respond. 

What do you teach chaplains in training? I do a unit on basic Buddhism and on Buddhist techniques that can help patients, like mindfulness, and I explain how to document those interventions. I also teach a class on the “nones”: people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, atheists, naturalists, and so on.

We look at how we, as chaplains, can connect first with ourselves and then with the other person as we assess where they are spiritually. Can we find common threads? If they say nature is their church, and looking at the sky or the birds makes them feel that spiritual connection, can we relate to that? Most of us can, just as we can identify with the comfort of petting the dog or the enjoyment of sunlight glistening on the water. I encourage our CPE students to stop worrying so much about vocabulary, about who created what, because when they’re busily thinking about God and creation, they aren’t actually being present with that creation, with nature. 

We talk about presence. We talk about lots of things, like the symptoms a patient might bring up that may not seem particularly spiritual at first glance, like being lonely. Well, what is loneliness? It’s the need to connect with other people in a way that is meaningful, a way that makes sense for them in their hospice journey.

You worked as an RN for decades, and now you’re doing a lot of different things, one of which is chaplaincy. What have you learned about yourself that chaplaincy really brought home? I think what chaplaincy has brought home to me more than anything has been to really understand the phrase “Don’t know.” Not even “I don’t know”; just “Don’t know.” As a nurse, you think in terms of “I have to know, because I have to be correct and make the right decisions.” There’s so much more to the patient experience than competency. And ultimately, I don’t know. 

The post Chaplaincy and Not Knowing appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Community involvement has always been an essential part of chaplain Alex Beth Schapiro’s DNA. Having recently received a grant to weave spiritual care into a New Jersey health system’s outpatient support program, Alex is working with clinicians to cultivate a more collaborative approach and improve patient outcomes. Before they trained as a chaplain, Alex was a youth activist, a translator in China, an artist who created scent installations for a band they toured with, and an author. 

Alex grew up in a Jewish family in Baltimore. While different family members were more or less involved in the religious aspects of their faith, from a cultural and community perspective, Judaism was very present in Alex’s upbringing. “I went to Hebrew school three days a week and we celebrated holidays—it was a very classic American Jewish upbringing.”

Alex is a third-generation Jewish Buddhist. Their great-uncle participated in the well-known Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Massachusetts from its very beginnings, and their aunt teaches insight meditation in Flagstaff, Arizona. This aunt gave young Alex their first taste of sitting during a family trip in Boca Raton (“I was a very angsty teenager”). 

Now lay ordained in the Soto Zen lineage, Alex says that their Zen Buddhist practice is the contemplative part of their Jewish life. “I recently read something I really relate to: the idea that we’re all practicing Jews. It doesn’t matter how we practice; if we identify as Jewish, our very personhood is Jewish.”

Tell us about your path to chaplaincy. I had gone back to school and was studying philosophy at City University of New York when I was invited to join a group of students for sesshin with the New York Zen Center. On that first retreat, in 2013, Zen practice resonated with me like nothing else ever had. There was so much formality and ritual, and yet on the cushion I felt I had total freedom to be in my experience in a completely different way. It was very powerful.

That’s where I saw Trudi (Rev. Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson)—she was the first board-certified Buddhist chaplain, I think—walk across the room, and I was like, who is that? It turned out that she was an artist, a dancer, a Buddhist monk, and a chaplain, and she seemed to be quietly, humbly, and completely integrated in her own practice. I thought, Oh wow! Buddhist chaplaincy is a thing! I don’t think I even knew what a chaplain was outside of the military. I googled it, and it felt like the exact work I could see myself doing, the ethical integration I’d been looking for. 

After that I was on a very clear path to train in and do this work. I pursued a master’s in pastoral care and counseling at the New York Theological Seminary in tandem with the New York Zen Center’s Foundations training. In this way, my spiritual life became very integrated with my vocational life—they came into my consciousness, my imagination, at exactly the same time.

I took my time doing CPE—Clinical Pastoral Education. The relational CPE work was really fabulous for me personally and professionally. My first and most formative clinical placement was in outpatient palliative care with an amazing group of clinicians, including Dr. Craig Blinderman, who is also a Zen practitioner. It was wonderfully collaborative; I got a glimmer of what it means when chaplains are an integrated part of a clinical team. 

I’ve also done some additional training and psychoanalytic work. I think my training process has revealed the importance of community, of sangha, for me in this job. I really want and thrive with peer support—as you know, it can be isolating work. The importance of having that support has been on my mind a lot for all of us chaplains. I actively participate in two peer supervision groups.

What is your work? I work at Atlantic Health System in New Jersey. My colleagues and I received a two-year grant from the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health to bring spiritual care to ambulatory care settings in our system. It allows us to create more continuity of care, to see folks—we work with patients who have progressive neurological diseases—in an outpatient setting, and to look at a new financial model for how we might fund chaplaincy in these settings through ACOs, accountable care organizations. ACOs are basically consortiums of clinicians who negotiate with insurance companies to get better health outcomes by creating more holistic, integrative services for patients. Until now, though, ACOs have rarely incorporated spiritual care.

The idea is to beta test our work and then bring it to the whole system, not only people with serious or chronic illnesses, but everyone in an outpatient setting. What excites me about this project is being able to collaborate with more and more clinicians and to have chaplaincy be more fully embedded within the health-care system. Clinicians usually know when their patients are spiritually and existentially distressed, and yet they don’t necessarily have the bandwidth, resources, or training to address it. It would be easier for them to start that conversation if they knew there was a spiritual counselor they could refer the patient to.

I’m both managing the grant and this program, which is telehealth, and doing one day of clinical work in person with a palliative care consult team. It’s a combo platter.

What challenges do you face in your job? The health-care system is really hard on the folks that work in it. Just witnessing the suffering of a system that does not care for people equally—I struggle with trying to address gaps in care that wouldn’t be there if we were treating people properly. And in my per diem palliative care work, which I only do a few hours a week, it breaks my heart that we know so little about the spiritual lives and needs of our patients and their loved ones when they’re in these difficult situations.

What do you think about God? Is that a question I can ask you? Sure, you can ask me anything. I find myself saying more and more “thank Gods” and “God willings.” It feels right for me; I think that, as Jews, we have permission to be God-fearing and atheists.

Practically, how do you integrate your Zen path and your Jewish path? Do you find time to sit every day? I’d like to say yes…with an 8-month-old child, no. In our home, we also celebrate Shabbat. I think zazen and Shabbat are very similar contemplative practices, in the sense of both being sort of liminal, communal places where we connect with our ancestors and ancestral spaces. In our home, my partner, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, and I practice both. 

To my mind, calling in the ancestors during Shabbat feels quite similar to calling in the bodhisattvas for their support on sesshin. It’s been an access point into becoming comfortable finding a place for myself in Jewish practice in a more explicit way.

That said, zazen has changed my life at its core—it’s changed how I can be in this world. Soft belly practice allows me to do my clinical work and to be in relationship in a totally different way. I think the greatest thing about diving into Zen when I was training to be a chaplain is that now it’s like walking zazen all day long in my work in the hospital and on Zoom. Whether I can formally sit or not, the practice is always there. It’s always about pivoting, finding where my breath is, and centering it in my belly. 

How does what you’ve learned in and through psychoanalysis inform your work as a chaplain? I think it’s helped me to listen in different ways—to listen symbolically to what a person is communicating. There’s also a piece of theology that I relate to about “growing down”; it was put forth by the archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who also happened to be Jewish. The idea is that we are all souls—perfect, complete, lacking nothing—that have to learn how to grow down into this world. 

A related Jewish belief holds that while an embryo develops, the soul has an Angel that is teaching them all the mysteries and secrets, all the potential knowledge of the world. Right before they come out into the world, the Angel wipes them clean of that knowing—this happens above the lip, creating the physical philtrum. We come into the world thinking we know nothing and follow a process of remembering what we already know. I find this very resonant with a lot of Buddhist ideas. 

Do you feel confident that chaplaincy is going to be the way that you share what you have to offer with the world? I feel so. It may take different forms, but it’s my primary professional practice. My big, big dream is to have an adult day center where people can come together, have a place to socialize, and be cared for by community. Connected to the day center would be an outpatient geriatric palliative care clinic for folks to see providers in a holistic way. It’ll take me a few decades to figure it out!

What have you learned about yourself? That I’m stubborn and a slow learner, and that rigor and form are good for me. And that it’s a choiceless choice: that’s how I once heard a Zen teacher speak about this path. If I could do something else, I might, yet after learning about this work, I found out that my great-great-grandmother Sarah and some other women in her community started the Brooklyn Hebrew Home for the Aged. She did hospice work! So in many ways this was a choiceless choice: my ancestors did this work, and I will honor them by continuing it.

The post Chaplain Alex Beth Schapiro Believes in the Healing Power of Community appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Born to a Buddhist family in Chattogram, Bangladesh, Venerable Priya Rakkhit Sraman now serves as the Buddhist chaplain at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From a very young age, Ven. Priya connected with Buddhism through his parents’ daily practices at home and the Theravada temples and programs they would attend together.

Twenty years ago, at the age of 11, he asked to become a monastic and left for Sri Lanka, where he remained through high school. Ven. Priya’s college studies took him to Thailand and Hong Kong, and eventually to Harvard, where he earned his MDiv (Master of Divinity) while serving as the “Buddhist in Residence” at Tufts. “I was basically interested in everything they were talking about,” he says of his graduate studies.

It was during the MDiv program at Harvard and time spent in field education at Tufts that Ven. Priya became interested in working as a college chaplain. “I think that’s when I found meaning and purpose in everything I was doing. Up until that point I was a student; then, for the first time, I was like a teacher sharing the ‘data collection’ I’d been accumulating my whole life.”

As the Buddhist chaplain at Emory, Ven. Priya’s workweek is anything but predictable. On campus he may be found at meetings, leading meditations, taking part in Asian Student Center activities, holding dharma discussion gatherings and ritual practices, working in the garden, helping in emergency situations … the list goes on and on. Ven. Priya also participates in the greater community, conducting retreats and encouraging dialogues with members of the robust local Vietnamese population as well as with Buddhists with Western roots.

Are there many Buddhist students at the university? Not so many, but there are a lot of people who are interested in Buddhism and Buddhist practice.

So most of the students you work with have life experiences, goals, and visions of the future that are likely very different from yours. How do you relate to them? I think a big part of chaplaincy is to be a very good listener. A lot of the time students come because they simply want someone to hear what they have to say. That’s one way I relate to them—I just sit and listen to what they have to offer, and I try to make the teachings and practices relevant to the stories they’re bringing.

As a monastic, are you able to relate to the experiences they share? For example, for college students, a lot of anguish might come from relationships—do they talk to you about their heartbreaks? Yes, all kinds of issues come up in our conversations. I’ve found that the best approach is to be totally honest about my expertise—or lack thereof. I’m not a therapist or a psychologist. I’m there to listen, and I’ll share what I know or just admit that a question is outside of my scope. Direct honesty can be very helpful. 

People often find it easier to seek an answer from someone else, to be handed a solution, but I don’t know how beneficial that really is. I’ll often try to communicate and ask questions in such a way that the listener can find the answer or solution on their own, in their own life. Or maybe there is no solution. 

In the early stages of my chaplaincy training, I was always wondering how to be a good chaplain. I used to ask myself, “Am I doing justice to my profession? What is the right way to be in this position, the right thing to say? Buddhism is serious—I can’t just say whatever I want about such deep and intricate things. Did I create confusion or was I helpful?” Then I realized that there’s no magical way to gain wisdom overnight unless you’re enlightened. I have to accept that I’m not enlightened and don’t have all the answers. But I can always be honest and genuine in my connection with the people who come to me.

Another thing that helps me is to remember that I can rely on resources that already exist. The Buddhist teachings are filled with all kinds of wisdom, and stories are available to me all the time—I don’t have to write or create new ones. So even if I’m not wise enough, the tradition is wise enough already; I just need to borrow from it.

It really sounds like being a university chaplain is your calling—you love it, and there are so many facets to your activity. For you, how does this fit into the traditional notion of monastics as being in retreat from society and not working? There is an understanding that monastics are not supposed to be paid for work. But if you look at the lifestyle of any monastic, traditional or not, they’re working all the time; the only difference is that one is employed and the other isn’t. That’s what I found when I was introduced to the idea of chaplaincy or ministry: monastics have been doing this work all along.

Traditionally, in the Theravada tradition, we’re supposed to be in a secluded setting, to go meditate in the forest and all of that. In the Thai forest tradition, for example, that’s what they’re doing. But they also serve and offer teachings and guide community retreats. This is how so many people were able to benefit from Ajahn Chah’s teachings. He was a meditation master first and foremost, but he also worked and served a lot. 

If you go to any traditional Theravada Buddhist country, such as Sri Lanka or Thailand, or even Bangladesh, you’ll see monastics teaching in colleges or living in cities doing social justice work, taking care of orphanages, and so on. All kinds of social engagement spearheaded by monks and nuns is taking place. 

The only thing that’s been on my mind since I came to the US is that I’m not living in a temple anymore. When I was in Asia, I always lived in monastic communities, including Chinese and Tibetan temples connected to the Mahayana traditions. Then, when I moved to Boston, I started living in a rented apartment. Living alone and offering service to communities within the universities and beyond has required a compromise. I shouldn’t say that it’s been easy—it isn’t easy for an Asian monastic from a foreign country to be on their own, buy and cook their own food, and all of that. It’s been a big change. 

You hold programs for people whose families are traditionally Buddhists and for people who adopted Buddhism as their path. Is there a difference? It’s not exactly the same. In the nontraditional Buddhist communities, retreats mostly focus on meditation, mindfulness, and textual studies. I’ve also led many retreats with traditionally Buddhist families where there is also meditation, dharma discussion, etc., plus another part of these programs is more cultural: donations and alms rounds, chanting, rituals, and other aspects of practice that are more traditional in Asian Buddhist communities. 

Many of the Asian kids I meet in the greater community were born into Buddhist families in the US, away from a traditionally Buddhist country or setting. “We’ve been going to these temples and observing holy days all of our lives, but we don’t really know what’s going on. We don’t understand the texts, we’re just told that it’s good,” they’ll tell me. When there’s no explanation and it’s kind of forced on you, it can feel annoying. What they’re really saying is, “We would love to know more so we can choose the good.” We need to hear them out and answer their questions. 

At Tufts and now at Emory, I’ve done some cultural programs like celebrating Vesak (Buddha Day), full moon ceremonies, chanting, and expanding our understanding of what Buddhism has to offer. The students and college communities seem to love learning about the significance of these different elements of Buddhist practice. 

What do you see yourself doing in ten or fifteen years? I hope to stay in communities where we can have these genuine conversations. I enjoy exploring our understanding of life based on Buddhism and other traditions that can help us expand ourselves. In one of his books, Bhikkhu Analayo writes that mindfulness generates perspectives. When mindfulness is cultivated well, it expands our awareness of other ways of looking at things. Lack of mindfulness makes us think that there’s only one way, one truth. I’d like to be using all these tools and resources that can help us learn to be smarter, or wiser, or just more reasonable. 

Buddhism has a lot to offer the world of chaplaincy in terms of spiritual care. If, as Buddhist educators and chaplains, we want to help create a rich spiritual community of learners and practitioners, now is a very good time. It would be wonderful to create spaces on campus—something like the Buddhist equivalent of the Jewish Hillel network, for example—where students can learn Buddhist philosophy and practices while building community.

A personal interest I have is to establish and support places back home where I can offer scholarships and learning opportunities for children and teenagers, just as I was supported in my own learning. I want other kids to be able to study and grow in their lives—not necessarily through Buddhism, but through anything they would love to learn. In ten or fifteen years, hopefully I’ll be in a position where I can help create that. 

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the Buddha was a great, great chaplain.

Any final thoughts on your role as a chaplain? I’m ordained in the Theravada tradition, and my appearance is that of a Theravada monk, but I tell my students that I’m a Buddhist chaplain. Not Theravada or Mahayana: Buddhist. I’m open to sharing all kinds of Buddhism, including cultural, doctrinal, meditation practices, and rituals, so our students can learn about and from them. And to students who are not Buddhist, I simply say that I’m a chaplain.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the Buddha was a great, great chaplain. He wasn’t trying to teach monastics only—he did his best to be there for everyone. How can we chaplains get inspiration from his example and the examples of other great Buddhist teachers? If we care to look, we’ll find there is so much to discover.

The post A Young Buddhist College Chaplain Connects with Students and Communities of All Kinds appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Being in or entering into a crisis situation can be nerve-racking, unsettling, and exhausting as well as rewarding, invigorating, and uplifting. There can be a broad mix of internal reactions as we wade through an environment of unpredictable churning and dynamic energies. However, it is important to be prepared to face those situations before entering. You want to be a skilled swimmer before jumping into the deep end of the wave pool.

So writes Reverend Nathan Jishin Michon, PhD, in their introduction to Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, a new compendium featuring twenty-four Buddhist perspectives on crisis care. A Buddhist chaplain, scholar, author, editor, translator, interfaith minister, and Shingon priest, Jishin currently lives in Kyoto. Their post-doc research at Ryukoku University explores the development of chaplaincy in Japan, where it is a relatively recent discipline that has advanced considerably since the devastating tsunami of 2011.

Jishin’s academic path spans an MA in comparative religion, an MDiv in Buddhist chaplaincy, and a PhD in history and cultures of religions. They have traveled widely and lived in a number of different countries on several continents. They also lead workshops and guest lectures when they have a moment.

Jishin was raised in a “devout yet open-minded” Catholic family in Michigan. “I had a lot of Catholic education growing up,” they say. “I was the kid who sat at the front of the bus on school field trips so I could ask the priest all sorts of questions.” Their meditation journey began with Zen, continued with the Thai Forest tradition, and settled in the Japanese Shingon School, where they were ordained in 2017. “Today, with my Shingon Vajrayana teacher, I’m still asking questions,” Jishin admits.

What led you to Buddhism? In my first year of college at Western Michigan, I had experiences that I just couldn’t explain. I took some philosophy classes but didn’t find them helpful, then I stumbled upon a course about Buddhism. At the beginning of that course, I had another powerful experience and became very focused on the idea of nonattachment and trying to let go of everything cognitively, even though I hadn’t learned anything about meditation. This led to a mystical experience—a contemplative state of consciousness—where time slowed down and loving compassion and connection with everything around me arose. It was both extremely opening and wonderful, and also, in the days after it ended, extremely lonely. I felt I had a new understanding of reality and nobody to share it with. 

Eventually, I spoke with my professor of Buddhism about it. She suggested some readings she thought I might find helpful. I read a lot and started experimenting with meditation on my own. I went into Buddhism from there, beginning with Zen. 

Where did your formal Zen practice begin? I sort of jumped in at the deep end when I was around 20. At school I’d asked to do an elective research course to study life in a Zen monastery in Japan. Without any Zen or formal meditation training, I found myself in a situation where we were meditating for ten hours a day in silence. Based on what I’d read, I still had a lot of romanticized Western images of what Zen would be. Those images started crashing down when I went into the experience!

And your path to chaplaincy? In 2007, I spent half a year learning about peace studies in Austria and training in Romania, and was considering pursuing conflict resolution as a profession that offers work in the world rather than in academia. During that period I was regularly around people coming from conflict zones. It was a time for me of watching, paying attention to facial expressions, and listening deeply to people’s issues and stories. I was also guiding basic mindfulness meditation; other people involved in peacekeeping seemed to find it helpful. The experience planted seeds. 

After my internship I began applying for regular jobs in conflict zones, but my parents asked me to please find a different field. I told them I’d try to find a job where they wouldn’t have to be up all night worrying about me. 

I had heard about chaplaincy and thought it might be a good way to combine my different interests. I entered the Master of Divinity program in chaplaincy at University of the West, and when I did the chaplaincy courses, the role-playing, verbatim exercises, training and reporting back all felt very familiar. After my master’s, I went straight into a PhD program, with a chaplaincy focus. That’s when I started researching the Clinical Pastoral Education programs in Japan. 

I also spent time volunteering as a chaplain there, mostly working with disaster survivors. This often took place through a group called Café de Monk. It’s a play on words because the word monku in Japanese means “to complain.” So it was a place where survivors could come and “complain” about their lives to the volunteer “monks” on hand to listen. It was meant to be an oasis of listening, and also of forming community bonds between and with survivors.

Can you share an experience from your time as a volunteer that marked you? I attended the final Café de Monk gathering at one of the temporary housing communities from the 2011 disaster shortly before the community was to be closed. Toward the end of the gathering, there was a traditional dance from the region in which everyone walked slowly in a large circle, performing the prescribed steps and gestures. Despite all the hardships that they had been through, there was so much joy and deep connection throughout the room. We often think of disaster chaplaincy as dealing only with immensely tragic stories, but it can also include moments of joy and bonding, and these are among the most important elements of the work.

How is chaplaincy in Japan unique? It has developed very quickly and is still going through growing pains. There’s been a blossoming of books, articles, and conferences and a great deal of new material, thought, and theory here in Japan over the last decade.

Compared to chaplaincy in the US, which is dominated by its Christian history, most of the trained and certified chaplains here are Buddhists, and most of the training takes place in Buddhist universities and under Buddhist teachers and trainers. I find the Buddhist emphasis and background really exciting; my role here is not just to study and understand it but also to see what I can take back to Buddhist chaplains in places like the US, where they’re so much more of a minority.

There’s a much stricter separation of religion and state in Japan than in the US. This creates difficulties for clinical chaplaincy because we can’t do anything religious in hospitals and hospices that are publicly funded, and most of the Japanese health care system is, thankfully, funded by the government. We may not be permitted to offer a prayer or a chant even if a patient or family asks us to, but we can do basic, secular mindfulness exercises with them. 

I feel there’s potential for that to change in the future, but at the moment the chaplains and leaders of the field seem to be treading carefully and establishing themselves first rather than trying to push the boundaries of what they’re allowed to do. The dominance of Buddhism in Japan and the nascent nature of chaplaincy here forces a lot of adaptation. How do we take this originally Christian vocation and adapt it for a primarily non-Christian audience in a very different culture? What’s the best way to serve and care for Japanese people? There’s a lot of creative innovation happening as we try to figure it out.

Can you give us an example? Yes, there’s a teacher-trainer here named Oshita Daien who’s been working in hospitals with dying cancer patients for almost two decades. He’s from my Shingon tradition and reordained as a Theravada monk in Sri Lanka, so he has a broad meditation background. At first, to gain more experience in hospital settings, he also trained as a music therapist. He’s taken his Buddhist training in mantra practice, dharanis, and other chanting techniques and adapted it to music therapy and contemplative practices to create a complete therapeutic system of chanting meditation therapy. Now he teaches doctors, nurses, and social workers how to use these techniques to serve the needs of patients. He’s doing a lot of cool things! 

Are there many professional chaplains in Japan? The number of paid professional positions is extremely limited. The majority of people going through the chaplain certificate program at my university, for example, are ordained priests who would like to become better listeners for all the funerals and grief care that they’re doing, or to combine their temple duties with some kind of volunteer chaplaincy on the side.

Given the many different forms of Buddhism present in Japan—Zen, Shingon, Soka Gakkai, Pure Land, etc.—does everybody get along? I would say the chaplains get along better than most of the other Buddhists [laughs]. It’s not that the others don’t get along, it’s that there’s very little interaction among the different Buddhist sects. One generally learns and trains within one tradition. In some ways, chaplaincy is a whole new thing for Japanese Buddhism because there’s a heck of a lot more interaction.

As a Shingon priest, what are your responsibilities? When I can, I help my teacher, Seicho Asahi, at his temple, Riso-in, especially during certain festivals. It’s a small monastery, and everyone else is Japanese. I’m kind of a longtime novice; I’m still learning how to do rituals properly. The Shingon tradition has a lot of different chants and ceremonies, and I’ve learned and memorized some of them. I’m slowly adding more to my ritual utility belt. 

Tell us about your new book. How did the project begin? I was back in the US planning to return to Japan when the COVID lockdowns suddenly began. My Japan plans went through long, repeated delays because of that country’s strict border closures. I had just finished a dissertation that partly dealt with disaster and crisis care and had met so many people doing wonderful, amazing work in the world through that process. 

I ran the idea of an anthology past a few people and sent out a call for papers. The response was incredible—there were so many beautiful stories and gems of wisdom from people belonging to a variety of Buddhist traditions, fields, and countries. All of these voices were so important. It felt like they should become a book for the times we are all living in. 

The post Buddhist Chaplaincy Evolves in Japan appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Continuing Tricycle’s Q&As with Buddhist bloggers series, today we have an interview with Lt. Jeanette Shin, the U.S. military’s first Buddhist chaplain (there are more now, all of them except Lt. Shin serving in the Army). Commissioned by the Navy in 2004, Lt. Shin, an ordained priest in the Nishi Hongwanji branch of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, has been providing Buddhist services at the Marine Corps Base Camp in Pendleton, California as well as in Afghanistan. She also runs the blog Buddhist Military Sangha, a forum for Buddhists serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Not sure what military chaplains do in the first place? Read on to find out and hear Lt. Shin’s thoughts on being a female Buddhist in the armed forces.

Why did you first join the military and what inspired you to apply for chaplaincy? I first joined the military (U.S. Marine Corps) in 1988 and served for four years. It was during my time as a Marine that I was introduced to the teachings of Shinran Shonin at Ekoji Buddhist Temple, in Fairfax, Virginia. After I was discharged I went back to school and worked for the federal government for awhile, and eventually decided to go to the Jodo Shinshu seminary in the U.S., the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, CA. My intentions were to become a Shinshu minister in the U.S. but then I learned that the military chaplaincy option was available, and became a Naval Reserve chaplain after ordination in 2003. In 2006 I became an active duty chaplain. I felt it would be a natural fit after my prior experience in the Marines.

You’ve written on Buddhist Military Sangha that military chaplaincy is one of the least understood professions in our society—what are some common misconceptions about it, and what is chaplaincy in reality? I stated that military chaplaincy is one of the least understood professions, but I believe this could also apply to all forms of chaplaincy. I’ve met many individuals, not only Buddhists, who were unfamiliar with the word “chaplain” or who did not know what chaplains do—to provide spiritual ministry, care, and counseling outside the confines of a traditional place of worship. I think one misconception is that military chaplains function as missionaries or that they preach killing. However, most chaplains really are concerned with ensuring that individuals, whether in the military or hospital or prisons, have access to services and sacraments of their respective faith. Military chaplains exist because of the U.S. constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. I think that if a chaplain were to engage in such behavior they would have very little credibility with other Marines and Sailors and therefore be very ineffective in their jobs.

Do you often find yourself defending your career path and your choice to enlist in the Marines to other Buddhists? How do you respond to criticism in regards to Right Livelihood and keeping the first precept? I have encountered some Buddhists who object to the practice of military chaplaincy due to the First Precept and Right Livelihood; however, my response is that Buddhists do exist in the military, they are citizens of this nation, so therefore they should have a chaplain of their faith background available. Also, America is not the only country to have Buddhist military chaplains—they are also present in the armed forces of nations with predominantly Buddhist populations like South Korea and Thailand. Buddhists, like other people, make individual choices about their practice of Dharma; it is not for me to judge how they interpret doctrine—my only concern is that they are able to practice without discrimination.

Tell us about some of the challenges of being one of the only Buddhist chaplains in the U.S. armed forces. Is it difficult to be a female Buddhist in an environment dominated by Judeo-Christian males? It is certainly a challenge being a Buddhist chaplain in the military! There certainly have been a few individuals who do not understand why a female would want to be in the military, or a Buddhist, but the majority of chaplains I’ve met have been welcoming and curious about the Dharma. Many chaplains have been stationed in numerous Asian countries, and have encountered Buddhism as practiced there.

 Do you work with non-Buddhists as well as with Buddhists? The armed forces is overwhelmingly Christian, but is there some receptivity to learning about Buddhism and other religions? How do you approach helping soldiers who are not Buddhist and may have radically different views? I work with non-Buddhists every day. As a Navy chaplain, we work in a pluralistic environment. I think that is another misconception of military chaplaincy, that chaplains are only available for individuals of their own faith group or denomination. While we cannot perform services from another faith tradition (for example, I won’t be saying Mass or doing Friday Islamic Prayers), we can always listen and talk with military members regardless of their religious or non-religious background. There is definitely a curiosity about Buddhism, but I am careful not to “push” my beliefs onto someone who is not receptive. If there is a Marine or Sailor who needs or wants something from their own faith tradition, I always refer them to a chaplain of that faith.

What do you have in your kit bag? When I was deployed to Afghanistan last year, I ensured that my bag had items to hold a service: An image of Buddha (in this case I used a thangka of Sakyamuni Buddha—easy to roll up and carry strapped onto my bag), incense, nenju, service book, candles, also some pamphlets on Buddhism to give to others. These were similar items that I would use as a Jodo Shinshu temple minister if I was visiting a member at home or at the hospital.

Can you talk a bit about how your practice as a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist reflects the Navy core values of honor, courage, and commitment? As a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, the core of my belief is faith and devotion to Amida Buddha. This informs who I am and how I approach my life and behavior towards others. We believe that we are essentially beings of bonno, or the unskillful desires. Often we have difficulties acknowledging this, but once this occurs, then understanding the path of Dharma becomes easier. This manifests in daily life in our conduct to others; I have learned buddhadharma from interactions with our sangha at our temples, seeing ordinary men and women care for each other and helping to keep their temples active and welcoming to all in spite of a long history of racial hatred and misunderstanding. This makes ideas like the Navy Core Values relatable as in how we want to treat others.

You’ve been deployed to Afghanistan to serve the troops there—what did a usual day there look like for you? An ordinary day would consist of Staff meetings, which chaplains participate in, and visiting areas of the camp where our Marines and Sailors worked, sometimes performing counseling, or just “hanging out” with them, talking and joking with them. I was also an active provider of the United Through Reading Program in which military members could record themselves on DVD reading books for their children at home. Chaplains and lay leaders conducted a variety of services, including Islamic and Wiccan services. The most moving experience for me was conducting a prayer for an “angel” (a Marine killed in action) on his way home to America. It was a service held at the airfield in front of many fellow warriors, very moving.

And since these questions have been very serious so far…what do you like to do for fun? I practice Japanese Calligraphy, although not very well! I also like hiking in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park, not far from Camp Pendleton.

♦

Missed one of the Buddhist blogger Q&A’s? We’ve had one so far with Kyle Lovett, Justin Whitaker, Waylon Lewis, and Barbara O’Brien. Go ahead and check them out!

[This article was originally published on October 4, 2011.]

The post From the Archive: Q & A with U.S. Military’s First Buddhist Chaplain appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nina Thompson’s involvement in end-of-life care began fifteen years ago. A project manager living in Vermont, Nina became a hospice volunteer after her father’s death. A few years later, she picked up the Zen training she’d set aside years ago and began practicing again. “I got out my old cushion and some incense, and I started to sit for an hour every day on my own.” 

Around that time, she got a call from a work friend who was dealing with a life-limiting illness. “You’re one of the best project managers I know, and I hear you’re a hospice volunteer,” he told her. “I wonder if you’d manage my death for me.”

“It was a remarkable moment. I accepted the challenge, and it changed my whole life,” Nina says. “I noticed that when Zen and death crossed, the whole universe opened up to me; it seemed like everything I wanted to know was at that intersection.”

After that experience, Nina signed up for the New York Zen Center’s Foundations in Contemplative Care, a training program in spiritual caregiving. In 2012, while participating in the program, she created a nonprofit called the Wake Up to Dying Project, a traveling exhibit set up in public spaces—outside of a library or city hall, for example—for four days. Participants were encouraged to explore dying through art, workshops, stories, conversations, and reading materials. “It was all about death and service to community, and living too. We were encouraging people to make different life choices based on accepting the truth of death,” Nina explains. By the time the project shut down some six years later, it had been experienced by thousands of people across the Northeast.

Nina then spent about a year and a half “doing a deep dive” into her practice with her teacher, Roshi Sunyana Graef, at the Vermont Zen Center. “The alignment of end-of-life care and Zen was powerful and transformative,” she says. “I knew I wanted to become a chaplain.”

By the time she completed her second unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, Nina had already begun working part-time as a hospice chaplain with the University of Vermont Health Network – Home Health & Hospice, serving patients in their homes, facilities, and an end-of-life respite house. That work continues today, and there’s nothing she’d rather be doing.

How do you present yourself to your patients? If they ask, I’ll say I’m an interfaith chaplain. If they press, I’ll say that my own faith is Buddhist and what’s important to me is holding them in their faith. Vermont is very secular, so sometimes I have to reassure people that I’m not a minister. 

In hospice we take care of mind, body, and spirit, and I often introduce my role as being the spirit part. From devout Catholics to atheists and from nature to NASCAR, whatever you take refuge in, I’m here to support you in that. I’ve had ordained Christians embrace me as their chaplain even knowing that I’m Buddhist. Once, when I was reading scripture to a priest, he said to me, “How can you read so authentically?” I told him that it sincerely moved me to be in service to him in that sacred space. 

I don’t do much self-disclosure in my work, but with one patient who was really struggling I took the opportunity to share that I’d been grappling with illness myself. I told him I felt as though my entire world had shifted overnight; the rug was pulled out from under my feet, and it felt like something new was being taken away from me every day. And he said, “Yes, that’s what it feels like.” His wife said that from that point on, everything changed. They were able to talk about the past and the future, to cry and reminisce, to be together and hold each other. He died soon afterwards. 

What would you like to share about your health struggles? I have an autoimmune disease that pretty much happened overnight nearly a year ago. It felt like I was one person one day and someone else the next. It’s been humbling; it’s slowed me down and made me reflect deeply about who I am and what I want to do in the world with the limited energy that I have. It’s like I was hit upside the head with a two-by-four: Hey! Stop and think! What really is most important to you? And the answer was: I want to be a Zen practitioner and a hospice chaplain. And I’m so grateful that with the support of my teacher, my sangha, and my wife, who’s also a practitioner, I can do exactly that.

What does a typical workweek look like? My week starts at the inpatient respite house. Mondays are intense because there hasn’t been a chaplain over the weekend and there are always lots of transfers and new admissions. I’ll also plan how the rest of the week will go with clients in the field. I usually see them every other week, more often if there’s a spiritual crisis or the person is actively dying. 

We have one full-time chaplain, two part-time, plus a per diem who covers vacations and sick days. I’m part-time. There are weekly interdisciplinary group meetings with the other members of our hospice team as well as a monthly chaplain meeting where we can dive deeper, talk about how we’re navigating certain client situations, and discuss organizational changes. 

One of the specificities of Vermont is that it legalized medical aid in dying. Yes, Act 39 is the Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. I think this is an important title because it really is about patient choice. As a chaplain, I’m there to support them in whatever their spiritual needs may be.

Can you walk us through the process? There’s a legally prescribed process that the patient needs to go through. Their physician and our medical team help them through it. During the initial phases, our hospice team will ask the patient about their vision of what will happen: Where do you want to be? Sitting on the couch, on the bed? Who’s around you? What do you want to be seeing and hearing? 

Once the medication has been received and the patient has decided that the time has come, the family can prepare it and present it to them. The patient will have to consume the medications themselves. They take the first pills, and then there’s about a half hour for life review, readings, prayer, guided meditation—whatever we’ve agreed to—before they consume the liquid medication. After that, unconsciousness happens pretty quickly, generally within ten minutes. It isn’t a slow letting go; it’s a faster death than you normally see, and it’s important for families to know what to expect.

There’s something amazing about it. When you know that someone’s going to die this afternoon at two o’clock, you show up, you say what needs to be said, you let them know how much you love them… It’s hard, and it’s beautiful. My job is to be there and hold the space, to support those present in the way they need to be supported. 

It’s been very meaningful for me to create ritual around this process with people. One woman had a favorite walk in the woods, and I learned the walk so I could “accompany” her as she was taking the medication: we’re going now, and as we reach this point, we can see up to the next clearing, there’s a bench, and you’re going to sit on that bench and pause while those who have loved you from both sides of the veil are gathering around you… It was like a handoff. 

I might engage the family with readings or hold silence; whatever is meaningful for the person is what we try to do. Loved ones are usually present—once there were twenty-some people in the room dancing and singing and circling around the person. She wanted to use a guided meditation, and I helped her craft what would be said during the time between the first set of medications and the last. It was like a memorial as she was dying, a celebration of her life.

For a Buddhist, the questions around choosing to end one’s own life would probably be similar to a theist’s, wouldn’t they? Instead of asking whether God will condone the decision, we may wonder if it will negatively affect our karma and rebirth. When you first thought about being involved in someone’s process, what was it like for you? So many thoughts. In our Buddhist practice there’s a precept about not killing. I had to really sit with and think about it. And it became clear to me that it wasn’t about me, it was about them. So I turned myself to the precept that says you don’t withhold spiritual aid when asked, you offer it freely. And that became my guiding principle. 

I don’t know what I would do in that situation. I mean, I’ve been around death and dying for fifteen years, and it wasn’t until the current illness that I was like, whoa! I’m gonna die! My body will break down; it’s not going to do what I want it to do. If this is an option at the end of my life, I doubt I would choose it, but never say never. 

What have you learned about yourself since you began working as a chaplain? I’ve discovered that I’m more “interfaith” than I’d realized. My roots, trunk, and form are Zen, but I am deeply moved by Jesus and scripture and God and pagans and contemplative animists and all of the faith traditions and spiritual beliefs I’ve encountered. I’ve also learned how critically important my Zen practice is to me, and how much better I am at being a chaplain when I’m practicing deeply. 

I cannot believe my good fortune to be able to do the work in the world that I love and feel I should be doing. It feels like my bodhisattva vow in practice.

The post How a Phone Call Brought Nina Thompson to Hospice Chaplaincy appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Born and raised in Paris, Lama Droupgyu Wangmo, née Fabienne Guillaume, began studying traditional Chinese medicine when she was twenty. The school’s Chinese medicine master had asked students to practice qigong every day for at least an hour, and Fabienne, who practiced assiduously, began to have practice-related experiences—some of them troubling—in which the material world seemed less solid than usual. She had questions about her perceptions as well as about the mind’s influence on health and well-being in general.

She spoke about this with her Buddhist friend and neighbor Delphine. Delphine suggested that Fabienne join her on her next trip to Dhagpo Kagyu Ling, a highly regarded Tibetan Buddhist center in Dordogne, southwest France, that offered public teachings and short-term practice sessions. “Come meet my teachers,” Delphine said. “They’ll help you understand what you’re experiencing.” 

During that visit in 1990, Fabienne took refuge, received helpful instructions from visiting teacher Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, and met the center’s meditation master, Gendun Rinpoche. Deeply inspired by Gendun Rinpoche’s presence, she returned to Dhagpo whenever she had time off. After a year, she began thinking about doing a closed retreat in Auvergne, central France, where the Dhagpo mandala’s long-term retreat centers and monastery were. “There were limits to what I could do practicing on my own in Paris.” Three years later, in 1994, she entered the first of what would be two traditional three-year retreats at Dhagpo Kundreul Ling under the direction of Gendun Rinpoche and the senior practitioners he had appointed as retreat guides. 

“My work was going very well; I was looking to expand and move to central Paris. At the time I saw myself doing one three-year retreat, then returning to Paris where I’d build my Chinese medicine practice, get married, and have children.” As she was preparing for retreat, Fabienne took novice monastic vows for five years. But when she took her robes to Gendun Rinpoche to be blessed, he looked her in the eye and said, “So when are you taking the vows for life?” His question landed like an arrow in Fabienne’s heart and kept working on her. “The day he gave the full nuns’ vows, I took them and received the name Karma Droupgyu Wangmo,” Eminent Lady of the Karmapas’ Practice Lineage. 

After her retreats, Lama Droupgyu Wangmo became involved in Buddhist prison chaplaincy. Last year, she was awarded a French National Medal of Honor for her work developing and participating in the Buddhist prison chaplains’ network.

When you’re not busy in the world, do you live in the nuns’ monastery? Yes. I’ve been living here at Dhagpo Kundreul Ling since 1993, either in retreat or in the monastery. This is my home. 

You told me you had worked in the entertainment sector to finance your studies. How did your experience in the working world inform your activity within the sangha? After I finished my second retreat in 2001, I was asked to be an administrator at the Union Bouddhiste de France (UBF) and to take responsibility for communications between the different centers of the Dhagpo mandala. Eventually, I was also asked to oversee communications with the “outside world” as well. 

And chaplaincy? In 2009–2010, the French Ministry of the Interior reached out to the UBF looking for Buddhists who could volunteer as chaplains within the correctional system. UBF’s board started identifying people who might coordinate the project.

Were they looking to serve inmates from former French colonies that were traditionally Buddhist, such as Cambodia and Vietnam? Actually, by offering visits by chaplains from a “peaceable” spiritual path, they were probably trying to provide a counterpoint to the proselytization introduced by some of the more radical or evangelistic religions. Plus, a number of inmates from a variety of backgrounds were asking to see Buddhist chaplains. While the government does not recognize or fund any particular religion, French law mandates that anyone who is deprived of their freedom—in corrections, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.—has the right to request spiritual support according to their preferences.

Approximately how many Buddhist chaplains serve in the prison system, would you guess? I don’t have to guess—as the coordinator, I know them all. At present, there are twenty of us visiting people in about forty prisons in metropolitan France. I’m actively looking for someone who can visit people incarcerated in the French West Indies as well. 

Our chaplains are all volunteers. They have to be backed by their communities—Zen and Tibetan Buddhists for the most part—and recognized for their commitment to the dharma. Plus, their activity is supervised by mentors or preceptors from their traditions. 

How do they support inmates? Buddhist chaplains are able to reserve prison chapels where several people can gather to practice together and we have keys to the cells for visits with individuals, which makes it possible to have very personal encounters with them. We’re allowed to bring practice materials such as books, statues, prayer beads, etc., when helpful.

When the pandemic was peaking and no visits were permitted, we fought to get phones with a toll-free number into the correctional system. It was a bit complicated, but we worked it out so inmates could call eight hours a day, seven days a week if they needed to. Two or three of us were always available to talk. 

In North America and elsewhere, Buddhist chaplains often offer mindfulness for prisoners who are not necessarily Buddhists, as well as for staff. What about in France? There are other associations that offer secular mindfulness in the prisons. For the time being, the UBF focuses on giving inmates who want to practice Buddhism an opportunity to do so. In France, a chaplain, by definition, is a minister connected to a particular religion. We’ll see anyone who asks to meet us, but our visits are, you might say, rooted in our practice: we all represent Buddhism and are sharing the Buddha’s teachings as best we can. 

Which Buddhist teachings and practices do you share? Mindfulness as taught in the Buddhist traditions is the main practice. We invite people to develop a real awareness of their situations and offer them tools to help them understand how to change the habits that got them where they are. If they don’t want to fall into the same patterns, they have to give themselves the means to change their conditions. We have exchanges about the four noble truths, the four thoughts that transform the mind, the four immeasurables, and so on, and we invite them to think about karma and the importance of ethical, benevolent behavior. We encourage them to be mindful in their daily lives and to develop an attitude of generosity towards fellow inmates and guards. 

Can you share an encounter that really struck a chord? Once I was called into a women’s prison, which is pretty rare; only 5 percent of the correctional population is female. When I arrived in the person’s cell, she said that prison had saved her life. She was a Buddhist, but she’d never really practiced until she was incarcerated. In prison, she was spending two to three hours a day meditating on Chenrezig [Tibetan Buddhist deity of compassion] and was experiencing the profoundly positive benefits of her practice. She said there was a lot of joy in practicing and helping others. Given her conviction and positivity, it was a powerful encounter for me.

You recently received a Medal of Honor. Can you tell us about that? Someone nominated me behind my back. How it works is a branch of local government reviews your activity, then communicates the results to the appropriate ministry—in my case, the Ministry of the Interior—which in turn presents their recommendation to the President of the French Republic. There are all sorts of medals; the one I received belongs to the Knights of the National Order of Merit category.

At first, I wanted to decline it—it seemed so disproportionate with regard to my activity as a Buddhist nun. But one of my teachers said that it was significant because it showcases the activity of Buddhist women in general and of nuns in particular.

Once it became official, it was decided that the prefect of our département, the Puy-de-Dôme, would award the medal during a ceremony within a greater event that was held here last summer marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the parinirvana of our lama, Gendun Rinpoche, and celebrating his legacy and continuing activity. I experienced it like a mandala offering. It was as if I could thank my teachers and the Dhagpo mandala for everything I’ve received from them. 

The director of the national correctional bureau was there, as well as the chief of police, the president of the regional office of medals, a former prime minister, and many people from other religions, including several other Buddhist traditions. There were already over five hundred people there for the Heritage and Continuity gathering, so it was an event within an event and it was really perfect. 

In your activity as a chaplain, what have you learned? I’ve learned how important it is to be aware of each moment, of every detail. And how much joy there is—it really surprised me. It’s difficult for us to gain access [to inmates] and there’s not much time, so the people we visit generally get down to brass tacks and focus on what’s essential. I find that these situations require a profound presence and extreme vigilance; if you’re not completely present, you’ll feel it. And in fact, whenever you are completely present—in any situation—there’s an immense joy connected with being in the heart of the moment. 

There’s joy too in sharing the teachings that may help someone find liberation from their suffering, even while they’re in prison. I’ve found that there are people “outside” who are far more constrained. You see that being a captive is a point of view, whatever the situation: your mind can be entirely free in prison, and you can be entirely imprisoned outside. What a paradox! And when you help an inmate experience a moment of profound freedom, when you see that flash of happiness in their eyes, it’s really too marvelous. 

This interview was conducted in French and translated by Pamela Gayle White.

The post A French Buddhist Nun Finds Joy Serving as a Chaplain in the Prison System  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Ajahn Aroon Seeda grew up on the family farm in Thailand. It took some persuading, but with his parents’ blessing, he was able to leave home and become a samenera, a novice temple monk, at the age of 12. “It was a calling. I was looking to find a way to make my peace and find freedom, even though I didn’t really know what that meant.” After nine years as a novice, he received full ordination and spent fifteen years as a bhikku. 

One day, when he was a young monk doing an alms round, Aroon encountered some American marines who were training in the area. “The way we stop for food is to stand somewhere silently. The marines were curious about what we were doing in front of their tent. I barely spoke English. I said, ‘I’m a monk, I walk for food.’” The soldiers offered some rations, Aroon accompanied them back to the temple, and his abbot, who spoke fluent English, showed them around. This meeting inspired Aroon to learn English. “I knew I wanted to see the world, and English seemed to be the tool.”

In 2001, after Aroon had completed other studies in Thailand, his preceptor sent him to Sterling, Virginia for some months to support an affiliated Thai temple there. He found that while many of the people who came to the temple were receptive to his teachings, “in American culture sometimes people don’t suffer enough to truly value the teachings of the Buddha. The Four Noble Truths are most effective for those in the midst of hardships who are really suffering. When they learn about these truths, they’re able to experience the process directly and it gives them relief right away.”     

In 2009, Aroon left monastic life and began military training. He now serves as a chaplain in the federal Bureau of Prisons and the US Navy Reserve, where he is a lieutenant commander. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from the University of the West and volunteers, teaches meditation, and participates in a local temple and at Rosemead Buddhist Monastery, where he was ordained as a Buddhist minister.     

It sounds like your current work is the perfect place to help people who know what suffering is. Yes. Before I began this work, I asked myself, what group of people will get the most benefit out of these teachings? The first group I thought of was people who are stuck on a ship for months in the military. They can’t go anywhere, there are no options. One of my mentors and good friends at the temple is a retired US Marine Corps colonel. He and his wife told me that one way I could help those people would be as a chaplain on a naval ship.

I spoke with my spiritual mentor in Thailand and said, “This is what I want to do, what do you think?” He said, “Go for it, Aroon. It sounds like a very good idea and probably a lot of people will benefit from it.” I only have one life and one chance to try to serve as many people as possible!

How did you go about becoming a chaplain? First, I enlisted for two years to make sure that I would like working as a chaplain in the Navy. I wanted to learn about the culture and understand what training was like. I left monastic life, became a [lay] Buddhist minister, and went to boot camp right after that—everything happened within one week in 2009. 

Were you living on a ship? Yes. Changing from the slow life of a monk to intensive military training and life in the Navy was quite a culture shock!

Did your years as a monk help you with this? I think it helped me follow discipline and adjust to the culture. It was easy for me to be in the military; I had no problem following orders. One thing that is very similar to life in a temple is respect for rank. Some of the sailors were younger than me but their rank was higher, so when they told me what to do, I did it. I opened my heart and opened my mind; I listened to and learned from them.

That being said, at one point when someone was yelling at me in training I thought I was going to die! No one had ever yelled at me like that before. I thought about the Buddha telling us not to say harmful words because they hurt people—and yeah! They really do hurt! I didn’t know how much until I went through that training. We need to be more careful about what we say and how we speak to each other. We need to always speak with kindness.

Some people will question whether it’s appropriate for someone with a religious background like yours to support people in the military who are trained to fight and even take others’ lives. How do you respond to this? Intention is very important. I want everybody to be happy. My intention is to help soldiers who protect their country—I don’t train them to kill. I train them to be in the present, to release stress, to see life more clearly, and to recognize and uphold the truth. I provide everyone with the same techniques. As Buddhists, we use these tools to gain enlightenment. If you’re not a Buddhist at least you can use the same tools to become sustainably stress-free. 

“With this group of people, I don’t need to explain anything about suffering; they’re already in it.”

You now work at a federal prison complex as well as continuing with the Navy reserve. What does your work life look like? At the prison, it’s based on inmates’ needs. There are two or three hours a day when they can meet us in the chapel. We can also visit the special housing unit that holds people who don’t spend time in the general units. As far as I know, I’m the only Buddhist chaplain working in the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. I spend forty hours a week at the prison and go to the naval base one weekend a month. Plus there are 14–29 consecutive days at the base annually for training, which is also work.

Do you get to yell at people? No no no, not at all! Oh! You’re joking. [Laughs.]

What practices have you introduced to these environments? Mindfulness. Mindfulness is one of the most important and effective practices that can be applied in the Navy and in the prison system. I often use a technique I call “single breath.” It has three components: it’s relatable, it’s effective, and it’s applicable. 

First, it’s relatable because anybody can practice and experience it: any age, any time, any situation. Second, it’s effective because you feel the result right away—as soon as you do the practice you experience a sense of relief. Third, you can apply it to the different situations in your life at any moment. 

How do you introduce single breath meditation? Stress is a sub-group of suffering; other forms of mental suffering are distress, anxiety, frustration, etc. The body has a natural mechanism that helps us release stress by unconsciously going into sighing. [Forcefully releases a breath.] I explain that with this practice, instead of sighing naturally, we’re going to sigh intentionally. You can feel it—go ahead, sigh! [We sigh.]

I’m not even stressed and it feels good! If you focus on where you feel the breath at the end, it will help you define your resting point. The process of feeling the breath easing past is actually the mindful experience of being in the present. With one breath, you’re experiencing mindfulness. Two, three, four… the process gradually becomes a meditative state. This helps you recognize when emotions are arising and observe them as they’re passing by. 

I encourage people to try and find the spot at the end of the breath. How long does the feeling last? Another breath—how long does it last? They’re recognizing change, anicca, as they practice. When they’re able to see the change, the heart will start collecting data little by little, from one moment to the next. When enough data has been collected, a person can automatically recognize what the heart is feeling and, when necessary, release it. It’s like a reset. Listen, observe, feel, release, reset. See, observe, feel, release, reset.

When they’ve learned to familiarize themselves with their feelings, they can identify where the changes are happening and what causes them. If inmates who are experiencing emotions—say anxiety, frustration, or anger towards their roommates, staff, or themselves—can observe, feel, release, and come back to the resting point, they find better balance. They discover that they have the power to manage their emotions in the moment. I explain that in Buddhism this is a method we use to become free from mental suffering.

Where does this single breath meditation come from? When I was 12 years old, during my first meditation, I accessed a meditation state where I felt extremely happy, like I was flying on a cloud. It’s part of shamatha meditation. I wanted to experience it again, so I meditated every day for ten years and not even close. One day I lit a candle, bowed to the Buddha, prayed, etc., and sat for about forty-five minutes—and then I thought, No! Zero! Can’t do it! I’m not good enough; this isn’t the life for me. There was a lot of frustration. So I sighed deeply, and again, and again—and I spontaneously went back to the space I’d experienced ten years before! I was like, Wow, this is easy! That whole day I was on a cloud and it lasted into the following week. 

I think I wanted to work with people who were in situations where there was a lot of suffering because I’d discovered a tool that might help them. Now I’m sharing my experience of this Buddhist mindfulness practice in a way that people can relate to. Every time they breathe out with a sigh it brings them back to the present, to their physical resting point. They feel it and are able to release the stress, suffering, and trauma that they’ve accumulated. With this group of people, I don’t need to explain anything about suffering; they’re already in it. I lead them to a path that helps them, and they use the tool seriously because they’re hungry for it. It helps them experience freedom from painful emotions so they have a little bit of spiritual freedom. And we take it from there. 

What kind of feedback have you received? Very positive! I’ve been doing research in prison with inmates and staff and they say it helps them. Also, because I’m in the reserve, I deployed a few years ago and spent a year in Germany. During that time I worked in the warrior transition program, WTP. I introduced single breath meditation to the team and they added it to the curriculum. And I’ve created a three-day program for the Navy where I teach others how to teach single breath-based mindfulness. I would like to do the same for the prison system.

What are the greatest rewards for you in this work? The greatest reward is each moment when I’m sharing the tools. I’m sharing the message, the teaching of the Buddha, and at the same time I’m doing my own practice. And every moment that I see people succeed in freeing themselves from mental suffering is truly very wonderful. I enjoy seeing it over and over and over again. It gives me energy to keep moving in my ministry. 

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