The Arts Of Contemplative Care

Powerful and life-affirming, this watershed volume brings together the voices of pioneers in the field of contemplative care--from hospice and hospitals to colleges, prisons, and the military. Illustrating the day-to-day words and actions of pastoral workers, each first-person essay in this collection offers a distillation of the wisdom gained over years of compassionate experience. The stories told here are sure to inspire--whether you are a professional caregiver or simply feel inclined toward guiding, healing, and comforting roles. If you are inspired to read this book, or even one touching story in it, you just might find yourself inspired to change a life.

The United States is witnessing a rise in the religiously unaffiliated. Participation in traditional religious settings is in decline. But everyone inhabits a location relative to religion, whether or not they practice or identify with a religious tradition. People engage in religious encounters and relationships in myriad ways, and their religious location is one part of their intersecting identities. This shifting religious landscape challenges spiritual caregivers to provide competent care and counsel that honors how persons' religious locations intersect. Jill Snodgrass argues that without a theoretical understanding of religious location, chaplains, counselors, and other spiritual caregivers are left without sufficient tools to navigate this relational terrain. In The Art of Spiritual Care across Religious Difference, she gathers practices and insights from experienced spiritual caregivers and scholars to explore the concept of religious location--a term initially coined by pastoral theologian Kathleen Greider--as an aspect of an individual's intersecting identity. Snodgrass presents a compilation of essays that help spiritual caregivers think reflexively about their own religious locations and how these locations influence relational dynamics with care seekers within a diversity of cultural contexts. This vigorous compilation advances the fields of pastoral and practical theology as well as spiritual care and counseling by developing a robust, interreligious theory of religious difference grounded in insights from Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam. As such, The Art of Spiritual Care across Religious Difference presents a well-timed resource for the training of religiously competent caregivers to serve in hospitals, prisons, places of worship, community mental health centers, offices of campus ministry, and more. Scholars and practitioners will quickly discover that this book will serve as an enduring resource to meet the training needs for spiritual caregivers in ways that will help them to build enduring competencies.

"In Awake at the Bedside, pioneers of palliative and end-of-life care as well as doctors, chaplains, caregivers and even poets offer wisdom that will challenge, uplift, comfort--and change the way we think about death. Equal parts instruction manual and spiritual testimony, it includes specific instructions and personal accounts to inspire, counsel, and teach."--Amazon.com.

Showing how spiritual care is practiced in a variety of different contexts such as healthcare, detention and higher education, as well as settings that may not have formal chaplaincy arrangements, this book offers an original and unique resource for Hindu chaplains to understand and practice spiritual care in a way that is authentic to their own tradition and that meets the needs of Hindus. It offers a Hindu perspective for all chaplains to inform their caregiving to Hindus. The book explores the theological and metaphysical roots of Hindu chaplaincy and puts forward the case for Hindu chaplaincy as a valuable spiritual practice. It covers the issues that arise in specific locations, such as college, healthcare, prison, military and the corporate sector. Chapters also examine Hindu pastoral care offered in other, 'non-chaplaincy' settings, such as LGBT centres, social justice work and environmental activism. Made up of some 30 essays by chaplains, scholars and other important voices in the field, Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care provides spiritual caregivers with a comprehensive theoretical and practical approach to the relationship of Hinduism and chaplaincy.

The Arts of Contemplative Care collects the voices of pioneers in the emerging domain of vocational Buddhism. This anthology captures the richness and diversity of practices being developed by socially engaged Buddhists in the fields of chaplaincy and ministry. This volume outlines a robust intellectual and spiritual foundation for the discipline and establishes the methods for practicing contemplative care on college campuses, in hospitals, prisons and the military, and in hospice environments. The Arts of Contemplative Care, the first comprehensive overview of Buddhist chaplaincy of its kind, is sure to become a touchstone work for engaged Buddhists as they forge their place in the world of pastoral care.

In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautiful literary collage documents his multifaceted explorations. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training himself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to Batchelor’s ability to be simultaneously alone and at ease. Mixed in with his personal narrative are inspiring stories from solitude’s devoted practitioners, from the Buddha to Montaigne, from Vermeer to Agnes Martin. In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.

Shadows & Light: Theory, Research, and Practice in Transpersonal Psychology is a groundbreaking 2-volume series covering many essential topics in transpersonal psychology. Shadows & Light (Vol 2) builds on the tradition of transpersonal psychology to cover vital contemporary psychological topics ranging from mindfulness, creativity, compassion, and the real world application of the integration of spirituality and psychology, The range of topics and contributors is broad, diverse, and inclusive and will bring the reader on many inward and outward journeys of human growth and potential. This collection contains talks and reflection pieces that are enjoyable and fascinating in the immediacy of the authors' voices and their messages for the individual and the collective. A wonderful selection of pieces by established leaders such as Charlie Tart, angel Kyodo williams, Judy Lief, and Roger Walsh as well as influential emergent scholars such as Ian Wickramesekera II, Dan Hocoy, and Louis Hoffman. These volumes are destined to become a classic text in the field.

It is said that the famous ninth century Chinese Buddhist monk Linji Yixuan told his disciples, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The deliberately confounding statement is meant to shock people out of complacent ways of thinking. But beyond the purposeful jolt from complacency there is another intention. This axiom suggests that, for liberation, one should seek the Buddha nature that resides within, rather than a mere Buddha exterior. The metaphor of killing the Buddha dislodges a person from the illusion that enlightenment lies outside the body. The proclamation also highlights the power of violence, even on a symbolic level. Violence abounds in Buddhist thoughts, doctrine, and actions, however unacknowledged or misunderstood. If You Meet the Buddha on the Road addresses an important absence in the study of religion and violence: the religious treatment of violence. In order to pursue an understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and violence, it is important to first consider how Buddhist scriptures and followers understand violence. Drawing on Buddhist treatments of violence, Michael Jerryson explores the ways in which Buddhists invoke, support, or justify war, conflict, state violence, and gender discrimination. In addition, the book examines the ways in which Buddhists address violence as military chaplains, cope with violence in a conflict zone, and serve as witnesses of blasphemy to Buddhist doctrine and Buddha images.