Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. How do we connect Buddhist teachings with effective service? Buddhists uphold the ideal to respond compassionately to suffering in our ever-changing world. Buddhist chaplains in particular take on roles of serving those who are in crisis, imprisoned, sick, dying, or grieving. Yet what compassionate engagement looks…
Tag: Buddhist chaplaincy
Foundations and Dialogues in Buddhist Chaplaincy
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Rev. Dr. Daijaku Kinst established the Buddhist chaplaincy program at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and served as the Noboru and Yaeko Hanyu Professor of Buddhist Chaplaincy from 2015 to 2022. She is a Sōtō Zen priest and guiding teacher of the Ocean Gate Zen…
Contemporary Approaches to Buddhist Pedagogy for Chaplaincy Education
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Dr. Jitsujo Gauthier is chair and Associate Professor of Buddhist Chaplaincy at University of the West. Dr. Gauthier is also a Zen teacher, priest, and preceptor within the Zen Peacemakers and White Plum Asanga lineage. In this article, Dr. Gauthier introduces the work of…
A Community-Based Disaster Chaplaincy Education Program
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Dr. Elaine Yuen served as chair of the master of divinity program at Naropa University. Cross-trained as a meditation teacher, Buddhist chaplain, and public health researcher, she continues to teach and is interested in how social contexts inform spiritual and contemplative care practices. Dr.…
Caring For Ōtsuchi Town After the Great East Japan Earthquake
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Rev. TAKAHASHI Eigo is abbot of Kōryūzan Kichijōji temple in the coastal town of Ōtsuchi in northern Japan. In this essay he shares his experiences of providing spiritual care to the town’s residents in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March…
The Great East Japan Earthquake and Reconsidering “Buddhism”: Do Our Lives Come to Nothing After Death?
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Professor KIGOSHI Yasushi teaches at Ōtani University, a private university in Kyoto, Japan, with an emphasis on Shin Buddhist studies. In addition to being an alumni of the university, Professor Kigoshi served as president from 2016 to 2022. Unique among the Japanese authors contributing…
Reflections on My Experiences Working as a Death Row Chaplain in Japan
Part of a special section on Buddhist Chaplaincy in the United States and Japan. Editors’ note: Rev. HIRANO Shunkō has served as a prison chaplain among death row inmates at Tokyo Detention House for more than forty years. He is a priest of the Jōdo Shinshū Honganji sect and the former abbot of Chūgenji temple in Ichikawa, Chiba. He is also the…
REVIEW: Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan, by Adam Lyons
Adam Lyons begins one chapter of his volume, Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan, with a joke he says he heard regularly among kyōkaishi, a Japanese role he translates as “prison chaplain”: “Why did you become a prison chaplain? ‘Because I did something terrible in a past life to deserve it’” (p. 216). The wry joke encapsulates some of the heavy and complex stressors that the position entails. Adam Lyons’ volume skillfully navigates the complex tensions involved in the role at present and how it developed since the late 1800s. Karma and Punishment takes the reader on a historical journey to show the origins of kyōkaishi; he shows both how they changed and what stayed consistent through different periods of history. Along the way, Lyons ties these developments to a valuable discourse on the religion-state relations and the evolving laws that oversee those connections.