| Increasingly clinicians are incorporating Buddhist understandings in healing, and many of these tenets can extend as well to pastoral care. Buddhist Resources in Pastoral Care by Adele Smith-Penniman presents an overview of Buddhism with emphasis on those elements that intersect with caregiving: mindfulness, dukkha, impermanence, acceptance, and the brahma-viharas---lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. The work opens with the Four Noble Truths, the gateway to Buddhism. They form a theoretical and practical response to the Buddha's statement: "I teach suffering (dukkha) and the way out of suffering." We examine such Buddhist-informed clinicians as Jon Kabat-Zinn, Marsha Linehan, and Zendel Segal and look at the work of such pastoral theologians as Howard J. Clinebell, Margaret Kornfeld, and Gerald G. May. Three pastoral care metaphors and their complements shape this conversation: the caregiver as shepherd/companion, as ascetic witness/prophetic witness; and as wounded healer/transformer. All are aspects of a Ministry of Presence. In each case, Buddhist principles inform how clergy can engage with the individual, the congregation, and the larger community. Buddhist Resources in Pastoral Care includes the context or system in which caregiving operates. Engaged Buddhism, the Buddhism of social witness, provides a template for right relationship and prophetic witness. Foundational to both is Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path, a framework for ameliorating suffering that guides knowledge, meditation, and ethics. This thesis reaches out to clergy of all faiths, clinicians in secular positions, and laity interested in learning how to incorporate Buddhism in their daily lives. The author is a Unitarian Universalist minister. |
