Healing through Spiritual Care: Arts and Ethics of Chaplaincy as Gleaned

from Some Buddhist Narratives

Upali Sraman
Many of the lay Buddhist practitioners in the USA have recently been becoming
actively involved in chaplaincy - providing ministerial services and spiritual care
in settings like hospitals, universities, prisons and so on. This trend might have
been influenced by existing ministerial models, such as for example the
curriculums in Christian-centric Divinity Schools. This trend has also attracted
renewed academic and institutional interests dedicated to analyzing and
understanding the distinctness of Buddhist Chaplaincy. Buddhist Ministry
Initiative at the Harvard Divinity School and similar programs at the Universities
of West and Naropa are some experiments to create professional Buddhist
chaplains and ministers who can perform some of the ministerial services that were
traditionally done by monastics. The Buddhist chaplains, practitioners and scholars
have turned to classical texts from this new perspective. This paper is intended to
be a contribution in this growing scholarship on Buddhist chaplaincy.
In this paper I closely examine some Buddhist narratives, with particular attention
to the Mulasarvastivada Avadanas, that illustrate instances/models of providing
spiritual care to the sick, the psychologically stressed, the poor and even those who
were subject to social injustices. These narratives illuminate us on some of the
excellent qualities, such as non-discriminative compassion, to be inculcated by
chaplains. They also teach some important arts of spiritual care such as skillfully
elevating the human dignity of the patients affected by fatal diseases.
This paper will also engage critically with the selected narratives addressing the
issues of defining Buddhist chaplaincy in a broader context of multi-faith
environments in an increasingly globalized world.