Concepts and Practices in Chaplaincy

This workshop provided experiential training in Buddhist chaplaincy for the first time in a Southeast and South Asian context. While chaplaincy and Buddhist chaplaincy in particular is well established in the West and has also emerged in East Asia, very few programs are available for direct study in the rest of Asia. This three-day workshop presented the principles of Buddhist chaplaincy and also offered certain key skills and practices to enable committed practitioners (ordained or lay) to serve as caregivers for those experiencing the wide variety of suffering in today’s society. Much of this suffering appears as depression, mental ill health, and suicidal ideation, yet emerges from trauma associated with study & work stress, gender and sexual identity, family trauma, social violence, tragic accidents, etc. The workshop was led by a team of seven practitioners from the two-day conference held in Bangkok. There were 21 participants largely drawn from the INEB network coming from Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam. They ranged from monastics who run temple schools to lay practitioners studying psychotherapy and counseling. Concerns ranged from dealing with war trauma to domestic abuse, suicide, and burnout in the caring professions.

Using an innovative Buddhist model using the 5 aggregates (skandhas), the workshop led participants through a three-day process: Skillful Means and Acts of Translation on the Path of Care; Mindfulness of the Body in Chaplaincy, Counseling and Being with Suffering; Integrating Buddhist Mindfulness & Western Psychotherapy; Maitri and Metta: Dynamic Aspects of Attunement and Compassion; Counseling Role Plays; Introduction to Buddhist Counseling and Chaplaincy around the World