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Serving The Ill And Dying

I began working as a healthcare chaplain in 2005, the same year I was ordained in the Order of Interbeing.  For those unfamiliar with the role, healthcare chaplains help patients cope with their changing lives using the patient’s own language of meaning, whether that language is religious, scientific, philosophical or based upon their life experiences.  This requires the chaplain to listen with compassion and respond appropriately, without proselytizing the chaplain’s own beliefs.  My chaplaincy and OI practices have grown and supported each other over the years and I’d like to share some insights into how they work together to help me serve the ill and dying. 

Precepts

Thay’s poetic and deep rendering of the 14 Mindfulness Trainings have been a constant source of inspiration, support, and correction for my chaplaincy practice.  I’ve recited the precepts every other week since becoming an aspirant, and with each recitation the precepts reveal something new, guiding me back when I’ve strayed or reminding me that, contrary to self-judgements, I’m doing ok. 

While all the precepts have at one point or another enlivened my chaplaincy, I’d like to mention a few that come up again and again.  Continue reading “Serving The Ill And Dying”

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Bumper Sticker Practice

Earlier this year I came up with a new mindfulness practice: bumper stickers! OK, let me explain. I like finding new and inventive ways to cultivate daily mindfulness. Being mindful means being mindful of something. And that something can be anything! Anything that allows us the opportunity to practice getting in touch and connecting with the present moment can be considered a practice of mindfulness. And it’s fun to find new ways in which to practice.

So in January, this idea of bumper sticker mindfulness came to me. For each month in 2016 I would practice noticing bumper stickers. In order to put a little extra weight on this new mindfulness practice, to help encourage me to do it, I would also write down the bumper stickers that caught my eye as being especially odd, funny or interesting. I then also resolved to write a blog post about it further into the year. And since I’ve recorded so many already I thought I’d stretch this bumper sticker practice into two blog posts, one now and one at the end of the year. As an FYI, my bumper sticker rules included only writing down bumper stickers I saw in action, meaning displayed on cars – so bumper stickers I saw for sale in a store didn’t count. I have a nice little notebook and an easily accessible pen in my car that I scribbled down all of the ones I saw, that I deemed worth noting. Here they are, in order of date seen:

Continue reading “Bumper Sticker Practice”

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Orlando and Beyond

Dear sangha, 
We are connecting with you at this time in order to encourage and support ways of practicing that can lead to personal and collective healing and transformation related to what is going on in the world. We wish to find ways we can be of support to each other as a community in responding to current events, to create loving connection rather than more trauma and fomenting fear.

The T​ransformation and Healing Committee of the Dharma Teacher Care Taking Council of North America would appreciate your sharing with the community your and your Sanghas response to recent events in Orlando. In particular, which teachings and practices are you using right now or did you use recently in your sangha in light of this event? For example we have heard that one sangha read from ​Thay’s book Calming the Fearful Mind – a Zen Repsonse to Terrorism.  Another sangha read out the names of the people who died at Orlando, sounding the bell after each name. Another sangha lit fifty candles. 

The ​Transformation and Healing Committee is charged with exploring and supporting engaged practice in the dharma teacher and OI communities. Orlando is a painful recent episode of violence. There have been many before, and given the conditions in the world now, there will be more. We can be more intentional about preparing ourselves to engage these kinds of situations by becoming more practiced in our Sanghas in processing current events, sharing the resources we use, learning skillful means from each other, and being a more active resource for the larger community. This message is going to Dharma Teachers Sangha and Order of Interbeing list with a request to forward to regional lists of Sanghas. We will also post on the OI website. 

With deep gratitude and joy in our practice together for collective awakening,

Signed.

John Bell
Richard Brady
Lyn Fine
Jack Lawlor
Kenley Neufeld
Leslie Rawls
Jo-ann Rosen

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Order Members Call to Ban Fracking in California

Feb 7, 2015
Dear Governor Brown,

We write to you today to support you to support a ban on fracking–hydraulic fracturing –in California, and to support you in your commitment to address climate change, as you stated in your inaugural: we need to take “significant amounts of carbon out of our economy.” As a Fourfold Community (monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen) in the Plum Village Tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, we practice mindfulness to nurture understanding and love. Our tradition’s teachings are ecologically founded – we are not here on our own, we interare with everyone and everything. It is from this awareness that we write to you today.

The deep and devastating impact of hydraulic fracking on humans, many species, and the water of our planet is now known. It is also known that with strong political will it is possible to move a fossil fuel economy towards an economy increasingly based on renewable energy. We have seen in New York State that with a combination of strong political will and clear awareness of the devastatingly destructive nature of hydraulic fracturing, it is possible to ban fracking. We can do this in California as well.

Today, we join with our sisters and brothers at San Francisco Zen Center in supporting you to sign a bill banning fracking. Help turn us away from the age of fossil fuels with its immeasurable and lasting damage to the biosphere. Help California continue to take the lead, as it has in the past, with its extraordinary implementation of energy-efficiency standards during your first term as governor, with Assemblywoman Fran Pavley’s emissions legislation in 2002 that set nationwide standards under the Obama administration, and with the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

We know that our actions today help create what kind of future we will have. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “We have to live in such a way that a future will be possible for our children and our grandchildren, and our own life has to be our message.” At Deer Park, our practice center near San Diego, CA, we have taken a vow to do our best not to deplete the energy of the land and her resources, but rather to contribute to the regeneration of this beautiful land. Our solar energy system covers 90% of our usage of electricity.

To take a next step to stop contributing to devastating climate change, and to protect the beautiful land of California, we support you in signing a bill to ban fracking in California. Such a ban will reduce the carbon going into the biosphere, thus reducing contribution to climate change from this source, and it will help protect the land, water, peoples, animals and plants of California, now and in the future. We support you to support this ban. Thank you.

For the well-being of all life now and to come. The following names are all Order of Interbeing members located in California.

Kenley Neufeld, Chân Niệm Hỷ
Marc Jantzi
Gael Belden, True Wonderful Eyes
John Salerno-White, True Peace on Earth
Brother Phap Ho, True Protector of the Dharma
Juliet Hwang, True Emerald Ocean
Quyen Haduong, Chan Huyen
Leigh Ann Lipscomb, True Mountain of Goodness
Meredith Klein, True Summer Garden
Jo-ann Rosen, True River of Understanding
Beverly Alexander, True Holy Insight
Jerome Freedman, True Precious Light
Terry Barber, True Moon Heart
Ngoc-Tan Phan, Chan Mat Giai
Karen Hilsberg, True Boundless Graciousness
Phil Stein, True Precious Eyes
Margo Doxakis-Stein, True Garden of Understanding
Jacqueline Kim, True Beautiful Garden
John Freese, True Dharma Awakening
Lananh Nguyen
Jim Scott-Behrends, True Recollection of Compassion
Lyn Fine, True Goodness
Laura Alderdice, True Spiritual Communion
David Ostwald, True path of Equnimity
Terry Helbick, True Original Land
Susan Murphy, True Good Birth
David Nelson, Truly Holding Equanimity
Bryan Ferry, True Recollection of Awakening
Blanca Arias, True Ocean of Purity
Zachiah Murray, True Lotus Ocean
Nathaniel Vose, True Land of Compassion
Brandy Sacks, True Spiritual Contemplation
Andrew Deckert, True Wonderful Direction
Karen Hostetler, True Mountain of Deep Vows
Lynda Louise, True garden of togetherness
Meena Srinivasan, True Seal of Peace
Louise Dunlap, True Silent Teaching
Gary De Foe, True Buddha Garden
Sophy Wong, Chan Hanh Nguyen
Harriet Wrye, True Precious Smile
Laura Hunter, True Ocean of Teachings
Alice Christine Dawkins, True Wonderful Mind
Hac Nguyen, Chan Mat Trieu
Susan C Terris, True Fragrant Ocean
Natascha Bruckner, True Ocean of Jewels
Polly Chu, True Garden of Realizations
Elizabeth Nguyen, Chan Tri Tinh
Alexa Singer-Telles, True Silent Action
Tam Le, Chân Lưu Phong – True Flowing Tradition
Nu-Ha Phan, Chan Dinh Qua
Lennis Lyon, True Silent Forest
Sharon Moy, True Mountain of Clarity
Debra Rodgers, True Chrysanthemum Garden
Birgitte Moyer-Vinding, True Path of Light
Maria Nicora, True Garden of Goodness
Joshua Kaufman, True Shining Ocean
Miriam Goldberg, True Recollection of Happiness
Keith Mesecher
Mary Gorman, True Ever Lasting Ocean
Peter Kuhn, True Ocean of Joy
Robert Speer, True Silent Light
Denise Bergez, True Silent Shining
Marge Wurgel, True Crane Garden