The Introduction to Buddhist Chaplaincy Training combines workshops & classes with activities that students complete in their communities. This combination makes it easier for students to participate while balancing work and family commitments.
Our educational method is one of action and reflection, wherein students not only learn in class, but also apply their learnings in real life situations and then reflect on these. This is a tried and true method for the training and development of chaplains, ministers, therapists, and the like. Click here for an explanation of this method.
This is a graduate level training that includes several self-directed learning components. Participants commit to attending workshops, reading and writing, and completing 100 hours of service. At the end of the 11 months, certificates are presented as follows: a Certificate of Completion is given to students who have: a) attended 10 out of 11 daylong classes; b) completed all writing assignments –or– a Certificate of Participation is given to students who have: a) attended less than 10 daylong classes; b) not completed all writing assignments.
Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Learning Diagram
Faculty: Paul Haller, Gil Fronsdal, and Jennifer Block co-created this training together in 2003, and have been co-leading it since then. Vanessa Able provides administrative support. For bios, click here.
Learning Outcomes: Chaplaincy necessitates special skills and diverse knowledge. It entails academic engagement and rigorous spiritual development. In completing this training participants will have been introduced to the field of chaplaincy/spiritual care. This includes having a basic knowledge in some of the important skills and understandings needed for chaplaincy. Graduates will also understand important practices, teachings, and virtues that provide the foundation of Buddhist compassion-based forms of spiritual care.
Participants interested in becoming professional chaplain will become well-prepared to enroll in professional chaplaincy training. Most commonly these are year-long, full-time programs called Clinical Pastoral Education that are offered in some hospitals. Completion of the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Program is a big support for being accepted in these CPE programs (especially in SF Bay Area hospitals which know our program). Those not interested in professional chaplaincy (a majority of our participants), will finish the program with a clear understanding of the skills, understandings, and options for both volunteer chaplaincy and providing spiritual care in various areas of their life.
In completing the program, participants will have been introduced and practiced with these and other basic chaplaincy skills:
– Articulating their own understanding and approach to Buddhist spiritual care
– Establishing and deepening spiritual-care relationships.
– Providing spiritual care to people experiencing grief and loss.
– Reflecting on one’s own experiences in offering spiritual care.
– Understand the role of their own spiritual, religious, or non-religious history in being able offer spiritual care.
– Understand effective “uses of self” in offering spiritual care. This includes practices of presence and non-judgmental awareness, emotional availability, cultural humility, appropriate self-disclosure, positive use of power and authority, self-care, and clear sense of appropriate boundaries.
– Uses and types of ritual, prayer, and guided meditation.
Participants will also have a basic understanding of how key Buddhist practices relate to spiritual care. These include:
– Compassion
– The Paramis/ten perfections (generosity, ethics, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity
– Mindfulness, embodiment, emptiness, letting go
– The Four Noble Truths
– Refuges and ritual
– Sangha
This training is designed for and welcoming to a diverse population. With the intention to dissolve all barriers that perpetuate the suffering of separation, prejudice, and discrimination, we are dedicated to the inclusion of all races, classes, sexual orientations, gender identities, ages, disabilities, cultures, ethnicities, and other social identities.
– Class size varies each year, from 15-24 people. Participants come from all Buddhist streams: Zen, Tibetan, Theravada, Pureland, eclectic, etc.
– The age range is from 25 or so to 70 and beyond, with a median age of 45.
– Participants come from all over the country, with 75% from the Bay Area.
– During the year, we become a sangha and benefit from friendship, mutual learning, and shared practice.
Additional Information
- The Origins and Dharma of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training by Gil Fronsdal, Faculty essay
- The Approach of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training by Paul Haller, Faculty essay
- Towards a Definition of Buddhist Chaplaincy by Jennifer Block, Faculty essay
- To learn more about chaplaincy in general, click here for a helpful article.
- Click here for the first book about Buddhist chaplaincy, published in 2012.
- There is a Buddhist chaplain website as well: www.buddhistchaplains.org