Sumeru News — Chaplaincy

Coming soon! ISBN 978-1-896559-72-8 (pbk)  /  $19.95 CAD 160 pages, 6.14 x 9.21 in  /  Illustrated (charts + diagrams) About the Book For most people with advancing diseases, there are signs that death will be soon. Diseases have many trajectories, but at a certain stage, the ceasing of life becomes certain, with a predictable sequence. At 21 days, there are usually no more treatment options with any real promise of quality of life. Death is a mystery, and we don’t want to take all the mystery away. However, there are steps we each can take to be fully, effectively present...

Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford has just sent me the table of contents for volume II of her Buddhist chaplaincy textbook, Kalyanamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual Care. We are aiming for editing to be completed in June, which means it will be published this summer, 2021! Here's what will be inside: Kalyanamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual CareVolume II: Praxis Table of ContentsDedication / Acknowledgements / Introduction   Chapter 1: Pragmatic Skills for Every Context           Presence          Not Being Present        Being Present in Meditation & Daily Life          Being Present in Spiritual Care Being Present for Yourself: Reflexivity Listening & Responding           Not Listening   Listening         Responding Appropriately        Responding to Difficulty          Empathy & Compassion           On Being Open-HeartedFour Divine Abodes     Empathic...

A very nice review of Kalyanamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual Care recently appeared on the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab's blog: https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/2021/02/book-review-sanford-kalyanamitra-a-model-for-buddhist-spiritual-care

Almost ready to go into production on "Kalyāṇamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual Care" by Rev. Monica Sanford. This is a great resource for anybody in or considering entering the field of chaplaincy. We're doing it as two volumes. The first volume covers the theory and we hope to have it available in October 2020. The second volume covers practical applications. We hope to have that available in May 2021.

Here's a video of my talk at the New Paths in Teaching Buddhist Studies conference at the R.N. Ho Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. The event was held in February 2020, just before the pandemic was announced. Ironically, my talk begins with a bit about how bad we are about predicting the future! The Centre's YouTube channel also has videos from 11 other speakers from the event.