Buddhist Chaplaincy

Author(s):  
Monica Sanford ◽  
Nathan Jishin Michon

Buddhist chaplaincy is a profession in which Buddhists with specialized training care for the spiritual needs of suffering individuals (careseekers), typically within non-religious settings such as hospitals, hospices, military, workplaces, or universities. Although the roots of spiritual care date back to the beginning of the Buddhist traditions, professionalized Buddhist chaplaincy is a very recent phenomenon. Despite some beginnings in the mid-20th century, most developments have occurred rapidly only within the 21st century. This contemporary movement is occurring in numerous places around the world, including North America, Europe, and Asia, covering a wide range of countries, cultures, and Buddhist traditions. The profession of chaplaincy was originally a Christian vocation but began expanding to serve the needs of multireligious careseekers and train caregivers of various religious backgrounds in the 20th century. Thus, while chaplaincy is now a profession open to all comers, including Buddhists, humanists, and atheists, many of the educational, training, and professional standards for certification or licensing are still normed against Christian expectations and legacy organizational structures, particularly in North America, Europe, and the British Commonwealth. In the countries where Buddhist chaplaincy is flourishing in the early 21st century, different groups are developing degree programs, training opportunities, and professional expectations that accord with their local regulatory bodies and other forms of existing chaplaincy certification. In Asian nations, Buddhists are stepping forward to build standards for providing spiritual care in the context of cultural institutions that are not typically religious (e.g., hospitals and schools). Diverse settings and differing requirements lead to distinctions between Buddhist chaplaincy in different countries. However, some of the core competencies for spiritual care are very consistent: compassion, listening, ritual proficiency, cultural understanding, and reflection. Buddhist and non-Buddhist chaplains alike agree to a fundamental skill set to care for people who are suffering in the various institutions where they work and volunteer. Distinctions between Buddhist and other forms of spiritual care are based on the care model employed, whether strictly co-religionist (i.e., Buddhists caring for Buddhists) or interfaith (i.e., Buddhists caring for all). In the latter case, professional chaplains (of any religion) are trained to provide spiritual care from the spiritual or religious worldview of the careseeker. As such, most Buddhist chaplains must possess basic knowledge and competency in many world religions. Nevertheless, Buddhist spiritual care may be distinct in its theory (Dharma based) and place more emphasis on mindfulness, meditation, and other contemplative techniques to benefit both careseekers and chaplains. Spiritual care that is “Dharma-based” means based on the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and/or the Buddhist traditions and teacher who followed after him. This includes a broad range of texts and teachings across the Buddhist world. As an emerging field, there is little literature on Buddhist chaplaincy, so it is currently somewhat difficult to say what theories and practices will come to dominate the profession.

2020 ◽  
pp. 120633121989252
Author(s):  
Scott Kushner

The arrival of the digital computer demanded a new spatial logic for performing arts ticketing. As late-20th-century box offices updated equipment, managers imagined a ticketing space that was open and airy, rather than closed and secure. Interactions between agents and audiences became collaborative, and ticket sales became central to marketing efforts. This article analyzes changes in the box office by historicizing the spaces of ticketing, drawing upon Bernhard Siegert’s notion of cultural techniques, reading a diagram from a 1993 ticketing guru’s book, and excavating archival and published materials bearing on performance spaces in Western Europe and North America. The article shows how technological, social, and political changes in the 1970s and ’80s led to a substantial shift in the interactions that inhabit paraperformative spaces. In a concluding gesture, the article shows that these changes are themselves transitory and have since been succeeded by the digital ticketing familiar to early-21st-century audiences.


Author(s):  
Janet Goodall

Parental engagement in children and young people’s learning has been shown to be an important lever for school improvement and young people’s outcomes. However, parents are rarely involved in school reform movements. These reform movements are generally centered on the school rather than on improvement of learning per se. Shifting the focus away from the school and to learning as an overarching aim requires the inclusion of and partnership with parents. This is a new way of understanding school reform but has the best chance of supporting all students, including those not best served by the schooling systems in the early 21st century. The reforms here are chiefly concerned with U.K. schooling systems, but could be more widely applicable, and call on a wide range of evidence, from the United Kingdom and beyond.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Meis ◽  
J.M. Tyree

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorgen Segerlund Frederiksen ◽  
Stacey Lee Osbrough

Abstract. Systematic changes, since the beginning of the 20th century, in average and extreme Australian rainfall and temperatures indicate that Southern Australian climate has undergone regime transitions into a drier and warmer state. South-west Western Australia (SWWA) experienced the most dramatic drying trend with average streamflow into Perth dams, in the last decade, just 20 % of that before the 1960s and extreme, decile 10, rainfall reduced to near zero. In south-eastern Australia (SEA) systematic decreases in average and extreme cool season rainfall became evident in the late 1990s with a halving of the area experiencing average decile 10 rainfall in the early 21st century compared with that for the 20th century. The shift in annual surface temperatures over SWWA and SEA, and indeed for Australia as a whole, has occurred primarily over the last 20 years with the percentage area experiencing extreme maximum temperatures in decile 10 increasing to an average of more than 45 % since the start of the 21st century compared with less than 3 % for the 20th century mean. Average maximum temperatures have also increased by circa 1 °C for SWWA and SEA over the last 20 years. The climate changes are associated with atmospheric circulation shifts and are indicative of second order regime transitions, apart from extreme temperatures for which the dramatic increases are suggestive of first order transitions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
A.P. Khlynin ◽  

This study analyzed in details the genesis of American school of study of elites in the period from the middle of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century. In this case the author makes an attempt to classify the main phases of American elitology from the 40s of the 20th century. Based on an analysis of papers of well-known American sociologists and political scientists who study elites, the author states the main approaches in relation to the study of elites. Thus, in the 1940s, the dominant approach to understanding elites was the liberal-democratic, according to which access to the elites is open for everyone who has extra skills in different spheres of society. At the same time stands a technocratic approach, which define elite as a group of professional managers who form a new class of technocracy. In 50s–60s liberal-democratic approach has been criticized by left-wing approach. From this point, elite was defined as a narrow layer of financiers and persons, who are close to the president, and this layer is closed. In the 60s–70s, the most popular approach of studying elites was pluralism. According to which, elite has no monolithic origin — it is a complex of interconnected independent elites. From the beginning of the 70s, the basic principles of pluralism have been criticized by neoelitism, according to which the most elite representatives included in most elite groups simultaneously. The late 20th — early 21st century can be characterized in two ways: dispute between pluralists and neoelitists and attempts to operationalize the concept of elite.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2094325
Author(s):  
Dr. Carol Harrington

Coined in late 20th-century men’s movements, “toxic masculinity” spread to therapeutic and social policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia, and men’s violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context. However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term’s origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualizing discourses that have historically targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender hierarchies and individualize responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.


Author(s):  
Anton Franks

As ways of making meaning in drama strongly resemble the ways that meanings are made in everyday social life, forms of drama learn from everyday life and, at a societal level, people in everyday life learn from drama. Through history, from the emergence of drama in Western culture, the learning that results at a societal level from the interactions of everyday social life and drama have been noted by scholars. In contemporary culture, electronic and digitized forms of mediation and communication have diversified its content and massively expanded its audiences. Although there are reciprocal relations between everyday life and drama, aspects of everyday life are selected and shaped into the various cultural forms of drama. Processes of selection and shaping crystallize significant aspects of everyday social relations, allowing audiences of and participants in drama to learn and to reflect critically on particular facets of social life. In the 20th century, psychological theories of learning have been developed, taking note of the sociocultural relationships between drama, play, and learning. Learning in and through drama is seen as being socially organized, whole person learning that mobilizes and integrates the bodies and minds of learners. Making signs and meanings through various forms of drama, it is interactive, experiential learning that is semiotically mediated via physical activity. Alongside the various forms of drama that circulate in wider culture, sociocultural theories of learning have also influenced drama pedagogies in schools. In the later part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, drama practices have diversified and been applied as a means of learning in a range of community- and theater-based contexts outside of schooling. Practices in drama education and applied drama and theater, particularly since the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, have been increasingly supported by research employing a range of methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Thuy Trung Luu

In the history of Vietnamese drama, Saigon was one of the places absorbing Western drama from the early time. Although drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City didn’t develop in a smooth and straight way, it was a continuous and unbroken process. This process brought in strong development of drama in Ho Chi Minh city in two decades of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. However, in recent years, drama in Ho Chi Minh City seems to proceed slowly, which reflects some irrational aspects from drama script, performance art to performance operation. Therefore, it’s high time to review the whole history of drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City to collect experiences for the steady development of drama in this City in the future.


Author(s):  
Iryna Mishchenko

The purpose of this article is to consider the peculiarities of the reflection of the city – its architecture and inhabitants – in the works of Chernivtsi artists of the 20th and early 21st century, to analyze the differences between their views on the reproduction of urban motifs. The methodology consists in the application of the historical-chronological method, art analysis, and generalization, comparative and systematic approach. The scientific novelty lies in the introduction into scientific circulation of works by artists of the specified time, in understanding the evolution in the reflection of the city in the works of authors with various artistic orientations. Conclusions. In the paintings and graphics of the 20th – 21st centuries, several options for solving urban landscapes can be defined, among which the most common is a careful reflection of existing architectural monuments. In the 19th century in European art, in particular in Impressionist painting, the desire to convey not only the appearance but above all the spirit of the city became noticeable, depicting the townspeople, emphasizing the bustle or poetry of squares and streets. At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries the artists are no longer limited to the usual fixation of what is seen, but try to create a conceptual image of the city, to tell a story through iconic images and symbols, reveal their own position in particular and to preserve the authenticity of an object or the city in general. Such a variety of approaches for creating an urban landscape is partly due to differences in preferences formed during studies in art institutions and is also characteristic for the art of Chernivtsi – a city where people of many nationalities with different cultural traditions have lived side by side for centuries. Ultimately, the artists who worked here in the 20th century were often graduates not only of Ukrainian schools or universities, but also of well-known European institutions, including Vienna, Munich, Florentine, Berlin, Kraków, or Bucharest academies. While in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century the city often appears as the sum of certain architectural structures in the works of artists of Bukovina and visiting masters (F. Emery, R. Bernt, J. Shubirs), in the second half of the 19th – first third of the 20th century the artists mostly try to recreate the dynamics of urban life instead, sometimes depicted with a touch of irony, using the grotesque in the image of the inhabitants (lithography and watercolors by F.-K. Knapp, O. Laske and G. Löwendal). Subsequently, we meet emphasized mood images, in which the author's subjective perception of a particular motive, which he seeks to reproduce in a work full of emotions, is important (L. Kopelman, G. Gorbaty). A peculiar historical retrospection is present in the exquisite graphics of O. Kryvoruchko and in the distilled-finished sheets of O. Lyubkivsky, and the lyrical watercolors and sketches of N. Yarmolchuk represent the non-festive side of the city center. In O. Litvinov's paintings Chernivtsi surprises with desolation and restraint, and in M. Rybachuk's paintings it is distinguished by an unexpected riot of colors. Therefore, each of the artists creates his own image of Chernivtsi, which landscapes often become only a stimulus for the author's imagination, allowing him to depict a completely individual sense of space and life of the city.


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