This article introduces how spiritual care is practiced in Japanese hospices to fit the needs of nonreligious patients. It suggests that Japanese chaplains often go beyond helping patients vocalize spiritual pain and addressing anxieties through counseling, religious support, or being a sympathetic presence. Rather, much of spiritual care is also conducted in the margins of daily care, and through special group events or even prosaic activities-an approach that elicits less resistance by Japanese patients. This article will also discuss how examining the practice of spiritual care helps to problematize terms like "secular" or "post-secular" in Japanese society and point out the ways in which spiritual care is being marshaled by contemporary religious groups, chaplains, the media, and religious studies scholars to help valorize the role religion can play in Japanese society by emphasizing its psychotherapeutic contributions.keywords: spiritual care-chaplaincy-hospice-Vihāra-secularism Japanese Journal of Religious
What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict shows how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called “healthy” role in society. Focusing on how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death.
On a muggy summer afternoon in 2015, I was walking in Kyoto when I happened to come across a bookstore offering a large sale. As I perused some of the books set out on the sidewalk, one in particular caught my eye. It was titled The Reason a Zen Priest Aims to Be a Doctor. The author was Tsushimoto Sōkun, a former Zen abbot who had resigned from his temple to enter medical school. As I skimmed through the pages, I lighted upon the following passage.What on earth is it that parishioners expect of us priests? For the sake of the argument let's say that they only expect us to conduct funerals and memorial services. This would be truly sad. As Zen priests trained in fundamental Buddhist practices, what is it we can do to contribute to society? Is this not something that priests must individually consider as a theme in their activities? For example, problems in education, social welfare, and volunteer activities are all areas in which we can expect religionists [shūkyōsha] to play a role. 1
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