Body of Wisdom, World of Compassion

Trauma Resiliency Model and G.R.A.C.E.: Two Contemporary Upayas of Embodiment

Seishin Holly Haynes

Upaya Chaplaincy Program

March 2010 – March 2013 BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 2

Abstract

This thesis seeks to articulate the nature of presence and to show that through the lens of natural systems theory and Zen tradition, presence functions as a systemic intervention. Using exemplars from the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition and two contemporary models – the Trauma Resiliency Model (see Appendix 1) and the

G.R.A.C.E Model (Halifax, 2012), the thesis lists qualities, dynamics, components, principles, skills and practices that constitute upayas (a Sanskrit term used in the Zen tradition to refer to ethical action, intervention, or skillful means.) Along with this definition of presence, the thesis seeks to demonstrate how it transforms suffering.

The role of clergy and chaplains serving in secular settings is to offer healing presence. Usually these spiritual caregivers seek to offer presence in ways that actualize the world-view and ethics of their tradition. This thesis is intended as a resource for

Buddhist chaplains seeking skills and tools to cultivate presence in diverse work settings that are consistent with the teachings and practices of the Zen Buddhist tradition.

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ...... 2 BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION ...... 10 PART I: SYSTEMS ...... 10 PART II: A BUDDHIST SYSTEM OF HEALING ...... 12 Tenet #1: Not Knowing – boundlessness...... 16 The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom / Realizing Form and Boundlessness ..... 16 Dogen: The True Dharma Eye ...... 18 Tenet #2: Bearing Witness – emergence...... 21 Taizan Maezumi Roshi: Orderly Living as Cure ...... 21 Glassman: The Order of Disorder ...... 24 Tenet #3: Compassionate Action – form...... 31 Roshi Joan Halifax: The G.R.A.C.E. Model of compassion ...... 31 Upaya chaplaincy as a holon...... 34 TRM and Three Tenets of Zen Peacemaker Order / Response to Author’s Prompt: “Do you see links between the TRM Level II training and the Three Tenets of the Peacemaker’s Order? What are they and how might you utilize TRM in your work as a chaplain?” ...... 37 CONCLUSION ...... 40 REFERENCES ...... 42 APPENDICES ...... 46 APPENDIX 1 ...... 46 Introduction to TRM excerpted from Trauma Resilience Institute website...... 46 APPENDIX 2 ...... 47 Autopsy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital...... 48 APPENDIX 3 ...... 54 Some general properties of self-regulating open hierarchic order...... 54 APPENDIX 4 ...... 64 Research: chaplains in healthcare...... 64 APPENDIX 5 ...... 65 Sustainable chaplaincy: practicing interoception. Skills of embodiment...... 65 Brigham and Women’s CPE Chaplaincy Program Session One / June 25, 2012 ...... 65

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As a chaplaincy student working in an acute care urban hospital in which trauma

(and therefore secondary trauma) is a part of daily work life, I witnessed signs of emotional and physical exhaustion arising in myself and other chaplains. More alarming to me than these signs of injury was the fact that we were not taught specific skills for recognizing and addressing them within our work setting. After a particularly intense somatic and spiritual experience while attending an autopsy (see Appendix 2), I had a clearer view of the depth of inner stability required when attempting to offer what chaplains refer to as “presence” in trying situations. Before working in the field with other chaplains and this eye-opening event, as a student in Divinity school I had heard the word “presence” used to describe ministerial and spiritual work.

Traditionally, a primary goal in educating spiritual caregivers (ministers and chaplains) is to cultivate spiritual authority and presence. One book that offers a view of what these things are, and how to practice them is, “The Courage to Be,” written in

1952, theologian Paul Tillich, who writes extensively on presence and the role of a minister in healing. In his book, Tillich advocates for medical chaplaincy by articulating the nature of spiritual and religious realms of healing, and how they, ideally, intersect and support each other. His work points to existential anxiety as suffering that the minister is most capable of healing and he asserts that this is done through cultivated spiritual presence. He writes:

The minister or anyone else can become a medical helper. He does not become a physician and no minister should aspire to become one as a minister although he may radiate healing power for mind and body and help to remove neurotic anxiety. (Tillich, 74, 1952)

Use of words like “radiate power” in my ministerial academic and practical education led me to see presence as a high and very mysterious goal. Up to the point of

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 5 the autopsy experience, I had naively assumed that this mysterious spiritual healing ability was something one either did or didn’t have. After hearing that I aspired to offer presence to patients in the hospital during an interview for a resident chaplain position, one senior chaplain offered me this wisdom, “Many people wish to be ‘present’ but few can.” Hearing this from an authority in the profession, I felt confirmed in my suspicion that presence was in inborn trait. Having my serenity shaken during an autopsy I lost confidence and wondered if maybe I lacked the presence that I so longed to offer!

Over time, however, through much more experience in the field of medical chaplaincy I saw all of us experience deep challenges to our physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and psychological resources. It became clear that presence is less of an inherited trait, and more of an artistic sensibility or calling. In my own experience and through what I witnessed in others, I saw that presence requires training and practical skills that develop resilience. That is, stability of attention and affect that increases one’s capacity for direct relationship between one’s body and mind, and between one’s self and the world. While there are those who will be gifted in this area, almost anyone can improve their capacity for presence by learning and applying appropriate models of practice and skill. As with all arts, progress, not perfection, is the goal.

Understanding that presence can be cultivated empowers everyone, especially those faced with great bodily and spiritual suffering. Further, cultivating presence is a way to become an agent in one’s personal resilience and the resilience of others, which enhances the general wellbeing of the system. Buddhism’s non-dualistic world-view, as defined by a dynamic of mutual causation (Macy, 1991), is particularly strong in

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 6 providing a view of dynamic, integrated relationship that leads individuals and communities to realize presence together.

Medical chaplains interact with hospital staff, patients and families, and participate in interdisciplinary teams and in collegial relationships. This means there is potential to become significant vehicles for healing, as well as the opposite of that aim, spreading suffering throughout the entire field of medical care by way of unaddressed symptoms of secondary trauma. The level of a chaplain’s awareness and skill determines which of these paths is taken. This reality requires that chaplains be as skilled as possible in self-care and relational dynamics.

A Buddhist chaplain’s realizes healing by offering presence (wisdom and compassion) as an embodied form of skillful intervention. The attentional, cognitive and affective skills involved in this kind of presence can be learned and cultivated through the use of two contemporary models of systems intervention; Roshi Joan Halifax’s

G.R.A.C.E. model of compassionate relations, and the Trauma Resiliency Model, designed by psychologists and trauma specialists, Laurie Leitch and Elaine Miller-Karas.

Recognizing the need to cultivate the ground for greater compassion in health care settings, Roshi Halifax’s G.R.A.C.E. model arose out of many years of dialogue and work with medical clinicians.

Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others. Ironically, in a time when we hear the phrase "compassion fatigue" with increasing frequency, compassion as we are defining does not lead to fatigue. In fact, it can actually become a wellspring of resilience as we allow our natural impulse to care for another to become a source of nourishment rather than depletion. (Halifax, 2012)

As a result of a dialogue between scientific study (Porges, 2007) (Blechert,

Michael, Grossman, Lajtman, & Wilhelm, 2007) (Benson, 1996) and the Buddhist

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 7 tradition, medical clinicians and Halifax sought to articulate simple mind/body practices that increase the resiliency of the practitioner/clinician and create professional healing environments characterized by equanimity and ease, or compassionate care. The result of this effort is the G.R.A.C.E. model, a tool for compassionate encounters in a medical settings. Clinicians and practitioners from other work communities are also now inquiring into how the model might serve the well being of the systems they serve.

The principles and practice of the G.R.A.C.E. model are broadly applicable and they incorporate insights from both natural systems theory and Buddhist perspectives.

Practicing somatic and cognitive skills integrates mind/body functions, allowing the practitioner to access internal and external feedback for self-regulation and to recognize

“emergence,” a naturally arising awareness of appropriate action to heal self and other.

All of this is to say that the G.R.A.C.E. model is an approach or orientation that is the equivalent of teaching and fostering presence. G.R.A.C.E. includes the following intention and set of cues (simple enough to be kept on small printed cards and carried by clinicians and other users) that are very consistent with teachings of the Zen tradition:

May I offer my care and presence knowing that it may be met by gratitude, indifference, anger or anguish.

Gather your attention Remember your intention Attune to self and other Consider what will serve Engage and then end

I recently introduced chaplaincy students from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in

Boston, a circle of CPE supervisors from a variety of work settings, as well as an interdisciplinary medical team at Boston Children’s Hospital to the G.R.A.C.E. model of compassion and the Trauma Resiliency Model (Leitch & Miller-Karas, 2011), as self-

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 8 care practices and systemic interventions. The Trauma Resiliency Model, like the

G.R.A.C.E. model, is a practical, teachable model that cultivates interoception (somatic or internal bodily awareness), which, in turn,offers greater capacity for relational sensitivity, both of which are necessary for maintaining presence and well-being in the wake of trauma, or secondary trauma.

Briefly, TRM teaches key aspects of the neurophysiologic nature of post traumatic stress, and about categories of trauma, referred to as “big T,” “small t” and

“chronic” trauma, post traumatic and secondary trauma symptoms and the desired state of a healthy neurologic “zone of resiliency.” Also covered in TRM training is the psycho- social aspects of trauma such as, emotional and relational, short and long term dis- regulation within individuals and communities. TRM offers skills and practices that can be used for self-care, counseling individuals and as systemic interventions (quite often all of this happens simultaneously). When integrated deeply in the individual and community, these skills/tools can have the effect of increasing emotional stability, equanimity of body and mind, a greater awareness of resources for well-being, and increased capacity for compassionate self-regard and caregiving.

TRM practice principles include:

• Invitational language / setting a relational field of respect

• Leading from behind / tracking or attuning to the experience of others

• Emphasizing the positive / non-retraumatization through emphasis on tending to

bodily sensation over trauma narrative.

Terms for Basic Skills:

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• Grounding: Down-regulating through attention to present moment and bodily

sensations.

• Resourcing: Recalling external triggers for well-being.

• Intensification: Magnifying that well-being through attention to associated bodily

sensation.

• Tracking: Attuning to self and other through internal (interoception) and external

(perception) awareness.

• Shift and Stay: Returning to embodied well-being and resting in that state.

The next sections of the paper explores how natural systems theory, teachings of the Soto Zen lineage and TRM and G.R.A.C.E. models all function as systems and, therefore, in important ways share definitions of healing. Zen, TRM and G.R.A.C.E. also share views on the nature of presence, the ethical and practical perspectives that they share are succinctly articulated by The Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Order; Not

Knowing, Bearing Witness and Loving (or Compassionate) Action. Seen through the lens of the three tenets, these contemporary healing modalities are recognizable as legitimate and traditional Buddhist tools. This paper offers this distinction, or definition to assure critics (Masters, 2010) of contemporary models utilized by Buddhist practitioners who suggest that such models run the risk of trivializing, psychologizing, or in any way disrespecting or disembodying bits of Buddhist wisdom. G.R.A.C.E. and TRM models incorporate timeless Buddhist principals and practices into contemporary forms, and are therefore, contemporary upayas.

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Body of Wisdom, World of Compassion

Part I: Systems

Joanna Macy’s book, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems

Theory; The Dharma of Natural Systems (Macy, 1991) shows that Buddhist views of reality and systems align very closely with natural systems theory. Building her argument, she presents four basic common elements of all systems:

• The system is a whole, meaning it can't be reduced to its parts without altering its

pattern.

• The system is homeostatic. It stabilizes itself through negative and positive

feedback. A system maintains a match between internal codes and input from

feedback by adjusting output.

• The system is self-organizing. New codes and patterns are created when necessary

for the system to function. Positive feedback encourages differentiation and

complexification of the structure...increasing adaptability, but reducing stability.

• The system is a part of a larger whole with which/whom it is co-determinative

(meaning, their mutual relationship determines, or serves to define, both the

system and the larger whole).

• Systems exist within a hierarchical structure in that “higher” order systems are

fewer in number due to the fact that they incorporate or contain the “lower”

systems as part and parcel of their whole. The structure of these systems

resembles an inverted tree, or a nest metaphor. These images show each part of

the whole as discrete systems that depend on, or arise from, the “preceding” one.

Each part that is a system unto itself is called a holon. (See Appendix 3)

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• The primary pattern of living systems is dynamic, often depicted as a “stream” or

“burning.”

Each of these elements of systems are described in Buddhist cosmology and teachings on impermanence, which are based on mutual causality, or, the interdependent co-arising nature of reality. Natural systems theory and Buddhist thought teach us that this is not only the nature of physical reality, but of abstract or invisible realms that include spiritual and social realities as well. In the following passage Macy discusses causation (reciprocal, co-determinate relationship) as it appears within natural systems and in Buddhist mythology, helping the reader to see the dynamic dance between conceptual and physical realms, or the nature of realizing, or actualization;

In the Mahayana [branch of Buddhist philosophy] skillful means (Sanskrit; upaya) is a characteristic of a bodhisattva [practitioner of this view of healing]. Covalent with wisdom and essential to enlightenment, [upaya] is seen as a manifestation of compassion and is necessary for its expression. Later, in Buddhist tantric symbolism, Upaya appears as wisdom’s consort. Their connubial embrace symbolizes the interplay of thought and act. The interdependence of insight and its manifestation in the world. No mere instrumentality, upaya is wisdom in action – the action that both reveals insight and deepens it in turn, in reciprocal relation. (Macy, 1991, p. 211)

The G.R.A.C.E. and TRM models operate under the same principles as the tantric dance Macy points to here. These contemporary models enact fluid and mutual relationship between mind and body, self and other. The practices and skills that comprise these models are the process of mutual causation, of producing, eliciting and incorporating feedback. TRM and G.R.A.C.E initiate a process of self-regulation enriches

“cognitive capacity” and leads to resiliency and compassion:

Cognitive capacity entails an enormously high degree of both integration and differentiation, and these attributes merge in the human who stands as link between organic and social world – or at that point where they appear as such. (Macy, 1991, p. 201)

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Skills cultivated by these models (upayas) are particularly crucial for individuals who intentionally “stand as links” between worlds. Buddhist chaplains are such people.

Later sections of this show several examples in the Soto Zen lineage of individuals who serve as links, or bridges between worlds by embodying apparently separate organic and social worlds. Because TRM and G.R.A.C.E. articulate and teach skills that cultivate embodiment, they are legitimately Buddhist tools, or skillful means for Buddhist chaplains.

Part II: A Buddhist System of Healing

In a recent Tricycle Magazine article, “Pursuing An American Buddhism”

(Prebish, 2012), Charles Prebish expresses his concern regarding the effect of the dialogue between Buddhist practices and scientific research. It is undoubtedly with good reason that Prebish expresses concern about contemporary Buddhism in the West becoming a hollow shell of its “original” Eastern self. He and many others who care for the tradition make a reasonable critique of some secularized Buddhist practices and principles that have flooded Western culture and its consumer society. They argue that taking Buddhism out of the context of faith and ritual, could well diminish Buddhism’s richness by limiting its religious expression in the West.

When people talk about practicing the buddhadharma, I think they sometimes fail to realize that the buddhadharma is a comprehensive religious system. (Prebish, 2012)

There is, as he argues, a danger of contemporary Western minds creating modern psychologized paradigms that trivialize and scavenge Buddhism’s vast, ancient, religious tradition.

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As a lay Buddhist chaplain, I recognize myself as part of a new Western group that, in the opinion of Prebish and others, has the potential to water down teachings by dabbling in models of psychological, or physical healing that are packaged and presented as Buddhist practice without accounting for their lineage. I agree with the view that practices lacking roots that ground them in traditional rituals and faith become empty forms that are only superficially familiar as “Buddhist.”

This paper seeks to affirm the central matters of faith and ritual as essential aspects of the Buddhist system, and to articulate how models used for healing in secular settings like the G.R.A.C.E. and TRM models, manifest traditional Buddhist teachings and practices. Establishing deep connections between Buddhist faith and contemporary models like these empowers Buddhist chaplains with a sense of spiritual integrity and promotes creativity as well. This is a call to recognize an essential need to engage new upayas, as a way of reinforcing our tradition’s time honored dynamic system of being and healing – form and emptiness, integrity and creation.

The following sections of this paper provide a preliminary (and very simplified) sketch of Soto Zen Buddhism as a healing system. Using the lens of systems theory, this section looks at some of the main teachings and interpretations of four teachers in the

Soto Zen Buddhist lineage – Dogen, Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Bernie Glassman Roshi and

Joan Halifax Roshi. The paper seeks to highlight a thought, extrapolated from Joanna

Macy’s work (Macy, 1991), that Buddhism functions as a natural system. In particular, it maintains integrity over time and space through adaptation and the principle of mutual causality. This paper supports and illustrates this concept by tracing one line of movement and adaptation of wisdom from the Heart Sutra to the most recent embodied

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 14 iteration, Upaya Zen Center’s recently ordained Chaplains, including two models of system intervention they are trained to utilize, TRM and G.R.A.C.E.

This paper stands to show that while Buddhism is an “entire system” Buddhist practitioners and caregivers must continue to invent and incorporate new tools to serve secular settings. Such tools do not necessarily water down the tradition, on the contrary, new components are natural outcomes of a system as evidenced in natural systems theory:

… in nested hierarchies (sometimes called holonarchies) order tends to arise from the bottom up; the system self-generates from spontaneously adaptive cooperation between the parts, in mutual benefit. Order and differentiation go hand and hand, components diversifying as they coordinate roles and invent new responses. (Joanna Macy, 2009)

If we accept Prebish’s view that Buddhism is a system, natural systems theory tells us that as a system, Buddhism has a “nesting” hierarchical structure. Further each nest within the system (for example, the Zen lineage within Buddhism) is a “holon” (see

Appendix 3), a section of the larger system that is whole unto itself, while also being ultimately inseparable from the larger system (Koestler,1969). If we identify The Heart

Sutra, arguably the primary teaching of the Soto tradition, as the largest nest, then the smallest nests could be the Upaya Chaplains, and the TRM and G.R.A.C.E. models. With a multitude of chaplaincy projects arising, it seems important to note that according to complexity theory (Folke, Colding, & Berkes, 2003), increasing numbers of “cells” or growth in a system, can potentially result in vulnerability of the system, but another outcome. The other potential outcome is stabilization and magnification, or health. The point here is that new upayas can enhance the power of the Buddhist system, rather than dilute or scavenge it.

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Within the Buddhist system, the desired outcome is enlightenment (Buddhism’s great healing) and to the extent that Buddhism actualizes enlightenment, it may be seen as healthy, as fulfilling its function. Interestingly, in this system, the process and the outcome are seen as identical, meaning that enlightenment and Buddhism can be describes as the process of the knitting together of emptiness and form, wisdom and compassion, mind and body. Two contemporary upayas, TRM and G.R.A.C.E. are holons of Buddhism in that their practices and outcomes are healing. Later sections of this paper show that Upaya chaplaincy students find the ethics and principles of The

Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Order and the TRM model to align extraordinarily well.

The Three Tenets also echo the G.R.A.C.E. model’s teaching on compassion.

The Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Order nest within the system of the

Peacemaker Order. The three principles and practices do not function in linear progression, but rather they form a self regulating, co- responsive unit. Not Knowing,

Bearing Witness (seeing internal and external conditions) and Loving Action are the process of intimacy, or presence. The Tenets are, in a way, a holon, within which we see the process of enlightenment. In other words, this is no simple chronological progression from Buddha’s enlightenment to contemporary Western Buddhism, instead, as the following section highlighting portions of the Soto Zen lineage points out, we see mutual causation, form and boundlessness, integrity and creativity.

The Three Tenets serve as the titles of the next sections of this paper, to remind the reader of dynamic, non-linear, mutual causality, a moving relational quality to Zen thought and practice. Like the emergence of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Loving

Action, the Zen lineage changes creatively in time, while maintaining a consistent line of

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 16 wisdom and compassion within itself. When embodied, this integrity and creativity is presence.

Tenet #1: Not Knowing – boundlessness.

The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom / Realizing Form

and Boundlessness

The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom (The Heart Sutra) reveals some particularities of view and practice within the Soto Zen Tradition. A teaching on the nature of form and emptiness, the sutra is realized through its poetic content and the practice of vocalizing it in community. A playful dynamic of mutual causality between form and emptiness is embodied, or lived by the sangha (community of practitioners). Even the title points to this dance of the body and meaning, form and emptiness (or, as it is translated by some, “boundlessness”.) The words, “The Heart of

Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom” functionsas a holon of the larger Zen body, which is a dynamic lineage of heart/mind/body. Further, that Zen and the larger Buddhist system

(and other religious systems) are holons of human existence.

A lineage of wisdom actualizes itself in the form and emptiness of heart/mind, word, body and community. A dynamic mind-body play the sutra is form and emptiness dancing, as it does in all systems. This dance is a demonstration of Zen’s teachings on presence and transformation, a paradox of continuity over time and spontaneity in time and place. The following section of the heart sutra points to such integrated being:

Form is not separate from boundlessness; Boundlessness is not separate from form. Form is boundlessness; boundlessness is form. (Translation from text used at the Upaya Zen Center)

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The sutra activates a dynamic of body and mind, which is enlightened activity.

The sutra arose from emptiness, as words of an individual. Chanting the text physically and spiritually engages the heart/mind/body, the voice propels an invisible and interior wisdom beyond the individual into community. This movement is transformative. Interior insight becomes a shared experience and connects what was divided into (more or less!) one realization. This non-duality, joining of self and other, wisdom and compassion, is accomplished through the dynamic of mutual causality. Within this realization, there is no longer a distinguishable self, only the mutual co-arising of all. Just as its title promises, The Heart Sutra on Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom does “realize wisdom beyond wisdom.” This enactment of enlightenment is a relational dance that continues throughout the Zen lineage.

All those, in the past, present, and future, who realize wisdom beyond wisdom manifest unsurpassable, authentic and thorough awakening. Know that realizing wisdom beyond wisdom is no other than this great mantra (Excerpt from Upaya Zen Center translation of The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom)

The sutra is a remarkable work of art and a living example of natural systems theory, as well as a Buddhist take on embodiment, or presence. This model is consistent with the TRM and G.R.A.C.E. models in that it is relational, it involves the skills of attention, and qualities of stability, acceptance and resilience and the outcome is compassionate relationship. The particular qualities of presence cultivated within these contemporary models are articulated within the ancient sutra as well:

Without hindrance, the mind has no fear. Free from confusion, those who lead all to emancipation embody complete serenity.

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(Excerpt from Upaya Zen Center translation of The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom)

In its lived form, this sutra engages the body (bodies) as an upaya(s), a skilled means for healing. This point will be revisited again with examples of how the Zen lineage embodies skills and teachings of the Heart Sutra as a dance of heart/mind/body that cultivates and realizes presence, or existential healing. Spiritual lineage is an ongoing adaptation of these healing skills. One such adaptation and realization the Heart Sutra is the founder of the Soto Zen school, Dogen.

Dogen: The True Dharma Eye

Dogen’s main body of work, The True Dharma Eye is an innovative expression of

The Heart Sutra’s teachings on emptiness and form. Throughout this large collection of teachings, Dogen offers sublimely playful expressions of wisdom, but as the title suggests, he “focuses” a different organ of perception, and speaks repeatedly of central importance of “seeing and accepting” in actualizing the “fundamental point.” (Dogen,

2010, p.70) This teaching embraces and adapts the lineage he inherited. With a touch of defiance of traditional understanding, he offers ancient forms with refreshed and invigorated truth and creative, vital immediacy. Dogen shows genius in his ability to dissolve boundaries between conceptual opposites such as integrity and creativity, depth and lightness, body and language in such a way that also dissolves the illusion of a human being as a discrete individual with well-defined heart/mind/body parts that are separate from time and space.

At the very moment of embodying the awesome presence of this practice in body- mind, the timeless original practice is fully accomplished. Thus, the body-mind of this practice is originally realized. (Dogen, 2010, p. 49)

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Dogen presents the Buddhist lineage as a timeless entity. Timelessness is the combining of eternal and momentary truth and embodying it is presence. Such embodiment is one of Dogen’s markers of realizing Buddhist practice. In a Buddhist world-view, unconditioned and conditioned truths are always present. “Seeing and accepting” according to Dogen’s dharma, is to serenely sit within divergent realities. The capacity to see and accept requires skill and deep humility, but not knowledge, in the conventional sense of the word.

Even if I don’t know a single letter, I will be able to show it to others in inexhaustible ways if I devote myself to just sitting and clarifying the great matter. (Eihei Dogen ~ Shobogenzo Zuimonki)

As is typical of his spiritual lineage, Dogen teaches that the enlightened being is a bridge, or link between worlds, much like the view of human being found in a quote from

Joanna Macy that bears repeating:

Cognitive capacity entails an enormously high degree of both integration and differentiation, and these attributes merge in the human who stands as link between organic and social world – or at that point where they appear as such. (Macy, 1991, p. 201)

The Zen lineage consistently teaches a counter cultural message that while the world commonly values knowing, human beings who don’t know bridge worlds and embody truth. This is presence. “The great road lies within this body right now.” (Dogen,

2010, p.43) The human being bridges form and emptiness by embodying mind. “The mind itself is Buddha.” (Dogen, 2010, p.45)

Dogen viewed the body-mind as a natural unity that when fully realized “dropped away.” (Dogen, 2010) Doubting the efficacy of studying texts, his practice moved beyond learning concepts to directly realizing the mind-body, or presence through

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 20 attentional training, and zazen. Dogen expressed great faith in the healing potential of presence:

Shariputra once converted a person outside the way with his awesome presence (in the practice of cleansing.) This is not what the person wanted or what Shariputra tried to achieve, but where the awesome presence of a buddha ancestor was actualized, the practitioner of the crooked teaching surrendered. (Dogen, 2010, p.51)

Dogen taught that, when accomplished, the skills and practices of presence added up to something far beyond the value of their parts. In other words, not-knowing, stillness, awareness, seeing and accepting are not in themselves the fundamental points of the teachings…they are skills that, when maintained, comprise the ground for presence, actualization, or enlightenment. Much like Buddha’s statement that he accomplished enlightenment simultaneously with all beings, Dogen taught that presence is a state of being beyond the effects of wanting or trying in the conventional sense of these words. It is typical of Dogen to point out that while presence is technically not doable, it is realizable and transformative. As was shown previously, paradox, or holding together seemingly inconsistent truths, is consistent with Dogen’s (and the Buddha’s) view of relational enlightenment or presence. His primary teachings of seeing and accepting are foundational practices that support presence; which in his lineage is the capacity to maintain a state of Not Knowing and thus, link worlds by participating and bearing witness to reality directly.

Briefly, it may be helpful to note that Not Knowing or “giving up fixed ideas about self and the universe” comes through again, much later as a guiding principle in a contemporary Western sangha. Not Knowing is the first Tenet of The Zen Peacemaker’s

Order, and is core to this group’s dharma of social action. This tenet also appears as

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 21 practices and principles within the TRM and G.R.A.C.E. models. (The connection is covered in more depth in following sections.)

Dogen’s life as a transmitter of the Buddhist transition from one culture to another foreshadows that of a later member of the Soto lineage, Taizan Maezumi Roshi (1931-

1995). He is another human being who links worlds, with one foot in Japanese culture and tradition and the other in contemporary Western world. as one of the first teachers of the Soto Zen tradition to establish a sangha in the U.S., Maezumi Roshi embodied paradox. His message was one of form and ceremony, but it was grounded in daily life.

Maezumi’s life and teaching resonates with that of Dogen. It was emblematic of Dogen’s poetic and mystical view of embodiment:

Fully engaging body and mind, you intuit dharma intimately (Dogen, 2012, p. 30)

When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others drop away. (Dogen, 2011, p. 20)

Tenet #2: Bearing Witness – emergence.

Taizan Maezumi Roshi: Orderly Living as Cure

The lineage of Buddhist teachings and teachers form a structure that can be described as “nested.” (Joanna Macy, 2009) Taizan Maezumi Roshi’s (1931-1995) form of deeply practicing the simplest of household tasks nests within Dogen’s teachings.

(On Dogen’s Genjo Koan use of the word study):

… the word naran, or “study” is more like “to repeat something over and over and over.” We could also say “to learn” but not necessarily to learn something new. Perhaps an even better word would be practice. To practice the Buddha Way is to practice oneself, or just live life. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 23)

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Some of Dogen’s forms adapted and became what Maezumi Roshi called ceremonial living in domestic life. Maezumi drew the connection between Dogen’s and his own teaching:

When we read about this kind of detailed ceremonial action, it seems almost ridiculous, but Dogen Zenji is serious. This is nothing but enlightened action. It is life itself. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 42)

Maezumi spoke of the importance of not being careless or casual in the act of getting out of bed in the morning. Activities such as washing one’s face were taken as

“seriously” as Dogen’s teachings on “cleansing” because any and all activities are opportunities for enlightenment. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 40) Emphasis on form was, in both

Dogen and Maezumi’s dharmas, another angle from which to explore the Heart Sutra’s wisdom, the play of emptiness and form. Dogen taught “studying oneself” in a variety of radically simple ways to cultivate seeing directly and accepting. The skills of attention and appreciation were reiterated, or adapted slightly into Maezumi Roshi’s “just as you are” teaching:

Just as we are. Just as you are. Just as everything is. How can we appreciate our life in this way? (Maezumi, 2001, p. 16)

As a Japanese formalist, to him ceremonial living was healing practice:

[…] ceremony is an act that cures or heals, or by which something is healed. In having a ceremony in doing ceremonial action, we must ask, what is healed? By what? (Maezumi, 2001, p. 40)

Deepening everyday experience through attention, embodiment, reverence for one’s life, appreciation or presence cured harmful effects of ego, individualism and casualness. He pointed to the fact that “cure” is part of the etymology of the word

“ceremony.” (Maezumi, 2001)

Regarding healing, there are some interesting points to consider. For instance, sickness can be a symptom of disorderliness of the mind, emotion, psyche, body,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 23

whatever. In one way or another, we are all sick until we have become unified and live a balanced life. Of course, we can be physical ill and still live ceremonially, in some balance. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 41)

Although this appears to be an almost entirely individual and inward-looking view, Maezumi Roshi saw that “inward” attention was in truth an act of enlightenment that includes all beings.

Since the life of each of us contains everything, taking care of yourself is taking care of everything else, do you see? (Maezumi, 2001, p. 89)

It was with humility and humor that he invited radical acceptance of our own lives as the WAY.

How do we save all sentient beings? We say that the Bodhisattva’s job is selling water by the river. Isn’t this unnecessary? There is plenty of water in the river for everyone. In fact, we are the water itself, true nature itself! No one needs to buy it, but we don’t believe that our life is the WAY just as it is. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 74)

Please appreciate yourself! This life of each of us is most precious. If you disagree, you are the one who must buy water by the river. This is a very clear- cut, straightforward issue. How can we realize this fact of our life and live it? (Maezumi, 2001, p. 74)

Moving to new environment challenges a system and precipitates adaptive change. Maezumi Roshi moved from Japan to teach in America and had to adjust his teachings to resonate with the environment in which he lived and operated as a spiritual leader. Given the adjustments necessary in such a transition, it seems appropriate that

Maezumi and his teachings would focus on cultivating stability, resiliency and compassion. Change necessitates the “resilience” of a spiritual teacher or chaplain who touches many systems, as Maezumi’s life did. Possibly this stress on his personal system gave rise to his own well-known suffering. Paradoxically, and in keeping with the Zen skill of sitting in divergent realities, even in the midst of struggle (he acknowledged struggling with some addictions) he taught freedom:

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 24

Nothing is binding you. If you feel that something is binding you, what is it? How do you take care of it? (Maezumi, 2001, p. 89)

One by-product of Maezumi’s complex embodiment of Zen was his immediate successor in the lineage, a fiercely intelligent, culturally complex and spiritually playful student, Roshi Bernie Glassman (1939 - ) who stands as another adaptation in the Soto lineage of paradoxical “trickster” figures.

Glassman: The Order of Disorder

If you were to ask me “What is the essence of Buddhism?” I would answer that it’s to awaken. And the function of that awakening is learning how to serve. In most mystical traditions, the role of the mystic – and of the peacemaker – is to make whole. [Glassman then goes on to describe the Jewish term for “peacemaker” and it’s connection to this definition.] (Glassman, 1999, p. 41)

There is symmetry between Maezumi Roshi’s emphasis on curing and Roshi

Bernie Glassman’s expression of the dharma, which, like Maezumi’s, emphasizes curing and healing, and taking care of everything. Zen tradition migrated from being embodied by a Japanese man in a particularly complex cultural and historical situation, to a Jewish

American man with a similarly complex situation. Glassman was a scientist, father and husband and a Western Jewish person practicing an Asian form of religion. Describing these lives in the context of Zen lineage, it would be clumsy to try to assign specific meaning to culture, time, place or being. However, what is clearly significant at this point in the Zen lineage is the degree of change from one generation to the next. Enormous cultural shifts from one man to the other stimulated adaptation at a rate of growth and change in the system that throws the deep consistency and creativity of the Zen lineage into relief.

Systems are not isolated or self-defined. Rather, they form through mutual causation. Just as with any system, environmental or cultural change brings about

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 25 adaptation and diversification within Buddhism. As the first American dharma heir of

Maezumi Roshi, Glassman was aware of the unique position he held in the lineage.

[Glassman on Maezumi Roshi] He had brought the buddhadharma to the West and seen it take root. He knew better than anyone else that if it was to flower, it would have to chart out new courses and develop new ways. He would not be the one to do that, he said, for he was Japanese. (Maezumi, 2001, foreward)

Your life is the life of the Buddha. Here is this country. Right now. [Glassman quoting on his teacher, Maezumi’s words.] (Glassman, 1999)

As a Jewish American raised in Brooklyn, Glassman is clearly very different from his teacher, yet as his teacher implored, he appreciates, realizes and embodies his life as it is. Glassman’s dharma is oriented toward daily tasks and ceremonial living, but his expression of this dharma could not be confused with Maezumi’s style of Japanese formality. He is not inclined toward teaching the act of cleansing in as literal a way as

Dogen and Maezumi did. Glassman points to the ethics of a shared existential kind of karmic cleansing and healing that includes Dogen’s seeing and accepting and Maezumi’s appreciation of one’s own life. He embodies his predecessor’s teachings in a relational form, emphasizing acting from compassion, or love that transforms the suffering of all beings, particularly those whom he refers to as hungry ghosts.

First, invite everyone into your mandala, your field – then you feed them. You feed them the Bodhi-mind, which is compassion…but you also feed them food. There are millions and millions of hungry ghosts and I made a vow to feed all of those aspects. (Glassman, 1999, p.)

He writes an account of his own practice in the book, Bearing Witness,

(Glassman, 1999) in which he describes how the practice of feeding hungry ghosts began on a personal scale within an intimate spiritual community and then in time, grew beyond the Zen community. In his book Instructions to the Cook, (Glassman & Fields, 1996)

Glassman speaks of the need to include all of the ingredients of one’s life in practice. The

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 26 ingredients of his life included urban, American, Jewish, and many other manifestations of “hungry ghosts.” (Hungry ghosts, it is taught within the Buddhist tradition, are spiritual entities who exist in a state of perpetual starvation due to the fact that they are equipped with enormous stomachs and tiny mouths.)

Bearing Witness to suffering on the periphery of society led to the practice of

“street retreats,” in which he and a sangha live on the streets for a period of time, and commit to bearing witness to the invisibility and vulnerability of the homeless community. A more tangible and permanent systemic intervention is Greyston Bakery, founded by Glassman in 1982. This business trains and employs homeless people and others at risk, reintegrating them into community through creative and profitable work.

Greyston Bakery, through its profit generation, is a substantial source of revenue for the Greyston Mandala, supporting affordable childcare for community, affordable housing for homeless and low-income families, and affordable health care for persons with HIV. (Greyston Bakery website, Vision Statement)

It is worth noting that other than the use of the word mandala, there is no explicit mention of Zen teachings on Greyston Bakery’s website. This business bridges not only the Zen tradition and the secular world, but commercial and spiritual worlds, society and a disenfranchised population, by inviting homeless people into meaningful work and community. This upaya of social action resonates with Maezumi’s view that we are healed and everything is taken care of by appreciating our lives. (Maezumi, 2001)

Each of us has all the ingredients of a peacemaker, and these ingredients are nothing other than our lives. Out of the joy and suffering of our lives emerge certain qualities that shine, others that are dim, and still others that are repellent. (Glassman, 1998, p. 186)

Glassman’s radically inclusive Street Retreats, and retreats at sites of the Jewish holocaust are, in some ways, far from Maezumi’s ceremonial form. But in another way,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 27 the intention of these practices goes back to the root of ceremony, which is appreciation, taking care and curing:

Each person, each encounter, is nothing other than the oneness of life, nothing other than him. […] The Buddha is nothing other than the dried-out grass that’s thirsty or the child crossing the street. Having taken the first three vows, we’re in the realm of action. We take care of things. (Glassman, 1998, p. 58)

Glassman’s inclusive ceremony and ethic is an adaptation of ancient teachings on emptiness and form, adapted and manifesting as in a new form. Buddhist social action.

Glassman and his sangha of Peacemakers invoke this ethic and practice with The

Peacemaker Vows and Three Tenets:

Three Treasures of a Zen Peacemaker:

Inviting all creations into the mandala of my practice and vowing to serve them, I take refuge in: Oneness: the awakened nature of all beings Diversity: the ocean of wisdom and compassion Harmony: the interdependence of all creations

Three Tenets of a Zen Peacemaker

Taking refuge and entering the stream of Engaged Spirituality, I vow to live a life of: Not Knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe Bearing Witness to the joy and suffering of the world Loving Actions towards ourselves and others

This section would not be complete without noting Glassman’s warmth and playful nature. He invigorates the dharma of the Heart Sutra, of Dogen and Maezumi by quite literally playing with form and emptiness. Glassman and his American Zen compatriots founded something called the “Order of Disorder” in a move that resembles the tricky and artistic heartmind of Dogen, and (on the surface) appears to (again, literally) thumb its nose at the ceremonial orderliness of Maezumi Roshi. Glassman

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 28 typically signals that he is about to deliver this form-defying dharma by clamping a red rubber ball on the tip of his nose, thus embodying a dharmic clown.

Precepts of the Order of Disorder:

The Three Treasures- Disorder Humor Love

The Three Tenets- Not even Not Knowing Just wait Belly laughter

The Ten Guidelines-

1. Don’t kill anything by taking it seriously

2. Don’t steal anything unless you can get away with it (and you can't)

3. Don’t worry about promiscuity; no one would look twice at you- you clown

4. Don’t lie by pretending to know anything

5. Forget about intoxicants, you are already a mess

6. Laugh at yourself at least as often as you laugh at others

7. If someone makes a fool of themselves, pay your respects and join in the fun

8. If you can, smile. If possible, giggle. Whenever there is a chance, laugh with all your might.

9. Have fun.

10. Don’t laugh at Bernie, Yoowho, or Kuku….

One way in which Glassman embodies this formlessness, this non-separation is to eschew wearing his formal Zen priest robes, a traditional symbol of an ancient hierarchy and indicator of spiritual accomplishment that can impose a false sense of separation.

What I mean by spiritual is to move beyond separations. (Glassman, 1999)

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In his way, Glassman does actualize his lineage with healing presence comprised of play, insight, work, sangha and body. His has cultivated a branch of American Zen that is robust, animated and positively adapted to a particular time and place.

Integrity and creativity, form and emptiness are actualized by the Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Order. In response to those who fear the loss or dissolution of the Zen tradition as its influence bleeds into American secular culture, I offer Glassman as an example of Dogen’s timelessness, a human being who stands as a link, one who embodies his own time and place, while also embodying Zen’s ancient lineage. Another example of this kind of bridging of worlds is that when relying on Jewish and Christian theology to describe and expand the mystic field of healing, his words express his Zen origins most eloquently:

(Glassman on “Christ Communion”) He (Jesus) knew that the wafer lying in the tabernacle was not a symbol but actually was the unity of the world. Some of us intuit this naturally. Sometimes we look at a snowflake, a flower, or a rock resting in the countryside and we see all of life. If we can deeply penetrate just one form of life, we can penetrate life in its totality. Every great artist knows this. (Glassman, 1998, p. 58)

Glassman’s contemporary American Soto Zen is deeply relational, it includes all in the body of realization. Perhaps unlike Buddha, Dogen, Maezumi and other Asian ancestors who lived more circumscribed lives than contemporary Western Zen Buddhists.

Modern Zen is adapting to include all ethnicities, religious orientations, classes, disciplines and species in the mandala of practice. Yet, even in an increasingly complex and diverse world, the nature of skillful action remains intimate, personal, embodied and it is characterized by compassion:

Not just any action, but intimate action. Action that comes out of connection, the knowledge that we are each and every sentient being in the universe. I am his leg and he is my arm. She is my fingers and I am her shoulder. Because we’re so

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connected, we take action. In Buddhism we call such action compassion. Com- passion means with suffering. (Glassman, 58, 1998)

When the entire world is a field of Compassionate Action, then, as a form of self- regulation, the Buddhist system must generate compassion with which to stabilize and heal self and other. This requires flexible and practical tools appropriate for myriad contexts and forms of suffering. Not Knowing (the first tenet of the Peacemaker’s Order) is the first essential tool for intervention. Not Knowing is one such tool, it is a way to prepare and stabilize for resting in continually arising reality. By Not Knowing, we enter into faith in the infinite forms and dharmas that co-create and heal the world:

In order to appreciate the ten thousand dharmas, we should know that although they may look round or square, the other qualities of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; furthermore, other universes lie in all quarters. It is so not only around ourselves but also right here, in a single drop of water. (Dogen ~ Genjo Koan)

Glassman teaches direct participation in the system, his relational emphasis calls us to engage our own deep responsibility by accepting that we have a critical role in creation. Maezumi Roshi had this insight as well, and he puts it this way:

In a way, right here and now, space and time, are all distractions. What makes space and time real? You, your very being as you are gives space and time significance. It is easy for us to understand that without space and time we cannot survive. The reverse is also true. Without our very being, no space, no time, no history, and no world exist. In other words, our very life itself is the process of the creation of the world, of everything. This is what I mean when I tell you all the time to take good care of yourself, according to the position you have and the work that needs to be done. (Maezumi, 2001, p. 89)

Roshi Glassman’s mystic realism takes a “middle path” between paralyzing delusions of excessive responsibility and humility to the point of paralyzing humiliation.

The point of our peacemaking is not to do a perfect job. The point is to bear witness, to offer, to be the offering at each moment. Of itself, the fruit is born. Each of us is that fruit in this wonderful garden that some call the universe. (Glassman, 1998, p. 187)

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In his book Bearing Witness, Roshi Glassman describes his student, founder of the Upaya Zen Center and Upaya Chaplaincy program, Joan Halifax. What makes her exceptional he says, is “her ability to create new upayas, new forms of practice that are needed for this time and place.” While he masters feeding the hungry ghosts of the disenfranchised members of society and those wounded by societal atrocities Halifax discerns and addresses systemic suffering from a number of angles. She is, in part, the fruit of Glassman’s teaching to engage the system at all levels, and she has developed a particular focus on entering through the dharma door of the western medical system.

Tenet #3: Compassionate Action – form.

Roshi Joan Halifax: The G.R.A.C.E. Model of compassion

Thich Nhat Hanh points to the role of compassion in natural systems when describing his student Joan Halifax’s (1942 - ) work and life:

Without suffering, you cannot grow. You cannot realize peace. An organic gardener needs garbage to transform into compost for her roses. We may need suffering to transform into insight, insight into non-duality, insight that leads to compassion. This understanding is at the core of Joan’s work and life. Joan tells us to remove our adornments. Be truth. Go to the Buddha and tell of our suffering. Face our pain with courage and tenderness. Turn also to the world. Turn to it with compassionate action. (T.N.H., 2008)

His words sketch out a Zen view of presence when he identifies Halifax’s quality of being as “truth,” names the elements of presence, “courage and tenderness,” and then links these to compassionate action. This statement acknowledges Halifax’s place in the ancient Zen lineage and affirms her creativity as a woman who occupies her own time.

As a chaplaincy student at Upaya Zen Center, under the guidance of Rohsi

Halifax, this author has found that her interpretation and embodiment of the Zen tradition has much to offer in this regard to the art of offering presence. Just as The Heart Sutra,

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Dogen, Maezumi and Glassman do, Halifax manifests presence and teaches about it utilizing traditional and new upayas. She teaches that presence varied and artful by nature, and she encourages actualizing presence as a systemic intervention on the large scale. With the intention of large scale transformation of suffering, Roshi works with other traditions (including the science tradition) to distill spiritual and neuroscientific insights on the nature of suffering and healing into teachable skills. She and a cohort of collaborators are in the process of showing that skills of embodiment, much like those traditionally cultivated in the zendo, can travel into the secular world and serve to cultivate underlying conditions for compassion.

Maezumi’s and Glassman’s talent for “bridging worlds” (discussed earlier in this paper) manifest in Roshi Halifax as well. Using contemporary means she invents new upayas that link many realms; science and Buddhism, spiritual and work life, body and mind, self and other.

Another example of linking worlds is that she often encourages presence in her students with the words “strong back / soft front.” This teaching links wisdom and compassion in a single resilient body. Resilience is a term used in systems theory to denote the relative health of a system. In the Buddhist system (Yuasa, 1987) (Wngyal,

2002), and in neuroscience as well as in psycho-social profession’s terminology, resilience (Levine & Frederick, 2010) (Lipsky & Burk, 2009) is product of wisdom and compassion that is not toughness or denial of pain, but the clarity and stability to see and accept feedback, and respond appropriately to what is. Further, Halifax’s teachings link compassion and resilience by pointing out that we find ourselves cultivating suffering when we reverse this orientation, presenting a “soft back and strong front.” A soft back

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 33 presents instability and fosters the need for a strongly defended front which prevents wholesome connection and open relationship with the self and the world.

The critical insight of this teaching, that compassion and resilience are linked

(Halifax, 2012) in mutual causality, gave rise to the G.R.A.C.E. model of intervention that Halifax developed in conversation with professional medical care providers. This model serves not only the individual in need of resiliency, but it is also a large scale systemic intervention. The G.R.A.C.E. model works as a systemic intervention because individual people are holons (whole systems onto themselves that mutually arise with other systems) and their own resilience cultivates resilience, wisdom and compassion within the entire network of systems in which they exist.

Medicine (medical care) is a relational field, a social enterprise, a healing technology that is among the enlightened acts that could be the West’s most sophisticated and far reaching contribution to healing the world’s suffering. Within the field of medicine chaplains and other care givers act as holons, with potential to counter the deleterious effect of trauma on the larger living system in which they operate. As individual systems, chaplains and others who serve are in constant negotiation with injury and trauma within themselves, as well as with the suffering of those they encounter within the medical system. Seeing this suffering as a challenge to the potential healing power of the medical field, Roshi Halifax’s G.R.A.C.E. model offers practical skills and practices that help clinicians and chaplains to cultivate the ground for compassionate presence.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 34

Another expression of Halifax’s dharma is the body of chaplains she trains and ordains to work in diverse systems to transform suffering. Their chosen fields include corporate, natural environments, education, detention, prison, gender and sexual justice, etc. Studying and practicing Buddhism and natural systems theory helps chaplains to see the complex reality of suffering and how it is potentially exacerbated or healed through a connected mind/body relationship and in relationship with the entire world.

Zen is not a solitary practice. As we chant at the end of our liturgy, “May we realize the Buddha Way together.” Sitting with others, studying with others, working with others, talking with others—all these are integral to the life of Zen. (Halifax, Upaya Zen Center Web Site)

Upaya chaplaincy as a holon.

Ungan asked Dogo, "What use does the great Bodhisattva of Compassion make of all those hands and eyes?" Dogo said, "It is like a person straightening the pillow with outstretched hands in the middle of the night." Ungan said, "I have understood." Dogo said, "How do you understand?" Ungan said, "All over the whole body is hands and eyes." Dogo said, "You have had your say, but you have only given eight tenths of the truth." Ungan said, "How would you put it?" Dogo said, "Throughout the whole body is hands and eyes." (Traditional Zen Koan)

At Upaya Zen Center, chaplaincy students learn that compassion is a response that originates in the body. One way in which this is conveyed is through teachings on the heart, ears, hands and eyes of Avalokiteshvaral, the hearer of the cries of the world, and chanting this liturgy:

Ten Line Sutra of Avalokiteshvara's Boundless Life

1. Avalokiteshvara, Perceiver of the cries of the world, takes refuge in Buddha, will be a Buddha, helps all to be Buddhas, is not separate from Buddha, Dharma, Sangha— being eternal, intimate, pure and joyful. In the morning, be one with Avalokiteshvara, In the evening, be one with Avalokiteshvara,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 35

whose heart, moment by moment, arises, whose heart, moment by moment remains!

Halifax teaches that the body of this compassionate being is the world. All bodies, when awakened by wisdom, hear, see, feel and act as a world of compassion, with as natural a response as the hand reaching to adjust the pillow beneath the head. This teaching resonates with the teachings of: Dogen, “see and accept” Maezumi Roshi, “by appreciating our life, we take care of everything;” and Glassman Roshi, “including all in the mandala of practice.”

Upaya Chaplains commit to awakening themselves and participating skillfully in the body of wisdom and compassion. This model of Buddhist service is the path of Roshi

Halifax, who offer the G.R.A.C.E. model, a body-based technique that helps care providers embody a “strong back/soft front” model of care. The skills practiced within this model increase somatic awareness, stability and regulation, cultivating the ground from which compassion naturally arises (Halifax, 2011).

There is growing research and academic evidence in the numerous fields of study

(Kerr et al., 2012) (Blechert et al., 2007) that skills such as those taught in the TRM and

G.R.A.C.E. models that cultivate somatic awareness, or presence, are literally transformative and healing. The TRM and G.R.A.C.E. models offer sets of portable skills for unifying mind/body that are not only beginning to be recognized by modern science, but are also deeply linked with Dogen’s ancient view of healing. Interpreting or weighing the healing value of these models from the perspectives of natural systems, neuroscience

(Kerr, Sacchet, Lazar, Moore, & Jones, 2012) and the Buddhist traditions affirms that they are indeed “skillful means” and genuine contemporary upayas.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 36

Moving beyond these models of intervention to the chaplains themselves as healing presence, there is now evidence-based research (see Appendix 4) suggesting that the presence of a chaplain in a medical setting likely positively affects medical outcome.

Given this evidence, one could reasonably extrapolate that there are a variety of contexts in which Upaya Chaplains can not only offer presence, but teach the skills and practices that comprise it. Presence (and the tools that teach related skills) could potentially benefit all relational institutions, such as schools, military units and prisons. In counseling relationships, therapists and clients can learn and practice these skills to support well- being within individuals and families suffering from post traumatic symptoms, substance abuse and other forms of domestic violence and systemic dysfunction.

A primary goal of this paper was to help Buddhist chaplains recognize TRM and

G.R.A.C.E. as tools consistent with Zen’s deep well of wisdom and compassion. Peering into this well, we see the Zen lineage is, itself, a system. The following description maps how the each member of the Zen lineage discussed in this paper is a holon of the Zen system. Each is born out of previous manifestations of the dharma in a linear progression, but they also exist in mutual relationship with each other, in a dynamic of mutual causation. (Macy, 1991)

Viewing small portion of the Zen lineage as a natural systems nesting structure

(Koestler, 1969) (Joanna Macy, 2009), we can see that Upaya Chaplains who choose to serve a variety of secular settings, nest in and inform Roshi Halifax’s natural systems theory and G.R.A.C.E. model which, in turn, nests in and informs Glassman Roshi’s ethical system of The Three Tenets of the Peacemaker, which, in turn, nests in and informs Maezumi Roshi’s living a ceremonial life, which in turn, nests in and informs

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Dogen’s seeing and accepting that mind itself is Buddha, which in turn, nests in and informs the non-dual view of form and emptiness dancing as The Sutra on the Heart of

Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom. This is an entire, mutually arising system of wisdom and compassion that gives rise to the Upaya Chaplains and the contemporary models of healing that they employ. The hope here is that affirming the deep roots of models chaplains may choose to utilize serves the authenticity and spiritual depth of Buddhist chaplaincy in practice.

The next section is a set of quotes from four Upaya Chaplaincy program students who trained in TRM. (See Appendix 5) These are the chaplain’s own creative ideas about how this contemporary form aligns with and draws from the Three Tenets of the

Peacemaker Order:

TRM and Three Tenets of Zen Peacemaker Order / Response to Author’s Prompt:

“Do you see links between the TRM Level II training and the Three Tenets of the

Peacemaker’s Order? What are they and how might you utilize TRM in your work

as a chaplain?”

Response 1

As a practitioner – approaching the work from a place of Not Knowing helps to be able to stay behind the client. And the importance of the role is to help the client know his or her own sensations – so it doesn't even help to know. The language reflects Not Knowing – invitation to sense something or not, say something, or not – Totally staying in Not Knowing what's best for the client. I'm able to stay behind by Bearing Witness – the tracking is a concrete Bearing Witness practice. Being with the client – sensing some similar energy in the field – experiencing interconnectedness is also part of Bearing Witness. And only out of that comes the healing action – girded by the client responding with titration, shift and stay, pendulation – intensification. Intensification really promotes healing.

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And truly, I doubt that I would have been able to complete the program without learning how to use the model to regulate my own activation, a wonderful asset to chaplaincy.

As a client it's amazing to be in Not Knowing with sensations of the body – to see what happens next. A pleasant sensation turns quickly into sadness or grief. Grief then turns into tenderness – and by being girded to not know and explore sensations, the knowing comes. It's an empowering practice to bear witness to one's own internal continuum and know someone is also Bearing Witness to you. Intensifies the healing action that naturally arises in the body. All of this strengthens the capacity to be a healing presence to others. (Mary Zinkin, Upaya Chaplain Cohort 3)

Response 2

Not Knowing

The entire TRM process takes place in “Not Knowing” from both the facilitator and client sides. “Not Knowing” is really “non-self” totally open to whatever arises. In TRM “arisings” occur in both practitioner and client.

Bearing Witness

To me, “Bearing Witness” is the relational field of “Not Knowing.” B-W is subject/object pendulation. While in the field of “Not Knowing.” Observation is with the whole body, so the resonant field is around and within both people.

Compassionate Action

In my view is simply an energetic arising out of Not Knowing in the field of Bearing Witness. The action (speech) simply manifests out of the body of one or both of the TRM participants. (Steven Spiro, Upaya Chaplain Cohort 3)

Response 3

The Trauma Resiliency Model is an embodied practice of the Three Tenets of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Compassionate Action. Unlike traditional forms of therapy, TRM is based on the practitioner waiting and following the wisdom of the body as evidenced in the client’s movement and feedback. The practitioner is basically a mirror for whatever the client brings to the experience; it is her job to not have an agenda, to “not know” what anything means and to not ascribe meaning. As she asks the client to notice what is happening somatically, she is to simply bear witness to what arises – joy, sorrow, pain – as it is located in the body. Healing happens when the practitioner as loving observer simply reflects back and reminds the client to find the wisdom that is right inside his or herself. What a relief, not to have to “do” anything but be present, be behind the client, and be ready for a miracle. (Phyllis Coletta, Upaya Chaplain Cohort 3)

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Response 4

Essentially we were mimicking the three tenets of the Peacemaker order – Bernie, in his website, describes Bearing Witness as the capacity to stay in Not Knowing. Laurie reminds us over and over not to make assumptions, i.e. (“ I see your eyes are moist, are you feeling sad?”) and to guard ourselves closely from those nuanced assumptions that insidiously creep in to our thinking, conversations/questions and perceptions.

From this position in TRM, as in our everyday life, from Not Knowing and Bearing Witness, Loving Action naturally arises. Bearing Witness is the capacity to stay in Not Knowing – the big pause – and from that Not Knowing, loving (healing) action naturally arises.

We know after having settled ourselves into a resonance with the “other” what is the next right move. We often instinctively know (or in collaboration with the client) what the loving/healing action is that follows in both in the tenets and in TRM.

On Bernie’s website he reminds us that when entering into the stream of socially Engaged Spirituality, these tenets are an orientation in which we move toward transforming service into spiritual practice; suspending separation and hierarchy, opening to direct encounters between equals as the spirit and style of the services. This could be a description of TRM but doing so through a different medium, i.e. using the body and imagery to heal itself.

From Bernie’s web site:

“Not-knowing drops our conceptual framework from very personal biases and assumptions to such concepts as "in and out" "good and bad" "name and form," "coming and going." Not Knowing is a state of open presence without separation.” (Glassman, 2003-09)

TRM calls for the exact same quality of being but in a different context and with different language. While Bernie is talking about a global perspective and spiritual practice, TRM is talking about letting the client lead, staying ½ step behind the client, etc.

“Witness, the second Tenet, merging or joining with an individual, situation or environment, deeply imbibing their essence. From this intimate "knowing," we can then choose an appropriate response to the person or situation, described as "taking Loving Actions," our third Tenet.” (Glassman, 2003-09)

TRM’s language is about grounding, resourcing, resonance, and titrating but very syntonic with Bernie’s Three Tenets. Many of the steps in TRM cannot be seen as separate practices (like the Three Tenets) except only in the very discriminating mind. They are, like the tenets, a continual flow, all containing and giving rise to the others. TRM 2 did not feel like much new information except for orienting,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 40

which is helping someone break a repeating pattern in their life, but rather like a deeper integration of TRM philosophy with the entire Buddhist approach.

I would suggest that consideration be given to making her work mandatory, if only for the personal use of the chaplains themselves. (Claire Willis, Upaya Chaplain Cohort 4)

The preceding four quotations are a representational sample of the eight students sampled. All students surveyed found TRM valuable as a tool for implementing their work as Buddhist chaplains. All respondents described connections between TRM and the Three Tenets and/or other core Zen foundations.

Conclusion

This paper seeks to articulate the nature of “presence” or embodiment as it is taught and realized in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage. Using the lens of natural systems theory, the thesis identified components, skills and practices associated with presence and confirmed its function as a systemic intervention. To model the dynamic nature of presence as it is articulated and embodied within the lineage, the paper touched on a progression of Zen teachings and teachers; The Heart Sutra on Realizing Wisdom

Beyond Wisdom, Dogen, Maezumi Roshi, Glassman Roshi, Halifax Roshi, Upaya

Chaplains. The final aim of the paper was to establish two contemporary models of care, the Trauma Resiliency Model and the G.R.A.C.E. model of compassion as upayas.

The paper offered Upaya Chaplain student’s confirmation that the TRM model is a tool that is consistent with the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemaker, and as further confirmation of its utility in a secular hospital setting, the following comments were received by email from Ron Hindelang, the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) supervisor

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 41 at Brigham and Women's Hospital following a TRM staff training implemented by the author.

In ministering to patients and their families, our hospital chaplains experience a great deal of secondary trauma and expend great emotional and spiritual energy to provide care and spiritual sustenance. The Trauma Resiliency Model encourages them to have a "strong back and a soft front." Both are necessary: having a strong back helps them weather the storm and then have the resiliency to replenish their own spirits so that continued care for others is possible. Having a soft front is also necessary: it is the hospitality of evident compassion that they caringly express to others that wins the confidence of others to enter in and share their stories and their concerns.

The Trauma Resiliency Model teaches our chaplain residents and interns to listen to the sensations and feedback from their own bodies, to process these with a caring colleague and thus provide themselves healing self-care in the midst of all the care they offer to others. It is this healing self-care that replenishes their spirits. This model, while perhaps most evidently aligned with Buddhism, incorporates the wisdom and mystical traditions of many religions and spiritualities to help caregivers attend to their own bodies and spirits and hear the life-giving wisdom spoken in sensations, feelings, dreams, etc. The wisdom of the spirit comes not only through sages of long ago but also through our own bodies and spirits when we are quiet enough to listen and attend. The TRM has given the Clinical Pastoral Education residents and interns an important resource for self-care. The fruits of this replenishes their own spirits and then the abundance is available to flow out to patients, families, interdisciplinary staff and colleagues in ministry. (Ronald Hindelang, 2013)

The supervisor’s comments summarize nicely the benefits of TRM in the medical setting. It is the author’s sincere belief that the G.R.A.C.E. model is equally beneficial, that both models are upayas, and spiritually consistent with the Soto Zen lineage and

Upaya chaplaincy training. This paper was written in deep appreciation for the Soto Zen lineage and the entire body of teachings and beings who embody wisdom and compassion. Out of love for the profession of chaplaincy and the Buddhist spiritual teachings in the area of embodiment and presence, the author’s heart felt intention is that this paper will serve chaplains (particularly the new body of Buddhist chaplains). May the spiritual caregiver’s call to offer presence be (somewhat) demystified by this offering

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 42 of skills and practices that enhance and deepen wisdom, compassion and resilience within the chaplain and throughout the systems they serve.

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BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 46

Appendices

Appendix 1

Introduction to TRM excerpted from Trauma Resilience Institute website.

The Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM) is designed to stabilize the human nervous system and to reduce and/or prevent the symptoms of traumatic stress It is an integrative mind-body intervention, which focuses on the biological basis of trauma and the automatic defensive ways the body responds to threat and fear. TRM emphasizes that human responses to threat are primarily instinctive and biological.

After a traumatic experience, there can be a cascade of physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and spiritual responses. TRM explains these common responses from a biological perspective, which reframes the human experience from what is often one of shame and pathology to one of hope and biology. TRM is a comprehensive treatment that offers concrete and practical skills coupled with education about the biology of trauma. TRM's goal is to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of trauma by returning the body and mind back to balance. TRM can be used to treat any person who has experienced or witnessed any event that was perceived as life threatening or posed a serious injury to themselves or to others. It is helpful for workers in the front lines after traumatic events as it can reduce vicarious traumatic reactions and be used for self-care.

TRM is based upon the laws of nature, human anatomy and physiology, current research about the brain and somatic based therapies like Jane Ayres Sensory Integration

Theory, Eugene Gendlin's Focusing and Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing.

TRM has been used internationally in projects in Thailand, Rwanda, Kenya, and in March 2010, Haiti; projects are in development in Gaza and Kuwait. TRM has been

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 47 used domestically within the United States in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and

Rita, in the Department of Behavioral Health of San Bernardino County and the firestorms in Southern California. TRM's trainings were co-sponsored by the World

Health Organization in China's Sichuan Province, the site of the devastating May 12,

2008 earthquake.

Appendix 2

Few teachers talk about the place of emotions in the classroom. In the introductory chapter of this book I talk about my longing that a classroom be an exciting place. If we are all emotionally shutdown, how can there be any excitement about ideas? When we bring our passion to the classroom our collective passions come together, and there is often an emotional response, one that can overwhelm. The restrictive, repressive classroom ritual insists that emotional responses have no place. Whenever emotional responses erupt, many of us believe our academic purpose has been diminished. To me this is really a distorted notion of intellectual practice, since the underlying assumption is that to be truly intellectual we must be cut off from our emotions.[…] If we focus not just on whether the emotions produce pleasure or pain, but on how they keep us aware or alert, we are reminded that they enhance classrooms. (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress)

The story that follows recalls an occasion on which having had such an education would have been helpful. This event occurred about 3 years ago, after I had been in graduate school for a while. I was working in “the field,” as a Hospital chaplain. By this time I had learned a bit about Buddhist views of reincarnation, and the process of dying through studying philosophy, cosmology, and Buddhist views on suffering. However, I had not had the opportunity to focus on Buddhist interpretations of the mind/body relationship. During and after this event I realized that I lacked grounding in ritual and practice, specifically related to death and dying, that would have helped me to be more present during (and to make meaning after) the experience I had. Because I had no

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 48 personal relationship with a Buddhist teacher who might provide guidance, I suddenly felt very much out on a limb ethically, professionally and spiritually.

My intention is to present an example of why it is important for students of ministry to engage in a more complete form of study than we currently have available at

Harvard. Practice and theory must be strongly linked (if not inseparably linked) in order for “learned” ministers to function effectively. In this case, I hope that I was the only one who suffered the consequences for my lack of understanding, I could cite others where I am sure I was not.

Autopsy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Our CPE (clinical pastoral education) group was offered the opportunity to attend an autopsy as part of our training. I and three other students (Quaker, Anglican, and

Jewish) were interested. Weeks later, we were notified that a patient had died of unknown causes with a great deal of abdominal pain. The hospital was performing an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

A Catholic priest (one of the chaplains on staff) was to come with us. We met right off the main lobby of the hospital in the chaplaincy office and walked together deep into the bowels of the hospital. We went down several floors and through a labyrinth of beige hallways that all looked alike. To me the atmosphere began to feel as though we were well below the surface of the earth and I had a sense of the enormous weight of the hospital hovering over us, unlike any of the times I had gone into the basement to visit living patients. Finally we walked through an unmarked door into what seemed like a large, well lit, supply room. Someone handed us scrubs to cover our clothes, we were told to wear shoe covers and masks as well.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 49

After becoming anonymous behind our blue suits and masks, we met the technician, a silent young man who would perform the procedure, meaning, he would dismantle the body. A young doctor was also present. She told us that she was there to supervise the technician and to study and weigh various parts of the body, while recording her findings into a Dictaphone. Rock music came from the next room.

Together, we passed through another door, into what became loud rock music.

The room was a cross between a huge storage closet, a high school science lab, and a morgue. There were walls of shelves all around us, tightly packed from the floor to the ceiling with large transparent plastic containers. All of our eyebrows shot up (that’s all we could see of each other at the moment) as we realized the containers were filled with neatly sliced human brains. The walls, floor, ceiling and brains were all beige. One wall had a large pair of stainless steel sinks and the kind of scale you would see in delicatessen. In the center of the room was a stainless steel table, with deep gutters around the edges. Fluorescent lights lighted everything. At this point, the only color was us, bright blue from head to toe, eyes becoming punctuation marks as we checked in with each other silently.

I noticed the chill in the room as my eyes fell on the naked body of an older middle-aged woman, with only a sheet resting lightly over her. Her skin was the nearly the color of our skin. At that point I realized that I had been expecting a cadaver, a body that had been processed, like the frogs, worms and piglets I had dissected in high school and college. I had envisioned a grey, stiff, rubbery looking, body. Instead, I was confronted with what looked like a sleeping woman. Her hands and forearms were exposed, so I had the impulse to reach over and cover her, to keep her warm. She had

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 50 died just 12 hours earlier, and her body still had the look of life about it. One of my classmates leaned forward to read the tag hanging from her toe, looked up at me and said,

“I know her, I visited her this week.” I thought, “Oh man…this is really a whole new thing…there’s nothing normal for me to compare this to that will protect me.” I also wondered how my classmate could stay, but it didn’t seem to occur to him to leave.

As the technician approached her/the body our group stood about five feet away in a circle around the two of them. I tried to conjure up where I had been just minutes before, in the bustling newly renovated lobby of a busy hospital. I suppose part of me was looking for some larger context, some distance. It was impossible to find though. Another part of me was in a state of attention and focus that I had experienced only in fleeting moments before. Once I understood that the rest of the world would not exist for the next few hours, I became a bunch of senses. Eyes, ears, nose and another sense that I can’t name, were all on alert. Also, I felt insights were coming on, and that there would be no way to avoid them, even if I had wanted to. I was committed to going along for the ride.

We watched as the flesh of this woman’s torso was scored, peeled and (with some effort) pulled away from her torso. Her breasts were lifted from her rib cage and draped over her face. Even as the sight of this contortion dumbfounded me, I noticed my impulse to reach out and lift her flesh from her face, to allow her to breath. The details of the autopsy were astounding. The body was at once sacred and just a hunk of inanimate matter, an empty vessel. The force it takes to dismantle a human body is huge. I watched a strong young man struggle with the parts of this older woman as if he were ripping apart a well built house, not only with his bare hands, but with some hefty power tools.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 51

My eyes kept drifting to her hands At times she/the body was roughly jostled and

I would catch a glimpse of her hands lifting, or her fingers shifting from the force, and think, “She is resisting, or protesting. Her hand was being stroked and held by a loved one yesterday, she was holding a cup of water with those fingers.”

This is when that other sense, the one I can’t name, became very strong. I suddenly noticed that in my mind I had been talking to this woman, since we had come into the room. I noticed this now because I had begun apologizing to her. I was feeling tremendous responsibility, regret and even shame for allowing her body to be treated this way. Also, I became aware of some kind of pull, what you sometimes feel when someone is watching you from behind, only much stronger. I had to restrain myself from looking up into a corner of the ceiling, where the pull seemed to be coming from. I eventually did glance up and internally apologize a few more times. I was surprised at the strong impression building in me that she was aware of what was being done to her body, and that she was dismayed, disoriented, and hurt by it. With my heart (sounds odd, but that’s where the sensation was) I tried to reassure her, I tried to persuade her to go away from this scene, to go where she might feel at home again.

For four hours we watched as the entire body was methodically taken to pieces and each of the internal organs was removed, and weighed. The inside of the body is brilliant, and we saw each and every part in vivid color. At intervals I thought things like,

“Oh! So that’s where that is, no wonder it hurts when I do that. I never knew it was so big, and so near this other thing…Wow, that heart has been beating for almost seventy years without stopping…So, when you pull on that, all those things move too! Incredible!

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 52

This design is unbelievable, and everybody gets one! It is so hard to imagine that the world has created so many of these!”

Then I would apologize to her/ the body for the wonder I felt as I watched the destruction. I felt as though my education was at her expense. Meanwhile, my Quaker colleague was fully engaged in her wonder, she moved right in and got her face up close, asking questions in a very clinical tone. For her there was no sense of lingering life here.

She had no doubt that we were with only a body, a miraculous thing in itself, with no other remainder of the person who had been alive yesterday. I was impressed with her confidence, but also found myself apologizing for it. I told her/the body that it did seem to us that she was not here, and that if we knew she was still around, we wouldn’t do this.

I wondered if I should leave, but then I thought, “If she is here, and I’m the only one talking to her, she might really get upset.” Then I became of a constant background thought which was, “Have I lost my mind?”

Finally it was time to approach the head, it seemed appropriate that this be the last part of the body to be examined. It felt climactic somehow. I found that it felt too hypocritical to apologize to someone whose face is being turned inside out. It felt to me as if an accusation was coming from the corner of the ceiling. So, I did step into the next room as the face was scored and peeled back from the head. Somehow not watching this part seemed to ameliorate the crime a bit, but I was aware of the possibility that I was just too ashamed to remain present.

When I came back the technician had started up a hand held power saw. He scored the circumference of the skull. He then took out a chisel and small crow bar, and attempted to knock and pry the top of the skull off. It was not coming easily, and we all

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 53

(the students) began to nervously mumble to each other about pickle jars, and the like.

When the technician resorted to leaning with all of his might against the crow bar, I caught myself as my arms went up to assist him! I was actually going to try to help pry this woman’s skull apart! My classmates chuckled at my visible reflex, and jokingly asked me if I could hold the brain while he snipped it free. Feeling that I was about to either turn into a hysterically laughing mess, or was going to openly speak to the entity I felt watching from the corner…I knew that I had to pull myself back into the group, and I began to quietly talk to those around me about their experiences.

With the exception of that bit of a break in form at the end, the people present were composed and, although it seems odd to say given the circumstances, the body was treated with respect the entire time I was there. She/it was covered with a drape whenever possible, and we were all very quiet and reverent throughout the process…. It was a fantastic and profound exploration that felt, on one hand, like an act of reverence and on the other, like an assault on sacred territory. Time did a “contraction expansion” thing that makes hours feel like days and like moments, at the same time.

A Buddhist funerary practice I learned of later is that a dead body is not touched, or is touched very little, for several days. This is because death is defined differently in this tradition than in the Western Medical tradition. Death is not simply the end of perceived bodily functions, but is something more protracted and complex. Given this experience, and others with patients on the verge of death, I am inclined to believe that the Buddhists have psychological and spiritual insight into how professional chaplains might manage this situation with great skill.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 54

I then asked myself, how does one who has confidence in Buddhist teachings behave ethically within the Western medical context? and pursued answers in the academic and spiritual institutions to this question. I still carry some moral distress, and doubt as to whether or not it was ethically right for me to have participated at all in the autopsy.

In order to contemplate these experiences, and to make meaning of them within my role as a chaplain, I engaged in a purposefully integrated education in Buddhist thought and practice. Further, I propose that it is tremendously helpful when these questions and challenges are directly understood by the instructor , and that skills related to this kind of spiritual encounter be a foundation for ministry.

While an academic background is helpful, as a chaplain or minister, it is not ultimately enough to have philosophical, or cosmological theory to draw from. Chaplains need to cultivate mental, psychological, physical and spiritual tools and practices for this work. The new and strange sense of communication in which I was engaged during the autopsy were essential to my work as an end of life caregiver and they called me into acquiring new skills to develop deep stability and presence.

Appendix 3

Some general properties of self-regulating open hierarchic order.

(SOHO) (Arthur Koestler, 1969)

Note

The idea of the "holon" was introduced by Arthur Koestler in The Ghost in the

Machine (1967) and was presented again at the Alpbach Symposium (1968) in a paper titled: Beyond Atomism and Holism - the concept of the holon. The "holon" represents a

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 55 very interesting way to overcome the dichotomy between parts and wholes and to account for both the self-assertive and the integrative tendencies of an organism.

The following text is the Appendix to the intervention at the Alpbach Symposium, whose acts were published in 1969 as a book edited by Arthur Koestler and J. R.

Smythies with the title Beyond Reductionism.

1. The holon

1.1 The organism in its structural aspect is not an aggregation of elementary parts, and

in its functional aspects not a chain of elementary units of behaviour.

1.2 The organism is to be regarded as a multi-levelled hierarchy of semi-autonomous

sub-wholes, branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. Sub-wholes on

any level of the hierarchy are referred to as holons.

1.3 Parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist in the domains of life. The

concept of the holon is intended to reconcile the atomistic and holistic approaches.

1.4 Biological holons are self-regulating open systems which display both the

autonomous properties of wholes and the dependent properties of parts. This

dichotomy is present on every level of every type of hierarchic organization, and is

referred to as the "Janus phenomenon".

1.5 More generally, the term "holon" may be applied to any stable biological or social

sub-whole which displays rule-governed behaviour and/or structural Gestalt-

constancy. Thus organelles and homologous organs are evolutionary holons;

morphogenetic fields are ontogenetic holons; the ethologist's "fixed action-

patterns" and the sub-routines of acquired skills are behavioural holons; phonemes,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 56

morphemes, words, phrases are linguistic holons; individuals, families, tribes,

nations are social holons.

2. Dissectibility

2.1 Hierarchies are "dissectible" into their constituent branches, on which the holons

form the nodes; the branching lines represent the channels of communication and

control.

2.2 The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is a measure of its "depth", and

the number of holons on any given level is called its "span" (Herbert Simon).

3. Rules and strategies

3.1 Functional holons are governed by fixed sets of rules and display more or less

flexible strategies.

3.2 The rules - referred to as the system's canon - determine its invariant properties, its

structural configuration and/or functional pattern.

3.3 While the canon defines the permissible steps in the holon's activity, the strategic

selection of the actual step among permissible choices is guided by the

contingencies of the environment.

3.4 The canon determines the rules of the game, strategy decides the course of the

game.

3.5 The evolutionary process plays variations on a limited number of canonical themes.

The constraints imposed by the evolutionary canon are illustrated by the

phenomena of homology, homeoplasy, parallelism, convergence and the loi du

balancement (Geoffroy de St. Hilaire).

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 57

3.6 In ontogeny, the holons at successive levels represent successive stages in the

development of tissues. At each step in the process of differentiation, the genetic

canon imposes further constraints on the holon's developmental potentials, but it

retains sufficient flexibility to follow one or another alternative developmental

pathway, within the range of its competence, guided by the contingencies of the

environment.

3.7 Structurally, the mature organism is a hierarchy of parts within parts. Its

"dissectibility" and the relative autonomy of its constituent holons are demonstrated

by transplant surgery.

3.8 Functionally, the behaviour of organisms is governed by "rules of the game" which

account for its coherence, stability and specific pattern.

3.9 Skills, whether inborn or acquired, are functional hierarchies, with sub-skills as

holons, governed by sub-rules.

4. Integration and self-assertion

4.1 Every holon has the dual tendency to preserve and assert its individuality as a

quasi-autonomous whole; and to function as an integrated part of an (existing or

evolving) larger whole. This polarity between the Self-Assertive (S-A) and

Integrative (INT) tendencies is inherent in the concept of hierarchic order; and a

universal characteristic of life.

The S-A tendencies are the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the INT

tendencies of its partness.

4.2 An analogous polarity is found in the interplay of cohesive and separative forces in

stable inorganic systems, from atoms to galaxies.

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 58

4.3 The most general manifestation of the INT tendencies is the reversal of the Second

Law of Thermodynamics in open systems feeding on negative entropy (Erwin

Schrödinger), and the evolutionary trend towards "spontaneously developing states

of greater heterogeneity and complexity" (C. J. Herrick).

4.4 Its specific manifestations on different levels range from the symbiosis of

organelles and colonial animals, through the cohesive forces in herds and flocks, to

the integrative bonds in insect states and Primate societies. The complementary

manifestations of the S-A tendencies are competition, individualism, and the

separative forces of tribalism, nationalism, etc.

4.5 In ontogeny, the polarity is reflected in the docility and determination of growing

tissues.

4.6 In adult behaviour, the self-assertive tendency of functional holons is reflected in

the stubbornness of instinct rituals (fixed action-patterns), of acquired habits

(handwriting, spoken accent), and in the stereotyped routines of thought; the

integrative tendency is reflected in flexible adaptations, improvisations, and

creative acts which initiate new forms of behaviour.

4.7 Under conditions of stress, the S-A tendency is manifested in the aggressive-

defensive, adrenergic type of emotions, the INT tendency in the self-transcending

(participatory, identificatory) type of emotions.

4.8 In social behaviour, the canon of a social holon represents not only constraints

imposed on its actions, but also embodies maxims of conduct, moral imperatives

and systems of value.

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5. Triggers and scanners

5.1 Output hierarchies generally operate on the trigger-release principle, where a

relatively simple, implicit or coded signal releases complex, preset mechanisms.

5.2 In phylogeny, a favourable gene-mutation may, through homeorhesis (Conrad

Waddington) affect the development of a whole organ in a harmonious way.

5.3 In ontogeny, chemical triggers (enzymes, inducers, hormones) release the genetic

potentials of differentiating tissues.

5.4 In instinctive behaviour, sign-releasers of a simple kind trigger off Innate Releasive

Mechanisms (Lorenz).

5.5 In the performance of learnt skills, including verbal skills, a generalized implicit

command is spelled out in explicit terms on successive lower echelons which, once

triggered into action, activate their sub-units in the appropriate strategic order,

guided by feedbacks.

5.6 A holon on the n level of an output-hierarchy is represented on the (n + l) level as a

unit, and triggered into action as a unit. A holon, in other words, is a system of

relata which is represented on the next higher level as a relatum.

5.7 In social hierarchies (military, administrative), the same principles apply.

5.8 Input hierarchies operate on the reverse principle; instead of triggers, they are

equipped with "filter"-type devices (scanners, "resonators", classifiers) which strip

the input of noise, abstract and digest its relevant contents, according to that

particular hierarchy's criteria of relevance. "Filters" operate on every echelon

through which the flow of information must pass on its ascent from periphery to

centre, in social hierarchies and in the nervous system.

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5.9 Triggers convert coded signals into complex output patterns. Filters convert

complex input patterns into coded signals. The former may be compared to digital-

to-analogue converters, the latter to analogue-to-digital converters (Miller, G. A.,

Galanter, E. and Pribram, K. H., Plans and the Structure of Behaviour, 1960).

5.10 In perceptual hierarchies, filtering devices range from habituation and the efferent

control of receptors, through the constancy phenomena, to pattern-recognition in

space or time, and to the decoding of linguistic and other forms of meaning.

5.11 Output hierarchies spell, concretize, particularize. Input hierarchies digest, abstract,

generalize.

6. Arborization and reticulation

6.1 Hierarchies can be regarded as "vertically" arborizing structures whose branches

interlock with those of other hierarchies at a multiplicity of levels and form

"horizontal" networks: arborization and reticulation are complementary principles

in the architecture of organisms and societies.

6.2 Conscious experience is enriched by the cooperation of several perceptual

hierarchies in different sense-modalities, and within the same sense-modality.

6.3 Abstractive memories are stored in skeletonized form, stripped of irrelevant detail,

according to the criteria of relevance of each perceptual hierarchy.

6.4 Vivid details of quasi-eidetic clarity are stored owing to their emotive relevance.

6.5 The impoverishment of experience in memory is counteracted to some extent by

the cooperation in recall of different perceptual hierarchies with different criteria of

relevance.

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6.6 In sensory-motor coordination, local reflexes are short-cuts on the lowest level, like

loops connecting traffic streams moving in opposite directions on a highway.

6.7 Skilled sensory-motor routines operate on higher levels through networks of

proprioceptive and exteroceptive feedback loops within loops, which function as

servo-mechanisms and keep the rider on his bicycle in a state of self-regulating,

kinetic homeostasis.

6.8 While in S-R theory the contingencies of environment determine behaviour, in

O.H.S. theory they merely guide, correct and stabilize pre-existing patterns of

behaviour (P. Weiss).

6.9 While sensory feedbacks guide motor activities, perception in its turn is dependent

on these activities, such as the various scanning motions of the eye, or the

humming of a tune in aid of its auditory recall. The perceptual and motor

hierarchies are so intimately co-operating on every level that to draw a categorical

distinction between "stimuli" and "responses" becomes meaningless; they have

become "aspects of feed-back loops" (Miller et al.).

6.10 Organisms and societies operate in a hierarchy of environments, from the local

environment of each holon to the "total field", which may include imaginary

environments derived from extrapolation in space and time.

7. Regulation channels

7.1 The higher echelons in a hierarchy are not normally in direct communication with

lowly ones, and vice versa; signals are transmitted through "regulation channels",

one step at a time.

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7.2 The pseudo-explanations of verbal behaviour and other human skills as the

manipulation of words, or the chaining of operants, leaves a void between the apex

of the hierarchy and its terminal branches, between thinking and spelling.

7.3 The short-circuiting of intermediary levels by directing conscious attention at

processes which otherwise function automatically, tends to cause disturbances

ranging from awkwardness to psychosomatic disorders.

8. Mechanization and freedom

8.1 Holons on successively higher levels of the hierarchy show increasingly complex,

more flexible and less predictable patterns of activity, while on successive lower

levels we find increasingly mechanized, stereotyped and predictable patterns.

8.2 All skills, whether innate or acquired, tend with increasing practice to become

automatized routines. This process can be described as the continual transformation

of "mental" into "mechanical" activities.

8.3 Other things being equal, a monotonous environment facilitates mechanization.

8.4 Conversely, new or unexpected contingencies require decisions to be referred to

higher levels of the hierarchy, an upward shift of controls from "mechanical" to

"mindful" activities.

8.5 Each upward shift is reflected by a more vivid and precise consciousness of the

ongoing activity; and, since the variety of alternative choices increases with the

increasing complexity on higher levels, each upward shift is accompanied by the

subjective experience of freedom of decision.

8.6 The hierarchic approach replaces dualistic theories by a serialistic hypothesis in

which "mental" and "mechanical" appear as relative attributes of a unitary process,

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 63

the dominance of one or the other depending on changes in the level of control of

ongoing operations.

8.7 Consciousness appears as an emergent quality in phylogeny and ontogeny, which,

from primitive beginnings, evolves towards more complex and precise states. It is

the highest manifestation of the Integrative Tendency (4.3) to extract order out of

disorder, and information out of noise.

8.8 The self can never be completely represented in its own awareness, nor can its

actions be completely predicted by any conceivable information-processing device.

Both attempts lead to infinite regress.

9. Equilibrium and disorder

9. 1 An organism or society is said to be in dynamic equilibrium if the S.A. and INT

tendencies of its holons counter-balance each other.

9.2 The term "equilibrium" in a hierarchic system does not refer to relations between

parts on the same level, but to the relation between part and whole (the whole being

represented by the agency which controls the part from the next higher level).

9.3 Organisms live by transactions with their environment. Under normal conditions,

the stresses set up in the holons involved in the transaction are of a transitory

nature, and equilibrium will be restored on its completion.

9.4 If the challenge to the organism exceeds a critical limit, the balance may be upset,

the over-excited holon may tend to get out of control, and to assert itself to the

detriment of the whole, or monopolize its functions - whether the holon be an

organ, a cognitive structure (idée fixe), an individual, or a social group. The same

BODY OF WISDOM, WORLD OF COMPASSION 64

may happen if the coordinate powers of the whole are so weakened that it is no

longer able to control its parts (C. M. Child).

9.5 The opposite type of disorder occurs when the power of the whole over its parts

erodes their autonomy and individuality. This may lead to a regression of the INT

tendencies from mature forms of social integration to primitive forms of

identification and to the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group psychology.

9.6 The process of identification may arouse vicarious emotions of the aggressive type.

9.7 The rules of conduct of a social holon are not reducible to the rules of conduct of its

members.

9.8 The egotism of the social holon feeds on the altruism of its members.

10. Regeneration

10.1 Critical challenges to an organism or society can produce degenerative or

regenerative effects.

10.2 The regenerative potential of organisms and societies manifests itself in

fluctuations from the highest level of integration down to earlier, more primitive

levels, and up again to a new, modified pattern. Processes of this type seem to play

a major part in biological and mental evolution, and are symbolized in the universal

death-and-rebirth motive in mythology.

Appendix 4

Research: chaplains in healthcare.

Background: Medicine has long acknowledged the role of chaplains in healthcare, but there is little research on the relationship between chaplaincy care and health outcomes. The present study examines the association between chaplaincy services and end-of-life care service choices.

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Methods: HealthCare Chaplaincy purchased the AHA survey database from the American Hospital Association. The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care database was provided to HealthCare Chaplaincy by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, with the permission of Dartmouth Atlas Co-Principal Investigator Elliot S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H. The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care is available interactively on-line at http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/. Patient data are aggregated at the hospital level in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. IRB approval was not sought for the project because the data are available to the public through one means or another, and neither database contains data about individual patients, i.e. all the variables are measures of hospital characteristics. We combined and analyzed data from the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and outcome data from The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care in a cross-sectional study of 3,585 hospitals. Two outcomes were examined: the percent of patients who (1) died in the hospital, and (2) were enrolled in hospice. Ordinary least squares regression was used to measure the association between the provision of chaplaincy services and each of the outcomes, controlling for six factors associated with hospital death rates.

Results and discussion: The analyses found significantly lower rates of hospital deaths (β = .04, p < .05) and higher rates of hospice enrollment (β = .06, p < .001) for patients cared for in hospitals that provided chaplaincy services compared to hospitals that did not.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that chaplaincy services may play a role in increasing hospice enrollment. This may be attributable to chaplains’ assistance to patients and families in making decisions about care at the end-of-life, perhaps by aligning their values and wishes with actual treatment plans. Additional research is warranted.

Appendix 5

Sustainable chaplaincy: practicing interoception. Skills of embodiment.

Brigham and Women’s CPE Chaplaincy Program

Session One / June 25, 2012

(Concise!) Introductions 10 min

Who we are and why we are here.

Overview of Aims 5 min

Discovering through direct inquiry and experience (heuristic approach*) that embodiment, presence and compassion are interdependent qualities and practices.

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Challenging the myth of “compassion fatigue” with practices that cultivate more resilient and compassionate chaplains.

Sharing practices that grow a sense of collegial, safe and skillful dynamics within the CPE group.

Aims for Today 5 min

Review Today’s Agenda

Introduction to “interoception”** and related skill building through TRM

Grounding Meditation: Body Scan 5 min

Discussion: Presence 20 mins

“All of us would like to provide presence, but not all of us can.” ~ Katherine Mitchell

Is this so? Why or why not?

What is presence? How do we know if we are present? How do we know if others are? (Hint: See definition of interoception below!)

What teachings or skills do our faith traditions offer related to embodied presence?

Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM) Slides: An Intervention that Accesses the Autonomic Nervous System Directly 10 mins

10-MINUTE BREAK

Discussion: Challenges for Chaplains in the Hospital Setting

Sharing examples of sensations that arise in the body of chaplaincy students at work.

How do we work with these sensations?

Embodiment 5 mins

Realizing compassion and well being through “Strong Back / Soft Front”

Autism spectrum; the challenge of compassion for those who have limited empathy.

Demonstrate TRM Skills 15 mins

Grounding

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Resourcing

Shift and Stay

Practice TRM Skills in Pairs 30 mins

Leading from behind

Invitational language

Tracking sensation / no “feelings” language, stay with sensation

Slowing gestures for information

Magnify positive sensations

Introduce CPE Students to Body Outline 5 mins

A tool for use in developing interoception by recording the felt sense of the chaplain’s body at work in the field of spiritual care.

Questions and Comments

{Free gift to the first one to remind me to hand out TRM supplies!}

NEXT SESSION: Inquiring into the Nature of Compassion

Relevant Vocabulary

*Heuristic /hjʉˈrɪstɨk/;or heuristics; Greek: "Εὑρίσκω", "find" or "discover") refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Where an exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense.

**Interoception - sensitivity to stimuli originating inside of the body, sensitiveness, sensibility - (physiology) responsiveness to external stimuli; the faculty of sensation; "sensitivity to pain" proprioception - the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body and its parts somatic sense, somatic sensory system, somatosensory system, somaesthesis, somataesthesis, somesthesis, somaesthesia, somatesthesia, somesthesia - the faculty of bodily perception; sensory systems associated with the body; includes skin senses and proprioception and the internal organs

Enactive “The term enaction, as originally proposed by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, is grounded in the interactions between living organisms and their environments. A living organism enacts the world it lives in;

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its embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition.

Resources for this Session Include:

Curr Opin Support Palliat Care. 2012 Jun;6 (2):228-35. A heuristic model of enactive compassion. Halifax.

http://www.traumaresourceinstitute.com/index.html