Joan Halifax
The Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training is a visionary and comprehensive two-year certificated program for a new kind of chaplaincy intended to serve individuals, communities, the environment, and the world. The program is open to those who wish to be serve as Lay Chaplains, Zen Buddhist Chaplain Priests, as well as those who wish to deepen their understanding of service from a Buddhist and systems perspective.
The Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program focuses on altruistic and compassionate service, and on social transformation from a systems perspective. The training is intended to prepare people to have the skillful means to transform all forms of suffering, including suffering induced by structural violence. The Chaplaincy Training is part of the Zen Peacemaker Order, a leader in integrating spiritual practice with social action.
The training is based on the premise that those doing ministerial work are endeavoring to serve and heal not only individuals, but environments and social systems as well. Thus, chaplaincy is conceived as compassionate service from the point of view of systems change, a deep healing that takes place in concentric circles, from intrapsychic and interpersonal to environmental and global. This approach, based on complexity and systems theory and Buddhist philosophy, is radically innovative and is the theoretical, practical, and compassionate basis of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program.
Over the last 20 years, we have seen a huge growth in the presence of Buddhism in the West and what it has to offer as a way of life and a means for transforming suffering in the world. During the two-year training program, faculty and students study suffering, its causes, the end of suffering, and the way that suffering can be transformed (the Four Noble Truths). Our studies, practices, processes, and projects are all based in the profound motivation to end suffering in the world and in our lives. The “how” of this altruistic intention is the heart of our training.
Link here to visit the website of the Upaya Chaplaincy Program.
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