This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Buddhist Spiritual Care for Our Times with Dawn Neal & Kirsten Rudestam. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Buddhist Spiritual Care for Our Times with Dawn Neal & Kirsten Rudestam

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal, Kirsten Rudestam at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on October 26, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome everyone. Delighted to be with you today. Delighted to see familiar faces, familiar names, new faces, and new names. I'd like to start by inviting you to say hello in the chat. Maybe say if you are from one of the programs, either the Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy program or the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training, to name that as your current or past affiliation. And just one word about how you are today and maybe where you're zooming in from. Some combination of that. We would just love to have a sense of you in the room right away.

We're delighted to have you all here. No matter where you're from, if you're looking for a community, if you're interested in a program, if you're a graduate of a program, you're very welcome here.

Kirsten: Welcome, welcome. Really wonderful to be with you. For those of you who are from the Pacific Northwest of the US, I join you from White Salmon, Washington, the land of Wasco, Wishram, and Yakama peoples, and black bear and salmon. And it's raining here, too.

Dawn: Yes. To name that I am zooming in from Santa Cruz, California, where it is foggy and it looks like it might rain at any minute. It's hard to know. And it is the unceded land of the Awaswas-speaking Ohlone people here, the Ohlone people. And to be a little bit more poetic, the way Kirsten just was, it is the land of otter and sea lions and seals and redwood trees. So, happy to be here.

I'm going to start transitioning us to the program. We just wanted to establish a couple of ground rules because we are going to be doing a lot of relational stuff today, a lot of relational practices and connecting with each other. So, it's really helpful if you can to have your camera on unless you're doing something distracting or if you need to take care of yourself. If you're someone who can't be particularly near a screen or you need to lie down, that's fine. But in general, to have the camera on so we can be engaged.

And to take care of yourself today, to let this nourish you. The other thing we'll ask is when you're in the small groups, to keep confidentiality about content. You're welcome to share anything about your own experience or the process or your own content, but to not share the other person's.

So with all that sort of housekeeping out of the way, Kirsten is going to kick us off with some introduction and framing here.

Buddhist Spiritual Care for Our Times (link)

Kirsten: Okay. Thanks, Don. And just to reiterate taking care of yourselves. You'll see me, I'll be kind of moving on the screen a little bit. I like to stay connected to my body if I can when I'm on these long Zoom calls. So, if you need to move or stretch or lie down, you know, really if you need to eat, welcome.

I'll just say a few words about chaplaincy. I mean, that's why we're here, I think. And also just to name what a delight it is to be here with Don. Such a dear friend and deep, deep practitioner and just a fellow teacher and learner of mine. So, we've been dreaming this up for over a year now, recognizing that we both play these large roles in these different chaplaincy offerings and what would it look like to ask questions about how are these similar and how are they different?

Chaplaincy, and especially Buddhist chaplaincy, it really offers this almost countercultural kind of form of presence for our times, these times of really cascading crises. Although, you know, loss and suffering is a feature of the human experience, as we very well know and understand. And yet chaplaincy is grounded in these practices and skills of deep listening and compassion. And chaplains are trained not to fix but to accompany, to hold space for the complexity of the human experience of grief and confusion and transformation and celebration.

So in this world that is, you know, we're so often rewarded with speed and productivity, confidence, the chaplain's role is really in restoring this very sacred act of being with, you know, being with suffering, of being with loss, of being with possibilities for renewal, for celebration, for marking transformation. And we're seeing that chaplaincy has historically served individuals in institutions like hospitals and prisons and the military. And more and more, we're seeing a widening of this field. So for example, what I've been tending to is looking in places of classrooms, of environmental movements, of ecological communities, of activist spaces, and how eco-chaplaincy, again developing those same sorts of skills, is offered to different forms of community and different forms of emotional complexity and spiritual complexity. So that's what we're exploring together today.

Dawn: Yeah. A couple of thoughts emerged when you were speaking, Kirsten. One is that Kirsten was speaking about the engagement in this vitally important area of ecological and environmental concern, crisis, grief, whatever you want to call it. And that in my mind is a form of engaged Buddhism, a form of engaged practice that's very powerful. The Buddhist chaplaincy training—I come from a background of professional hospital chaplaincy, but I started in the Buddhist chaplaincy training well over a decade ago at the Sati Center¹. And one thing that it really highlights, this overall arc of chaplaincy, especially in the Buddhist traditions, is a way to engage that drops beneath difference and emphasizes what connects us all. The very, very most visceral, common, important, and transformative processes that we go through in our lives, whether they are tragedy or celebration, whether they are the inevitability of aging, sickness, death, or birth, and everything in between.

One of the real gifts in my own life and what I've seen in others' lives of the practice of chaplaincy is to be able to connect with a wide range of human beings and contexts, different worlds, different worldviews, in a way that is a heart-centered space grounded in kindness, grounded in compassion, in care that is deeply nourishing on a level that is deeper and broader than any view or opinion. So I find that personally to be a delightful dimension of this practice.

And then the institutions that Kirsten was speaking about—of course, I've worked in the institution of a hospital. I've not done jail or hospice work. However, chaplains increasingly can serve in a wide variety of circumstances. I've known someone serving as an animal chaplain doing animal therapies and chaplaincy and spiritual care that way. People who exist in between institutions or parts of society and help cross-fertilize the different parts of society with each other. Or in my current role as a dharma teacher, that also is chaplaincy in the capacity to serve a whole community and be engaged with a whole community. So the field is evolving, and I personally think that eco-chaplaincy is one of the exciting places it is evolving.

We're here today to talk a little bit about both of these. I'll just mention the arc of the day to give you an idea. The formal program, as formal as it gets, and you're seeing about as formal as it gets right now, is going to end at noon in order to give alumni from both programs time to connect with each other in breakout rooms, and for anyone who has questions of Kirsten and I about the respective programs or about the field of chaplaincy to be with us in the main room. So, that'll be from 12:00 to 12:30 at the end.

In the meantime, we will each introduce a little bit more about our background and about the program we come from. And then I will first provide a relational exercise that comes from the Buddhist chaplaincy training, and then Kirsten will offer a contemplative inquiry practice that grows out of how the Buddhist eco-chaplaincy evolved. We will have a break of about 15-20 minutes around 10:40, and give us some grace there; it may fluctuate. So know that you will have a break to get up, get tea, whatever. And please, if you need to step away from the screen and do a bio break, a shorter one at any time, do.

One thing Kirsten and I have found in our many conversations about our respective vocations and passions is that one thing that is common to the forms of chaplaincy we practice and teach is the sense of responsivity, responsiveness to the world, and to our own hearts, our own bodies, our own practices. And this process of learning to meet and respond to whatever is deepest and most difficult, most challenging, most important in the moment. At least in hospital chaplaincy, sometimes chaplains are referred to as the spiritual first responders. So it's that kind of courage of being in the fire of change, being in the fire of dukkha².

In terms of the Buddhist chaplaincy training, I'll just tell a little bit of a story about how I came to it. I was in a massive life transition and had gone to Burma to ordain as a Buddhist nun temporarily. I knew it was temporary when I went. I was away for I don't know, six months, something like that. And my own meditation practice in the insight meditation tradition of the Theravada³ tradition had really, really deepened and broadened. So I came back just longing to express that practice, that maturity, that wish to be of service in the world. And particularly wanting to express metta⁴, kindness, and compassion, karuna⁵.

I feel very fortunate that not long afterwards, in 2010, I discovered the Buddhist chaplaincy training. I felt tentative at first, but wanted the training and being able to offer care to others in a skillful way. I took the training in 2010-2011, and last year I started teaching it. So that gives you an idea of my arc. In between, I went through clinical pastoral education and a graduate degree and working in a hospital, Stanford hospital here in the Bay Area.

The Buddhist chaplaincy training was transformative because it linked the depth of Buddhist practice with that call, that wish to show up in the world in service. And to this day, we still train people, whether it's the online training like the one I teach or the in-person training in Redwood City, how to meet people, support people experiencing a broad range of difficulties or life transitions. I wasn't alone. And it's the next step for a lot of people who are long-term or deep practitioners looking for a way to take their practice off the cushion and make a discernment into some kind of right action, whether it ends up being wise or holistic livelihood or volunteering or simply and profoundly a breadth of expression of your practice.

Kirsten: That was just so beautiful. Thank you, Don. I love what you shared in particular around this linkage between practice and service because for me, I actually came into chaplaincy through this sort of very backdoor route. I haven't been trained traditionally or officially or formally as a chaplain. As Rob noted, so much of my training has been in the environment and as a student of Joanna Macy and doing deep nature connection practice and rites of passage work.

I already had a deep dharma practice at the time that I was teaching as a professor in the environmental studies department at the University of Oregon. I would teach these introductory environmental studies classes which would, very kind of formulaically, list each week a different problem, like mountaintop removal or water pollution, you name it. And then the last week might be something like "reasons for hope." But in the course of the term, I could just see my students, and they expressed it too, becoming cynical, becoming numb, becoming shut down. And I could feel that in my own heart and mind. This is just naming one group of people who are impacted in very psychological and spiritual ways, maybe not as directly as others who are bearing the brunt more directly of environmental impact, humans and non-humans. But I remember walking home from teaching and thinking, "This is not going well." This love is what inspired my offerings of environmental education, this love for the earth and this real engagement with justice and wanting so much to support life in its thriving. And this felt like it was not helping that.

So what I ended up doing in those classrooms was kind of chaplaincy work, is what I realize now. I had these sessions where I would ask the students to talk about the feelings that they were experiencing, to sit with each other, to be witnessed, to really be at the edge of what they were experiencing and be held in as unconditional as we could cultivate a space of deep compassionate listening. And that was extraordinary. That transformed those classrooms.

It was later that, in talking with Gil Fronsdal, as I was finishing my PhD, that he suggested that I help him develop this Buddhist eco-chaplaincy training program. And I had to look up what chaplaincy meant. I really didn't know. And when I started to learn about it, all of what Dawn pointed to so resonated with what was so alive in me, which was this deep engagement and like, how do practice and service come together? What is it to have engaged practice and the gifts of the dharma, which give us those deep skills of the capacity to listen, to be with, and that openheartedness, you know, that deep love and compassion.

So for me, that's really what sort of motivated and shaped this program. The two kind of more specific ways that we work with our eco-chaplain cohorts is this training to work with people who are confronted, maybe directly like they have lost their homes in climatic events, or maybe indirectly confronted with ecological anxiety or grief. But how we support people to be there for their experiences and be supported in their experiences through ritual, through deep listening, through holding that sacred space of wise attention. And then also really recruiting nature as a collaborator. This has been so fun for I think all of us, this deep recognition of "we are nature." The dharma points to that, you know, this non-separation. This earth body is made up of this earth, will go back to this earth. And so what can we learn from our wider, more-than-human kin and community? And how might that inspire and inform our ritual, our ceremony, our service of holding space for one another, human and non-human? We have graduates who have done vigils for icebergs and forests and endangered species or extinct species, as well as for other humans. So those are some words of orientation to the eco-chaplaincy program and what we're up to.

Relational Exercise: Being Heard

Dawn: We're going to invite you to be in breakout rooms for 15 minutes. You'll be with one other person. This is a story from very early in my practice. I think I had only been practicing meditation for about six months, and I started in the Soto Zen tradition. A friend of mine was much further along in that tradition at that time and had kind of introduced me to her teacher. So, I had gone to him, and I was just going through a really rough time—a divorce, health challenges, all this stuff—and didn't yet have the tools. I went in there and was talking and couldn't even connect with my own feelings. I was so kind of just thrown by everything that had been thrown at me. And he sat there and he looked at me with this look of great compassion as I was talking.

And as I continued to share, with his silent presence, I saw a tear come out of his eye, and then another one. Not just two. And it woke my heart up. He didn't say anything. He didn't try to fix it. He didn't try to change it. He didn't try to problem-solve. He was just there. And he clearly wasn't overtaken with grief. It was just this profound sense of being felt. And then he was able to ground me in my practice after that.

So, that's a very short version of a story. And I'd like to invite you to share with whoever you're teamed up with a time when you were really heard, felt, met in compassion or care. It doesn't even have to be about something terrible, but a moment where you felt completely held. And if that doesn't come up for you, or even if it does, the second prompt is a time when you've offered that kind of listening to yourself or someone else.

The way it's going to work is we'll ask one person to start, tell your story. The other one, practice completely being present silently. You can do little non-verbal cues or like "uh-huh," but no speaking other than maybe "tell me more." Allow that person to finish, and then you will tell your story. And then you can switch. In the time remaining, if there is time remaining, talk about how it was.

(Group exercise)

Dawn: I would love to hear just a few quick comments.

Caelix: Something that came up in our little chat was this idea of what makes me feel listened to and heard versus offering people what makes them feel listened to and heard. Specifically, I am a very neurodivergent communicator, but I'm at a school of theology getting an MDiv and I'm in a CPE program. And so I'm learning a lot about listening and how to be a good listener. Meanwhile, I have lived a life with an ADHD mom and a sister with autism and ADHD where the three of us would go hang out at Walmart and we would talk at each other in different directions. And that was like us hanging out and having a conversation, but we weren't necessarily tending to each other's content. It was a different kind of listening and exchange.

For me, when I'm listening to you, I'm probably going to want to tell you a story about myself to make sure that I understand what you're saying. And with other neurodivergent people, a lot of time that is a great way to communicate. They understand, you go back and forth. It's beautiful. But then when you're in maybe a contemplative chaplaincy peer processing group, you might have conversations about working harder to decenter yourself. And so we talked about this sort of tension between, "I want to hear you reflect yourself back, that is what makes me feel heard, but I'm being trained specifically to not reflect myself back."

Dawn: And then the wisdom of knowing when each of those work as a skillful modality. Thank you so much, Caelix, for bringing that perspective.

Shannon: It's wonderful to be back in a very heart space where it feels so good to actually get out of the way, to accompany. And it was just really beautiful. And it reminded me, and your story also reminded me, of that story of crying with.

Dawn: Yes. Shannon is bringing in the very first reading that happened in the Buddhist chaplaincy training, is "Crying With."

Michaela: I just wanted to touch on authentic intimacy and how vulnerable that can feel, particularly if you're in a professional caregiving role, allowing yourself to be held in a container by others when you're used to providing the container. And so, talking about being really intentional about finding those bidirectional relationships to keep us held while we also hold others.

Dawn: Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, there's a lot in what you just said. To find peer relationships is vital. And that care and self-care of allowing ourselves to be seen and felt in whatever way works for you.

Contemplative Inquiry: Heartbreak and Joy

(After a break)

Kirsten: So, how was that? What did you notice or learn or feel?

Michael: I thought it was really joyful. I really loved it and somatically I felt lighter. I thought it was pretty brilliant doing the joy question second because I did feel heavy the first, but I felt well-resourced because I was standing with my feet growing roots toward the earth and I felt stable, like a palm tree that blows in the wind. Thank you for your kind attention. I really appreciated this adventure.

Fred: I loved going through both questions. There were moments of discovery in this, as there was with our previous exercise, a lot of deep and actually quite moving discovery for me. And the other really important part is just being with my partner. In both cases, I really felt a lot of connection with both people and that was a delight.

Tammy: I think this is true of both my partners, and by the way, all three of us are in the Anukampa⁶ class as well. So that was good. What has been unfolding for all three of us, I think, is that in my last exchange with my second partner, we named how much physicality there was to the sensations of going through the things that are heartbreak, both in this exercise and elsewhere. It's really palpable in the relational and experiential field. I mean, I can just feel it. My partner talked about that as well. And then the more openhearted joy that came in also for us, it was a physical shift that was experienced by me, and I think my partner felt that as well. And to keep that in mind, that these micro-exchanges we have with people outside of this class, in the world, in our lives, even if they're five to 30 seconds, changes the field and the other person as well as me. And to keep remembering that that's an area where I can work without having to do a big march or something like that, which is not my mode.

Joyce: I was just thinking how the questions that Don put forward then led for me into the exercise that Kirsten taught us, in that usually if someone repeats a question to me, I would feel annoyed. But in this case, I felt that I was really heard and seen. So thank you.

Shannon: The first question, it's so easy to quickly come up with an answer in everyday life, and we answer that way and we accept answers that way. But with this... it's like the first one is just opening this little door, and the second one is almost more like an invitation to come in and sit down. And it just keeps opening and opening. It was really beautiful.

Reflections

Dawn: We'd like to invite you to discuss with two or three other people how you're already showing up as a chaplain. And by that, I'll say, how are you already showing up in your life for yourself, for others, with presence, with kindness, with compassion, inviting depth? Even the beautiful story I think it was Tammy who shared about these micro-interactions. How is that already showing up in your life? And those of you who are professionals or quasi-professionals regularly engaged, the invitation is to consider how it's percolating out more broadly in your life. For me, doing chaplaincy transformed all of my relationships, not just my professional ones. So to consider that for yourself, how are you already showing up in the field of chaplaincy, the relational field?

(Group exercise)

Mary Larry: This has all been wonderful, every group. What I talked about was showing up for myself. And it was interesting to note that that echoed for others. I have known intellectually for years, yes, if you take better care of yourself, you can take better care of other people. But I really didn't believe it. I didn't know how to do it. And with really devoting to developing my own practice, it's happening. So, I am just incredibly grateful and I'm astonished and love this opportunity to be able to name it, recognize it. It's like, "Oh my god, it's actually happening."

Dawn: How do you notice it showing up? How do you know that showing up for yourself is happening and that it's naturally flowing out? What gives you the clue?

Mary Larry: The relationship with my 30-plus years partner is really shifting because I am more willing to say, "You know, could you take care of that?" instead of being the house elf for everything. And the other is with my family, being able to question honestly, "So how is our relationship? How does my behavior affect you?" and not feeling scared to hear the answers. One of the other people in our group mentioned self-forgiveness. And being able to take risks with people where it might be very, very difficult, but I'm like, "Okay, what's going on?" and listening.

Debbie: Mary, thank you for bringing that self-care up. I got to experience Anukampa last year with Gil and Vanessa, and I tended to always look at how can I help others? How can I be there for others? And it was a wonderful 11-month exploration of finding the strength to take care of myself too, which has helped now after the program, seeing the change within me. I have a cold right now, and one way is just sitting still and not doing, because I tend to be a big doer. It's almost like the quiet time when one is sick, taking care of oneself.

Michael: I just felt really enlivened hearing my partner share regarding showing up, and it was really sweet and I felt light and kind of joyful. It was very heartwarming.

Sharon: I believe it was Kirsten, but it could have been you, Don, who said this earlier about how chaplaincy provides that link between our practice and service. I so appreciate that, and that's really what I needed to hear right now. I find myself unemployed after many years, and I knew I wanted to move to something spiritual when I retired, but it's being pushed up. With everything that's happening right now, I always want to do something. I join groups and I try to do things, but it just doesn't... But this chaplaincy being that link, it's like something just kind of clicked in my brain. I'm really just... thank you for this group. I think it's going to be a defining moment.

Erica: Today I've just been so moved by all the sharing with all of my partners, and to hear about their practices and the depth of their practices and the consideration they give first of all to others. But I think I heard so much, and I shared also, how important that self-care is and how they're so linked. So yeah, I just want to thank my partners and thank the group. I feel very moved by each of you.

Sveta: I too want to say how nourishing and wonderful this time here has been for me. I had this maybe aha moment when Kirsten said at the beginning that a chaplain is one who is with, kind of elaborating a little bit on the idea of a chaplain as a witness. And I really find it, you know, in some texts, in the Satipatthana Sutta⁷, how you know "the mind with greed" as opposed to "the greedy mind." There's something really, really important about it, something that just immediately helps me if I'm caught up to gain some distance. And I thought, wow, this is so... that was my aha moment. That's why chaplaincy was so important to me. It's by definition, of course, it is to be with, not to be lost.

Kirsten: You articulated chaplaincy within the Buddha Dharma, within the wisdom of this practice. These programs are situated from that Buddhist frame, you know, from that understanding of the three characteristics: of no stable self, of suffering being a feature of our existence, of change being a central part of what we all experience. And holding those wisdom teachings as a chaplain is profound.

Dawn: With Sveta's beautiful words and Kirsten's response, what does your Buddhist practice call you to do now?

Fred: I'm reminded of the phrase from Ram Dass⁸, "All we're doing here is walking each other home, right?" That's how it feels. I just recently moved into a retirement community, and yeah, it really feels like that here for sure.

Sharon: Following things that are happening in the country and the world, I really want to be a positive piece of what's happening now as opposed to a negative piece. And just this week it occurred to me, I have to have more compassion to bring down conflict everywhere around. And so it occurred to me this week, I need to, I want to, I have started doing metta for myself. And what's amazing is I was able to do it, which is a big deal. But that's what that practice is telling me I need to do, because until I can gain that compassion and love for myself, it's only superficial for others that I come in contact with.

Closing Ritual

Dawn: I just want to talk a little bit about something really fundamental to both of the programs, which is engaging with the power of ritual. I grew up in a very sort of egalitarian religious structure. There was a little bit of ritual, but lots of permission to do your own thing, believe your own thing, do your own seeking practices. So this didn't really click for me until later when starting to engage in chaplaincy, that this ancient quality, this ancient process of ritual has been around since human beings have been around. And that it speaks to different parts of the body, the heart, the mind that just aren't accessible to the rational mind. And it can be a profound part of healing, of spiritual care, of community cohesion, all kinds of different functions that it can serve.

To give a simple example, some of you will know the name Stephen Porges, a famed neuroscientist who pioneered something called polyvagal theory. He gave a presentation at the Stanford Center for Compassion, Altruism, and Research and Education (C-CARE)⁹ at least 10 years ago now, where he was talking about the power of ritual across all religions and how it has this ability to soothe and calm the whole system. He wasn't reducing it to neuroscience, but he was saying, "Here, look, it has these psychophysiological correlates." And there's a reason that every culture comes up with a way to bow and every culture comes up with a way to chant and to mark special occasions. It's deeply meaningful and actually reconnects us with ourselves, re-knits our systems together with each other and with ourselves.

Kirsten: Yeah, I love that. Ritual is a fundamental aspect of these trainings. I'll just say a bit more about what we do with the eco-chaplaincy in terms of ritual. There's a lot of collaboration with nature, with the earth, with the more-than-human. And not only, like Don pointed to, is there a deeply healing experience that we have individually when we engage in ritual, but it weaves us together relationally. It's really a way of knitting us together in this larger web of life, of living.

And it can be so simple. I think that's what I like to tell folks who might be just getting used to the idea of ritual and maybe disengaging it from ideas that they had about what ritual is or should be. But there's a simplicity in it that is just so beautiful. Like something that I've been doing for years now is every morning when I get up, I go outside to a tree outside my dwelling with a little cup of water or a little pinch of lavender, and I just put that by the tree. I put my hand on the tree, I put another hand on the earth, and I just give some metta, give some gratitude for this earth, for these beings. And over the years, there's like a thread of kinship that has developed between me and this particular tree, right? There are lots of trees outside my place, but this tree and I have become friends. And that's what ritual, or especially the repetition of ritual, can do. It can create and then strengthen these relational webs that we have with one another.

So, we're going to end with a little ritual, a simple one. Some of it will be very familiar to you, some of it maybe not so much. But for those of you who can and are able, we're going to bring our hands out to the screen and see if we can meet the hands next to us. This is just a way that we can really connect, feel the presence of one another here. We're in these various places around the world on screens, and yet, gosh, we're all human bodies on this shared earth. Just meeting each other for a moment. This touching, this meeting is core to chaplaincy. The heart needs to be touched in order to elicit that compassionate response.

So in the service of our time together and all of the engagement that we've put into this morning or afternoon, may it be of service, of benefit to this wider world.

May all beings everywhere be safe from harm and feel healthy and well in body and mind and really know a sense of their own belonging to life.

May they be free.

Thank you all very much for your practice.