Origin
n Shakyamuni Buddha left the home-life to attain enlightenment, preaching the ways of ending suffering and finding and the dharma of transcending life and death.
n Receiving increasing attention since the 1970s, hospice/palliative care attends to the spiritual needs of terminally ill patients, tackling with the avoidable issue of death and highlighting the importance of spiritual care.
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Dear Members:
Summer is here. Upon its invitation, trees are singing with flourishing branches and luxuriant leaves, and flowers blooming in radiant shapes and splendid colors. Streams flow with merry vitality, and birds chirp with melodious grace, infusing everything with vibrant life. Every living creature is a tiny but complete universe, blessed with the potential to attain Buddhahood as one’s original self is replete with Buddha nature springing from joyous responses to dharma. I wish you all replete with dharma joy.
Time flies. Eight months have passed since the founding of TACBS. During this period, progress in the operation and development of our association continues to be made as we complete one task and move on to challenge another.
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Dear TACBS Members:
Time has flied by so fast; without any notice, plume flowers are beginning to blossom, signaling the coming of a new season. I wish you all a happy, safe, and prosperous New Year.
The Taiwan Association of Clinical Buddhist Studies (TACBS) is founded in response to the growing demands for spiritual guidance for terminally ill patients in hospice/palliative care and their families. In the nascence of its development, our association concentrates initially on training clinical Buddhist chaplains and fostering spiritual cares and related researches indigenous to the culture of Taiwan. Nearly two decades ago, many terminal cancer patients committed suicide in the face of unbearable physical and mental sufferings while some were deprived of dignity as they begged on their knees for anything that would stop the pain. Though the situations have been improved with the introduction of hospice/palliative care, many terminally ill patients remain deeply tormented by the mental and spiritual unrests accompanied by the anguish of imminent death. These spiritual unrests are caused by as well as causing loss of self-respect, self-abandonment, attachment (e.g., reluctance, worries, ties and regrets), fear of death, and unfulfilled wishes. Of these spiritual unrests, fear of death is the most prominent in terms of clinical manifestation, and attachment and unfulfilled wishes the most deterrent to a good death.
Hospice/palliative care aims at promoting all-encompassing services caring the body, mind, and spirit of every patient. However, the quality of early hospice/palliative care in Taiwan was crippled by the serious scarcity of professionally-trained spiritual caretakers and the virtual absence of spiritual care in the education system and academic community. Consequently, entrusted by Buddhist Lotus Hospice Care Foundation and Yi-Ju Sanctuary Hospice Care Association, the Palliative Ward at National Taiwan University Hospital started in 1997 to commence researches geared to develop an indigenous spiritual care model for terminal cancer patients. Results of the researches were applied in 2000 to the training of clinical Buddhist chaplains who, upon graduation were referred to palliative wards, home cares, and joint palliative care teams throughout Taiwan. Up to this date, clinical Buddhist chaplains can be seen in the forefront providing spiritual cares for terminal cancer patients in nearly 30 hospitals island-wide. Thanks to their unique religious and spiritual learning background, clinical Buddhist chaplains are able to better interact with terminal patients in reflecting on life and death and practicing dharma, greatly reducing the patients’ anguish and fear, helping them fulfill the purpose of life in the limited time left, and guiding them on their journey to a peaceful death. And it is a genuine blessing that this revolutionary training program has achieved results highly recognized by all the host hospitals.
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