Rev. Danny Fisher

Back in January, I posted about the Seventh Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche being named as a plenary speaker for this year’s annual conference of the Association of Professional Chaplains (A.P.C.).

As I mentioned then, the conference will be held in Burlingame, CA, from April 28th until May 2nd. This year’s theme, which Ponlop Rinpoche and the other plenary speakers will expound upon, is Discovering Sacred Horizons: Encounters that Enrich.

The latest mailing I received from the A.P.C. about the conference includes, among other things, more information on each of the plenary speakers’ lectures. The title of Ponlop Rinpoche’s is listed as “Facing Death – The Sacred Horizon” and it is described this way:

Death can be a powerful experience that connects us with our own deeper or higher nature. According to the spiritual insights of Buddhism, in order to die well, we must learn to live well and fully now. By becoming more intimate with our own experience, we learn that dying is part of the process of living.

In addition to Ponlop Rinpoche’s speech, the conference this year will also offer educational excursions that should certainly be of interest to both Buddhist chaplains as well as chaplains who just want to know more about Buddhism: trips are planned to Marin County for a tour of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Japantown and Chinatown (where the itinerary includes a visit to a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist church), and the Zen Hospice of Project.

An expanded, somewhat improved version of my obituary for the late, great Semdech Preah Maha Ghosananda will appear in an upcoming issue of Eastern Horizon. I have updated the old post with some of the new material. You can read it here.

The Amherst Bulletin also ran an excellent piece recently that was filled with remembrances of the venerated elder from those in Leverett, MA, who knew him best. It offers some wonderful observations and stories, and I recommend taking a look at it.

Bhante Walpola Piyananda, author of the wonderful memoir Saffron Days in L.A.: Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America, served as the official Buddhist chaplain for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, CA, so I guess it’s not altogether out of the question that Buddhists might get involved in this sort of chaplaincy work…

This past week, PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly rebroadcast a story from 2003 about ministry and chaplaincy to prisoners on death row, their families, their victims’ families, and prison personnel in Huntsville, TX.

Reintroducing the story, guest anchor Kim Lawton began by saying:

Across the country, more than 3,000 inmates are on death row waiting to be executed or reprieved. So far this year (2007), nine executions have taken place in America, eight of them in Texas, which for several years now has executed more prisoners than any other state. All executions in Texas occur in one place — Huntsville.

It is an extremely powerful segment, including a fairly wide range of opinions and responses–I felt intermittedly moved and frustrated. I was also especially affected by the story of Paula Kurland and Jonathan Nobles. Anyway, I recommend taking a look at it.

Actually, this week’s entire episode of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly was particularly relevant for Buddhists interested or engaged in chaplaincy: also rebroadcast were stories about the late Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin and the creation of a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala.