Rev. Danny Fisher

[This post has been revised and expanded as of 4.19.2007.]

According to an email just sent to the Buddhist_Chaplaincy Yahoo! Group, Rev. Madeline Ko-i Bastis, the very first Buddhist to be board certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains, has died.

A priest in the White Plum lineage of Soto Zen Buddhism, Bastis was ordained in 1993 by Peter Muryo Matthiessen Roshi. To say that her work as a chaplain was extensive would be putting it lightly. In addition to founding the Peaceful Dwelling Project, an educational organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for those with profound illness (as well as their caregivers) through meditation, she demonstrated tremendous commitment to others wherever she found herself. As her faculty profile for the Omega Institute states:

Bastis has worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, New York University Medical Center, and in the AIDS Unit at Nassau County Medical Center on Long Island, offering pastoral care and leading retreats and meditation groups for people with AIDS, cancer patients, professional caregivers, people in detox, residential psychiatric patients, battered women, prisoners, teen substance abusers, emotionally disadvantaged adults, and Alzheimer’s patients, as well as for the local community.

The author of two books, Peaceful Dwelling: Meditations for Healing and Living and Heart of Forgiveness: A Practical Path to Healing, she also did quite a bit of other writing and speaking, including presentations for the College of Chaplains National Conferences in 1997, 2001, and 2003; the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education Eastern Region Conference; the 1998 Buddhism in America Conference; the 1999 Association for Death Education and Counseling Conference; and the 2001 Asian Cancer Therapies Conference.

She apparently closed the Peaceful Dwelling Project to address her own illness in 2004, and was in hospice care herself until the time of her death.

In another post to the Buddhist_Chaplaincy Yahoo! Group, Chaplain Mikel Ryuho Monnett wrote:

I found her to be tough, smart, and very direct. When I asked her what was the best advice she would give a prospective Buddhist chaplain, she answered without hesitation, “Put away your rakusu.” [A rakusu is a type of vestment worn by Zen Buddhists.] She then proceeded to tell me how her first day she had worn her rakusu to work while visiting patients and they had spent all day talking about Buddhism. That night, she took it off, folded it up, and placed it in its bag. The next day, she went into work and spent all day talking with the patients about THEIR spiritual beliefs and how they were either utilizing or not utilizing those beliefs to work with their illness (which is what a hospital chaplain is supposed to do)…Being able to stand with the patient in the common ground of the human condition is the greatest gift that we can give each other and Madeline helped me to learn that. She will be missed.

Those of us who are part of the Buddhist chaplaincy movement in the United States owe Madeline Ko-i Bastis an enormous debt of gratitude for her inspiration and her teaching.

Gassho.