Rev. Danny Fisher

Rev. Jennifer Block is Public Education Director & Chaplain for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. A Buddhist chaplain and interfaith minister, she has held her current position at the much-beloved and rightfully-celebrated service organization since 2004.

Educated at Boston University and Naropa University, Jennifer also serves on the adjunct faculty for the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In addition, she serves on the adjunct faculty for the Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries in Berkeley, and the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies in Redwood City. She has been involved with the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program since its inception. Jennifer also consulted with past interviewees Koshin Paley Ellison and Robert Chodo Campbell on the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care’s program as well.

Jennifer and I first met at the Third Annual Buddhist Chaplaincy Symposium held at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA, in 2007. I found her to be not only a terrific speaker, but a delightful and really insightful person to boot. I asked her for an interview on the spot, and she graciously agreed. We spoke almost a year ago by phone. To explain the delay: I did a number of interviews with Buddhist chaplains 10-12 months ago, and I’ve been slowly transcribing those many, many good conversations since. I’m happy to be able to share Jennifer’s now.

DANNY FISHER: Jennifer, for those readers unaware of the Zen Hospice Project and its work, would you tell us a bit about the organization’s mission and history?

JENNIFER BLOCK: Zen Hospice Project started at the San Francisco Zen Center. The San Francisco Zen Center was started by a Zen master named [Shunryu] Suzuki Roshi, who came from Japan to San Francisco at the direction of his bishop. After about fifteen years of religious life there, the monks and priests—who are both men and women—took in one person who was sick. And then another person. And then the monks and priests started taking care of people who were sick and dying as part of their practice. Not long after that, the AIDS pandemic hit and everybody in San Francisco was creating groups to take care of people who were sick and dying. So that’s how Zen Hospice Project got started. We just celebrated twenty years of service, and we’ve continued taking care of people who are sick and dying, most of whom are underserved. Many are homeless. We do this at our guesthouse residence on Page Street, which is across the street from the Zen Center. And we also do this at Laguna Honda Hospital on their hospice unit, which has about twenty-five beds. So that’s a lot of what the Hospice Project does. A lot of our work—education and care—is done by volunteers who have a Buddhist practice or meditation practice in another tradition, and who want to study death and dying and integrate that learning into their spiritual life. Also we do education for the public—people who want to know about death and dying, care-giving, and bereavement. A lot of our approach is based on Buddhism, and people want to lean that. We’re kind of a hallmark of spiritual care in the Bay area, so people come to us for education.

D.F.: The work that you do for the Zen Hospice Project is with their Education Center. Part of that work includes consultation with outside organizations and professionals. Generally speaking, what kinds of information and/or abilities are people looking for when they seek you out? What specifically do you think Zen Hospice offers to these organizations and professionals that is unique?

J.B.: Well, like people in everyday life, people in organizational life have a pretty strong aversion to old age, sickness and death. We’ve become—or have been for a long time—a death-denying culture. These questions do come up in organizational life, though: How does an organization handle old age, sickness and death with their staff? Even if an organization doesn’t have anything to do with, say, end-of-life care, these issues are present in organizational life—they come up everywhere, of course. So, for instance, I was working yesterday with a social service agency that cares for the homeless—the formerly homeless—in San Francisco. They run half-a-dozen resident hotels in the city, and up to 25-30 people a year die in these hotels. So the staff needs training in how to deal with people who are sick and dying, and also how to be with death when it happens in the organization.

We’ve also done some work with a think-tank at Procter & Gamble where they have executives go off-site and work on a creative project. They invited us not because they work directly with death and dying, but because the topic is provocative and gets people thinking about the larger picture of their lives and impacts their creative work. So, it’s applicable to everyone. Though most of those people have no idea about Buddhism, and they’re not Californians—the talk was in Ohio. I walk in there, and one group calls me “Lady Macbeth” because they felt I was such an odd kind of person to come in and talk about death.

D.F.: At Zen Hospice’s website, there’s something in the mission statement about “habitual patterns” in our culture around death and dying, and how working with people around these issues means addressing those habitual patterns. What kinds of habitual patterns specifically are people trying to break when they consult with you or otherwise look to Zen Hospice for help?

J.B.: Basically, they’re trying to break this pattern of turning away from mortality. They’re trying to get out of this denial of death. We’re all on our way to death, so why aren’t why thinking about/planning for it the way we do with something like a wedding or a graduation? People plan for their retirements, but not for their deaths: they often don’t have paperwork organized, don’t know what they want at the end. It’s often more of a burden for people to deal with, but we try to get them thinking, “Oh, yeah—this is important and I need to plan for this as well.”

There’s also this habit of forgetting that we’re normally shocked when someone who’s not over the age of eighty dies. There’s this delusion that “everyone dies when they’re old,” and that’s not true. So we’ve seen that people who think more carefully about the fact that death and dying are around us all the time have less shock and incur at least a little less suffering when they experience these things.

I think before a hundred years ago these habits were not so ingrained because we had death and dying around us so much more. Medical technologies and institutions are, of course, wonderful and life-giving and preserving, and yet somehow they’ve come between us and our awareness of our own mortality. We’ve lost touch our natural abilities to be with these big truths.

D.F.: You’re also on the core faculty of the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies’ Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. I understand that program is designed around the ten pāramīs. Can you tell us about that and why the faculty finds it such a useful rubric for the training that they do?

J.B.: They are each places for students, chaplains or anyone else to pay attention to what’s happening and cultivate a skill. Spiritual caregiving is a very broad category. What does it mean to be spiritual? What does it mean to be caring? People are going to have lots of different definitions. The pāramīs give us an opportunity to focus and go deep. With them, we get to do some careful reflection on the Buddhist teachings, and think about things like, “What does generosity or strength or wisdom really look like in my chaplaincy practice?” The act of listening, the act of assessment, the act of offering our opinion to other people could all be seen as acts of generosity, for example.

Also, a lot of people who come into our program have studied the basics of Buddhism—the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Five Precepts. They’re aren’t usually very familiar with the pāramīs, though. So it’s kind of new material, new windows into the Dharma that are fresh and exciting for them.

D.F.: I understand you’ve consulted with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care on their Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program, and I’d like to ask you a question that I also asked Chodo and Koshin over there: At the Sati Program’s website, you delineate two ways that it can meet the needs of its students. First, you say that it can help them begin on their path towards professional chaplaincy. Second, you note that it offers basic training in spiritual care for Buddhist clergy and lay practitioners. As you also mention in the literature, professional chaplaincy and what we might call Buddhist pastoral ministry are closely linked, but they are two different things. If you’re able to say, about what percentage of students are interested in professional chaplaincy, and what percentage are clergy or practitioners interested in developing basic spiritual caregiving skills?

J.B.: I would say that about half of the people who come into the program are interested in professional chaplaincy or discerning if that’s where they’re headed. Or they’re already in that process and have had a lot of Buddhist training; they generally don’t have an academic degree, and instead have gone right from Buddhist practice to a C.P.E. program. So they’re often back-tracking on some education.

The other half, I’d say, represent interest in two areas of “pastoral ministry.” One part of that is ministry within a congregation or sangha. A lot of the practitioners we meet come from communities that have a key leader or teacher. When those communities grow there’s often more work than that person can do, and so senior students are talking on some responsibilities. The other part of this half is interested in prison ministry—going to these institutions and teaching meditation to people who are suffering there. These people have usually been trained to teach meditation, but are coming to us to build skills around how to work with the group overall, how to be with people one-on-one, and how to relate with the entire system in a pastoral manner.

I would say too that about 25% of our students have gone on to do some C.P.E. About 15% have gone on to do some work in higher education before doing C.P.E. A lot of others are there…[pause as she thinks for a moment]…to bring social engagement to their practice. I guess that’s what everyone there has in common. For all of us, I think it’s about moving off the cushion or out of the temple and out into the streets to directly address and hopefully alleviate suffering.

D.F.: How do think you think what you’re discovering about these students and their interests might inform instructors and teachers at academic and other training programs? Any thoughts about where they might want to put more time and energy?

J.B.: Well, my background is in C.P.E. supervision as well as chaplaincy, so I’m very oriented towards skills. A lot of skill comes from self-awareness—looking at one’s own aversions, hindrances, and dynamics. So I’m always leaning towards things that are about knowing yourself, working with yourself. You’re the instrument for this work, so the more that people look not just at their good intentions but the places where they stop short, where they lose it and start projecting onto people. That’s where I get really interested. When we’re at the bedside of people who are suffering we have to be present and clean and of service, and if I’m in my own way I’m not going to be of as much service.

In terms of curriculum, I think if I were going to consult with an organization that was offering, say, an academic degree in Buddhist chaplaincy, I would say that I’ve noticed a lot of practitioners don’t know the teaching stories in Buddhism and how to use them with other people. I have Christian colleagues, and I was trained at a Catholic hospital, and everyday somebody would say something like, “Well, that situation reminds me of Mary at the base of the cross” or “That situation reminds me of the woman at the well” or “That reminds me of the fatted calf” or “That reminds me of Cain and Abel.” There was this whole rubric, if you will, of understanding and integrating the spiritual experience or dimension of the work. I’d be wonderful to see more cultivating and developing of these Buddhist stories for people to learn and hold onto and share with others. Stories are a great way for people to integrate what’s happening for them.

D.F.: We’ve touched on this a little bit, but I wanted to ask you more explicitly: What principles and practices from Buddhism do you find particularly useful in your chaplaincy work?

J.B.: I would say that one would be generosity, or dana—the sense of giving. I sometimes have an aversion to prayer; I’ll think, “I’m not sure if I want to pray in Jesus’ name with a patient.” I see this as an opportunity to practice generosity—to give something to somebody else that they need to support their spiritual life. How I feel about prayer isn’t the point.

Secondly, I work a lot with my own preferences. I’m compassionate, but I have strong preferences. So I really have to look at that sometimes and ask in an ongoing way, “Am I in the way here? Is what I want here helpful, or is it just my own agenda? Am I being greedy, or having a strong aversion and just covering it up with my own intentions.” So I do a lot of self-reflection to stay on-track.

D.F.: One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you, Jennifer, is that I so appreciated your comments at the Third Annual Buddhist Chaplaincy Symposium in Redwood City, CA, last year. In particular, I was really struck by something that you said at the end, and I wanted to ask you about it: you thanked everyone for coming, and then you said, basically, “Please stay, please keeping being Buddhist chaplains.” I guess I was struck because it occurred to me that there has been a lot happening in the last couple of years with regards to Buddhist chaplaincy—the creation of more programs at degree-granting institutions and dharma centers, for example. So there’s more help now than ever in terms of training Buddhist chaplains. But, as you seemed to suggest with what you said, it is a lot of work—and all that work is almost a deterrent. It’s an expensive, time-consuming, generally difficult path right now for students and trainees, and there seems to be a lot of tension around that. On the one hand, things are really cooking; on the other, it’s still a long, arduous, complicated journey to things like, say, board certification with the Association of Professional Chaplains. What are your hopes for the future as far as the development of Buddhist chaplaincy?

J.B.: Well, I’d really like to see Buddhists have a seat at the table of all chaplains. Catholics are at the table, Jews are at the table, Presbyterians are at the table… I want Buddhist and Muslim and Hindu and other chaplains to have a seat at the table because people who are of all faiths and no faiths throughout our country—which is more religiously diverse than ever—can have their needs met, and know that there are people who can enter their hospital room who they recognize and is more akin to them if they have a religious path.

I also think that Buddhism has an appeal to Westerners in general—in the last fifty years especially. I think this is another development in terms of Buddhism coming to the West. Like I said before, I think that leaving the cushion and the temple to serve others is a natural progression of the Dharma in the West.

I’d also say, for my own needs, I love company. I love being around Buddhist chaplains and people who are looking at the work through this lens. When I trained ten years ago, I felt very isolated—I couldn’t find any other Buddhist chaplains. That was a struggle for me, and I’m delighted that I and others have been able to stay in it so that doesn’t happen anymore for people.

D.F.: Lastly, I’m curious if there’s anything I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to share with our readers?

J.B.: I think I’d just like to emphasize again the need for training. Inspiration is great—Buddhist practitioners have a wonderful capacity to be with things as they are. It’s incredible. I recently gave at the Association of Professional Chaplains conference on Zen Hospice, and an elderly, conservative, seasoned chaplain said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about with this Zen stuff. I don’t know what you’re talking about…but I think it’s really important.” [Laughter.] And he ended up bringing someone to see what we were doing. So, we have things to offer around how to be present in spiritual care, how to deal with paradox, and so on, that people find really appealing, especially if other resources aren’t exactly working for them. But we need to make sure we have training too. When people are suffering and sick, they need to be treated really well. They just don’t have room for caregivers who are not excellent. I really believe in excellence, particularly when you’re working with people who are really vulnerable.

D.F.: Jennifer, thank you so much for talking to us.

J.B.: It has been my pleasure. You’re welcome.