Video: Refuge in the Storm Webinar Series Part II: Sickness, Aging, and Death: Caring for Life-Cycle Crises
This webinar is the second in a series offered by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. It featured a panel discussion of contributors to part II of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, edited by Nathan Jishin Michon. The panel included Kin Cheung (George) Lee and Lourdes Argüelles (Lopon Dorje Khandro), and was co-moderated by Rev. Dr. Nathan Jishin Michon and Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford.
Bios:
Kin Cheung (George) Lee: Dr. Kin Cheung (George) Lee is a California licensed psychologist (PSY28022), a California Board of Psychology recognized clinical supervisor, and a registered clinical psychologist of the Hong Kong Associations of Doctor in Clinical Psychology. Clinically, he is a fellow member of the Asian Academy of Family Therapy, certified therapist in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and certified therapist in Managing and Adapting Practice. In the past 17 years, he has provided psychological services to individuals, couples, and families in various non-government agencies, community mental health centers, and schools in Hong Kong and the United States. Academically, Dr. Lee is a lecturer at The Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong and a founding member of the Master of Buddhist Counselling program as well as the Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Practice of Buddhist Counselling. He is the former assistant chair of the Department of Psychology at University of the West and former Director of Clinical Training at Alliant International University, Hong Kong program. He is the author of the The Guide to Buddhist Counseling and 小空間(translated: "A Little Emptiness").
Lourdes Argüelles (Lopon Dorje Khandro): Born in Cuba and educated around the world, Lourdes Arguelles, PhD (Lopon Dorje Khandro) is a Ngkma ordained by HE Garchen Rinpoche and a Lopon installed by HH Chetsang Rinpoche, the head of the Drikung Kagyu tradition. She is also Professor Emerita of Education and Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California as well as a retired California licensed psychotherapist and community organizer who worked pro-bono with survivors of domestic and political violence in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Lopon-la currently lives in retreat except when she is attending dying beings or teaching at Drikung Kyobpa Choling, a Tiberan Buddhist monastery in Escondido,California and to its Sangha in Latin America.
Monica Sanford: Monica Sanford joined Harvard Divinity School as assistant dean for multireligious ministry in September 2021. Sanford comes to HDS from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she became one of only two Buddhists in North America to lead a multireligious life department at a college or university. Sanford is one of the first full-trained Buddhist practical theologians in the United States, having earned her PhD in practical theology from Claremont School of Theology. Sanford also holds an undergraduate degree in design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master of divinity degree from University of the West. Sanford is an ordained Buddhist lay minister in a Chan lineage and trained as a Buddhist chaplain. Her recent book, Kalyāṇamitra: A Buddhist Model for Spiritual Care (January 2021), is the first textbook for Buddhist chaplains.
Nathan Jishin Michon: Nathan Jishin Michon is a JSPS visiting scholar focused on Buddhist chaplaincy at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan. Jishin is editor of Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care and A Thousand Hands: Guidebook to Caring for Your Buddhist Community, among other works. Jishin especially focuses their research on Japanese Buddhist chaplaincy, chaplain training, and contemplative forms of care. They previously helped in disaster relief and hospice care.
This event took place November 14, 2023.
Full transcript:
SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Refuge in the Storm Webinar Series Part Two, Sickness, Aging, and Death, Caring for Life's Cycle Crises. November 14, 2023.
MONICA SANFORD: Well, I'm going to go ahead and start us off, so hello, everyone, and welcome. My name is Monica Sanford, and I am the Assistant Dean for Multireligious Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. Harvard is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is the traditional land of the Massachusett people, and we honor them for the ways they have stewarded this land, past, present, and future.
So I'm very delighted to be able to welcome today three wonderful authors-- Nathan Jishin Michon, Dorje Khandro, and George Lee, my friend George Lee. I'm not going to try to mangle your two Chinese names, George. I'm sorry. Please understand that as a courtesy to you--
GEORGE LEE: All good. Thank you.
MONICA SANFORD: --because of my own deficiency. So welcome everyone. We're here in the second of our lecture series on Refuge in the Storm, Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, which is a wonderful book. Nathan, do you have it that you can hold up? I realize I've left my copy at home because I was reading it, and it's wonderful. There it is, Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care.
So part one of that book is a wonderful example of how Buddhists care for people in large and community scale crises. So think of things like natural disasters. Part two of the book focuses more on life cycle crises. So these are the things we hear about in Buddhism a lot-- aging, illness, death, things that happen to pretty much everyone throughout their life. There we go, sickness, aging, and death, caring for life cycle crises. So that is the topic of today's webinar.
And we have two of the wonderful authors from that section with us, along with the editor of the entire volume, Dr. Michon. I am going to drop the link to the first webinar in the chat. So if you missed that, you can go back and see it. It's on the HDS YouTube channel.
This webinar is also being recorded and will be posted to the YouTube channel sometime in the next few weeks. But if you miss the first webinar, please go check it out. It's well worth it. We also had three wonderful authors on that panel as well.
What I'm going to do now is introduce our first author and editor of the volume, Nathan Michon, and then he's going to introduce the two authors who are with us today. So Dr. Michon is a JSPS. So that's the Japan Science-- what? Tell me--
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.
MONICA SANFORD: I knew Science was in there something. The Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science visiting scholar, focused on Buddhist chaplaincy at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan. Dr. Jishin-- Dr. Michon, I should say, is editor of Refuge in the storm, Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care, and A Thousand Hands, a Guidebook of Caring for Your Buddhist Community, which is also a wonderful book, and right over there on my bookshelf and full of little tabs because I use it all the time.
And Dr. Michon especially focuses their research on Japanese Buddhist chaplaincy, chaplain training, and contemplative forms of care. They previously helped in disaster relief and hospice care. Welcome, Dr. Michon.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you. And also thanks to our wonderful authors joining us today. So happy to have you both here. And so just for a brief introduction before we get going, Dr. George Lee is a psychologist and certified therapist, who has provided psychological services to individuals, couples, and families. And he is a lecturer at the Center of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong.
And Dorje Khandro is a Ngakpa ordained by HE Garchen Rinpoche, and a Lopon installed by HE Chetsang Rinpoche. She is Professor Emerita of Education and Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and a retired psychotherapist and a community organizer.
Both very involved in so many different activities that would take us long to introduce as well. So thank you both for all your work you do in the communities and for your presence here with us today.
MONICA SANFORD: Thank you all so much. Well, Nathan, I'm going to call you Nathan because those in the audience who might not know Nathan and I were classmates together many, many years ago at a wonderful little University called University of the West in California. So just from on a personal note, it's wonderful to me that you are here, that George is here, and that I'm getting to meet Dorje. That's all just lovely.
So Nathan, I'm wondering if you would start us off with a brief reading from your second chapter in the book. You have two chapters, you have the introduction, and then you have a chapter entitled "Café de Monk." Kaneta Taio and the "Mobile Deep-Listening Cafe." And I'm wondering if you could start us off with a brief reading from that chapter.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Just to say this reading and this chapter as you mentioned, cafe de Monk. Maybe I'll just say a brief couple of words about that before this little reading. But Cafe de Monk, it's a rather funny name. But in Japanese, it was started by this Zen Buddhist priest Kaneta Taio just after the large 311 tsunami and earthquake in Northeast Japan. And it was basically, as the title suggested, "A Deep Listening Cafe."
But the name in Japanese, the word "monku" means "to complain." And of course, monk in English, it's monk. So it was basically a place that you could come and complain about your life or situation to the volunteer monks on hand. And so I might say a little bit more about that after. But he was the one who started up this whole endeavor in that situation.
And so this is a little passage that he talks about some of the issues of deep listening. "People sometimes say a lot without speaking. There is also plenty hiding behind the words. They say." As Kaneta points out, quote, "even when a person says pain 10 different people probably use that word with 10 different meanings. There's a story behind each of those words. To help truly understand what they are saying and to show them we are present, we have to listen not only with our ears, but with our entire bodies," end quote.
He points out that Japanese has two different characters, to write listen even though they are pronounced the same way. The first simply refers to the common idea of listening through the ears. But the second quote, "means listening with all your heart in mind throughout the body. The sound that enters the ears carries not only information, but emotion, the way of speaking, the intonation, and subtle senses that surround it all. We have to observe those clues carefully to truly listen. It involves listening with all our senses and our entire bodies. Without this, we can't get to the heart of what they are trying to convey," end quote.
MONICA SANFORD: That's lovely. Thank you for that, Nathan. Could you share a little bit more about your own experience with Cafe de Monk and how you became involved and studied it?
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah. So I was previously on a Fulbright to research this kind of build up of Japanese Buddhist chaplaincy and it mostly-- although there were traces and aspects of it before this large earthquake tsunami event. That event, as tragic as it really was, it also spurned a whole lot of good, incredible volunteer efforts, incredible willfulness and help from people around.
And it ended up planting a lot of the seeds of the development of more of this formal Buddhist chaplaincy programs and other chaplaincy programs that developed in Japan. And so I was up kind of observing and taking note of all of these movements going on. But also, as a part of, I guess you could say, participant observation, really participating and wanting to not just be a person on the side as well. I volunteered for some of these places as well. And Cafe de Monk was one of those.
And I got to know Kaneta, the founder, through the process and my time there as well, and his family and a lot of the regular volunteers there, which was really, really wonderful. And just kind of seeing the type of work that they were doing.
And yeah, it's-- as I mentioned in there and in the subtitle, even it's kind of a mobile listening cafe. So there are, in present day, a few more permanent establishments around Japan. But for the most part, they are temporary setups, mostly in disaster zones. Sometimes in hospices nowadays as well around Japan, where people know this is a Cafe de Monk day and volunteers will come and help.
MONICA SANFORD: Thank you. And you were able to do that because not only are you a researcher and a scholar, but you are trained as a chaplain as well.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah.
MONICA SANFORD: So now, you've practiced Buddhist chaplaincy spiritual care in both the United States and in Japan. And I'm really captured by this description of deep listening. We talk about the power of listening so often in caregiving and in chaplaincy especially, but also in other caregiving professions like psychotherapy. And I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about what makes deep-listening so essential to providing good care and particularly, good spiritual care.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Good and big question.
MONICA SANFORD: I like the meta questions. Yes.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah. And I think as Kaneta so wonderfully encapsulated, in both sense, it's a type of listening that listens to the person in front of you, their whole presence in a way. And so there's so much communication, of course, that happens outside of the words. But also it's in a way, listening with your full presence as well, not just your ears, but through your body and your feeling of the situation. And so it's that more kind of holistic exchange in a way.
And because so much communication happens beyond the words, I think it's just very essential to try at least to encapsulate these broader modes of communication to try to understand the person in front of us the best as possible. But also to really convey that we are fully with them because that presence is also such an important part of being there with them. Yeah, at least, those are some basics.
MONICA SANFORD: Can I ask you to expand a little bit on that? Why is it efficacious? Does it help people? Why does it help people? How does it help people going through these crises?
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah. So, I mean, especially when a person is in a crisis situation, you're often not even able to verbalize what is happening in those moments. You're still just not even having the chance to process what has gone on. And so to try to put that into words is often still just not even possible. So often these other modes of communication can come out in the tone of voice, or maybe just the body shaking, or at it or shaking at a particular word that sends some important signals as well.
And so the attention to all those different details, maybe even notice that the person in front of you winces or cringes at a certain phrase or either that you're saying or they're saying. And maybe that's an important clue to something that might be really necessary as well to them in those moments.
I think, I mentioned in the first seminar a lot of people in crisis situations, especially they haven't even thought about their basic needs yet either. So sometimes those clues are important. And maybe you realize or get a hint that oh, they just ran out of their home during a disaster and forgot some critical medicine, or haven't eaten in a long time and haven't totally even comprehended and realized that.
And so sometimes also just asking for these basic need questions and picking up these clues from their different reactions in ways that might not be fully verbal, all of these can be important. And so again, of course, we have to listen to the words they're saying, but there can be so many little aspects in the background around that, that we attend this kind of broader attention might alert us to these different important aspects that they might need attention to as well.
MONICA SANFORD: Thank you for sharing that. So I'm wondering also based on your experience in both Japan and the United States, does deep listening or even spiritual care in general, but do these skills that you use in these two different contexts, do they look different? Is there a deep listening that works better in one situation versus another? Does deep listening work well in one place and not-- are there other interventions in another place? Like, what's the other distinctions that you would make, and commonalities as well?
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: I mean, I think for the most part, it's pretty similar in both cultures. But you could say there's a little bit more-- of course, also every person is individual, and there are differences between personalities. But if we have to generalize a little more, I'd say not just in Japan but especially for example, that region of more rural, northern Japan, people are much less likely to open up in front of a person that they have just met. In particular, to open up about some of their deeper feelings or concerns.
And so for example, that's one reason why the cafe mode was little more effective there because you start with just drinks, drinking tea or coffee together, eating some snacks, and having more informal "get to know you" in a small group type of thing. And once you have the chance to get to know people a little more and exchange, then that might offer more chance for a person to feel OK, now, maybe I can open up a little more to this person in front of me.
And if necessary, then we might go off to the side a little to talk slightly more private if a person wants to. But it could also be that group, small group environment provides a certain comfort as well. So again, and kind of pay attention to these little signals and adjust accordingly. But I'd say that's at least one little difference to open up to somebody who just met with a deeper story of personal suffering, I think people might be a little more hesitant in that area. But again, also it can be very individual too.
MONICA SANFORD: Yeah. We can't really generalize across cultures too broadly. We run into problems there. So I'm wondering just maybe you can tell us a little bit about what kind of knowledge or training or tools Buddhist chaplains look to in order to cultivate this ability to listen so deeply? Because it's really not the way we tend to engage in normal conversation, right?
We're just talking to people. We're like watching what's going by the window, and we're thinking about what we're going to say next, or what we had for dinner. So this kind of deep listening seems like a real skill. So how do we get to a place where we can do that on a fairly regular basis in these kind of situations?
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah. And honestly, it's something that comes up in the training a lot because I think a lot of traditional Buddhist monks and priests going through the Buddhist chaplaincy training. And on that side of just being a monk in a temple, a Buddhist priest in a temple, you're often just talking to people. And that's what comes up a lot in the training, because people have more of a tendency to just answer the questions more than actually just listening and asking counter questions or exploring things deeper with people.
So it can be very counter to some people's natural tendencies, and maybe especially for those who've trained a long time in Dharma talks and public speaking with Dharma talks. So to really just instead let the focus be on the person in front of you can be a different type of exercise to practice.
And I think, though, that of course, these other traditions and traditional chaplaincy offer a lot of tools too. But as Buddhists as well and from the Buddhist tradition, we have a lot of tools as well, and really incorporating this right mindfulness into listening and other parts of the Eightfold Path, the right speech. We say right speech, but a lot of the Buddhist sutras on right speech end up talking about right listening in a way as well.
And if we really read some of these sutras about right speech, a lot of them also talk about the Buddha being silent. And I think, in some ways, that's an interesting clue and an interesting thing we can take as far as list the times of listening and how much the Buddha emphasizes.
Right timing in speech as well. Even if it is fully true, even if it is a helpful, and well intentioned comment. If it's not the right time, he doesn't say it. And the sutras emphasize this aspect a number of times. And so I think these are also interesting tidbits to take into this idea of sitting back and really listening to the person in front of us as well.
MONICA SANFORD: Yeah. It's not really that new of a concept in Buddhism. It's maybe just been forgotten or overlaid or de-emphasized a little bit in our modern, hey, I'm the expert. I need to have the answer, training that's so many of us receive, right?
Well, thank you so much for sharing this. For those of you for those of you who want to go back and watch the first webinar, I asked Nathan similar types of meta questions about compassion and the distinction between the Buddhist term of compassion and the English word, and how we actualize Buddhist compassion in the work that we do in all of these contexts. So now, we've had a wonderful conversation about deep listening to add to the conversation on compassion. And I'm really looking forward to what our other two guests bring today.
So I'm going to step back. I'm going to disappear from your screens for a little bit and let Dr. Michon have a conversation with his authors. But please, I'm monitoring the chat and the question and answer. This is a webinar so you can put questions into the Q&A function, which is down at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Feel free to do that at any time and we will ask the questions towards the end of our conversation today, so.
Thank you so much, Monica. And I, again, am really honored and happy to see again our guest authors today. And so we're going to start with George Lee here. And he was the-- I gave a brief introduction before, but within this volume, he was the author of the chapter called "A Buddhist Counseling Approach for Advanced Cancer." And so many wonderful aspects of that packed into a relatively short chapter.
But I wonder if to start us out, George, if you can say a little about this bigger theme of cancer and about just-- a little bit about how widespread an issue is in the world, and how it can affect those who discover such a diagnosis.
GEORGE LEE: Thank you, Nathan. So I think cancer is not a new word to all of us. From my understanding of the statistic, it is about 18 to 19 million of new cases in 2022 and '23, which is very alarming. And besides that, I remember one expert pointed out if we-- like the number may not mean a lot, but if we just conceptualize every one in two people, half of us actually either experienced cancer or have any close one who have suffered from cancer.
So basically, this is something that is very, very real to all of us. And personally, I have a friend who died from cancer a few years ago. He was only 30 something. And at this moment of our conversation, my mother is actually struggling with leukemia. So it is a huge problem. And that's why I'm working-- like, part of my work is to try to get to know what is cancer and how does it affect us psychologically.
And for me, from what I've seen from my clients, from my close ones, one of the big reaction that most of us have is, why me? Why do I have cancer? I have been a good person, or I've done this and that. I could never imagine that. And I think cancer is a crisis. What happened is that we all live in a world that we have certain kind of understanding or definition of what is safety.
When I cross the road to go home tonight, I wouldn't think that a car would hit me. Or like, when I open my eyes next morning, I will believe that I will be alive. I will be safe. But cancer, as a crisis, is blatantly collapse our understanding of safety. And it almost like we all live in a protective shield that we will be safe, but suddenly, get collapsed. And in that situation, it's very scary. It is a sign to remind us that we all can die.
And because of what happened in the past where we grew up, we always have that strong fear of death, of aging, of sickness. So it will provoke a lot of pain, like you said. Different person have our own definition of pain. But it kind of elicited our own concept of pain. Our fear embedded with uncertainty, laws, and sometimes a very strong sense of loneliness. So it is a very uncomfortable feeling.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you. For sure. And as at least, a possible response to this, are working with people going through these issues, you bring up the model of Note, Know, Choose. And so can you say a little bit about the inspiration behind this model and what these steps are?
GEORGE LEE: Yes, sure. And as you have introduced I started my training as a clinical psychologist. And initially, I was trained in CBT. In CBT, everything is very logical, structure, simple words, and clear graph, and something like that. That reminds me of when we are working with people in crisis or any kind of strong emotional reactivity. If I'm going to train counselors or psychologists to do that, sometimes we cannot remember a lot of big concepts.
So I was thinking about maybe I can develop some acronym or some simple words. And then I got into Buddhism, which we all the three pillars of the practice-- the concentration, the discipline, and wisdom, which let me think about the magical number three. And the Note, Know, Choose are three action terms, and the verb that it reminds me of in any moment of volition, maybe there are certain things that we can do in a session with someone sitting across to us so that we can have them ways to share our insight.
So coming back to the model, Note, Know, Choose, that note is actually meaning noticing, gaining awareness. Just like what you said, when people are in crisis, they are in a very disturbed, scattered mind state that is very chaotic. And noting, at least, there are two meanings.
The first one is that can we ground, recenter, or recall that the mind through a single point in this practice. Taking a breath, or focusing on things around them, focusing on the body just like the first frame of mindfulness [INAUDIBLE], focus on our bodily sensation during the chaotic mode. When we are able to consolidate our mind in one object or meditation, then usually we are calmer. And usually, it helps us detach from all the conceptual proliferations by taking a break from that and come back at least for a moment for the reality.
And when we are in the present moment, usually there is a moment of stillness and calmness. So we further sustaining our training so that we have a more stable and clear mind to observe itself. So knowing exactly resonate with what you said earlier about listening. Even in knowing, means to know and see the general knowledge, but then we need to listen really deeply, thoroughly to our client to understand why they suffer and help them know why they suffer.
To know means that to basically investigate, to understand different causes and conditions that sustain, that give rise to a suffering, which is usually from external to an internal, like from our environment, from the family, from the immediate crisis to internally, how we perceive the event, and what is the deepest clinging or attachment that makes me suffer?
And it's also from conceptual to experiential. Conceptually, we all know dependent co-arising, Paticca-samuppada, or impermanence and all that. But then when we experience in our body, it's totally different. So knowing is a deep process of step by step, can we help our client by listening, by dialogue, by different experiential exercises? To help them understand, what may be some root cause of suffering?
When we gain the knowledge, when we know why we suffer, then choose is to come back to this moment, come back to our daily life. When we know maybe there are certain kind of habitual pattern that we thought it would bring us happiness, but actually it bring us more suffering so that we can take a break to see what our new choice point so that we can think, we can speak, we can act differently.
So that is a new karma. And generate new karma ripening, and slowly, bit by bit, moment by moment shaping our course of action, sequence of habit to a better direction. And then it go round and round like that in an iterative model. So it's kind of the gist of the [INAUDIBLE].
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: OK. Thank you. And to flesh that out a little more, could you provide a case study or example of what this might look like in practice?
GEORGE LEE: Yes. And one of my clients that I always remember was actually a very, very responsible, bright, gray medical professional who has a nice family, who has done very well in his job. But unfortunately, even though he doesn't drink or doesn't do anything unhealthy, he developed a very lethal cancer in a very short time. So at that time, it was around the liver, like pancreas area.
And because he's a medical professional, so when he discovered that, he kind of knew it cannot really be cured. It bring him a lot of fear, doubt, like shocking his whole world. He is, like, one of the people that live as healthy as possible in his life. And all the things are like, he tries best to do really well. And no one would imagine, like, why something so brutal and cruel like happening to someone like that. But it did happen.
So for noting, noticing, the first thing I try to help him to do is actually listening to him, listening to the life story, listening to what he said and what was being unsaid. And for me, it's not just noticing things that are happening in him or the emotions or the bodily sensations, but noticing how it makes me feel how sad I am in and what are the emotions that actually get brought up by being with him to notice that and to accept that.
And you take noticing on noting further when you have the physical pain. One technique that we used was actually chanting. Sometimes when we are too disturbed by our body and mind, just mindful breathing may be more difficult for beginner. So for him, I actually gave him those like, Buddhist, like those pebbles, and then he's chant with me on my back at home, which helped him consolidate the mind a little bit.
And then sometimes when he get too emotional, when we will do some chanting, he calm down and we can talk about his life again. And after his mind becomes more clear in the Note stage, we talk about how has it leaf his life. Now, like we are very open. But going to be the end stage of his life, are there any regrets? Are there anything that you feel like he should have done? Are there anything that reflecting that there's something that he cannot let go of.
So he reveal how you grew up, all the things he have done professionally, personally. And we reach a conclusion that by what he said, for what he had when he grew up, he didn't have much. Just like in Japanese, Chinese, we like playing Mahjong, right? Mahjong is a game. It's like gambling. It's kind of a card game, but like, solid card.
He said, well, for the Mahjong that I have, it's like when I'm born with, all the things I have is actually no connection. Nothing can make me win. But for all the things that I have done, for all the best I've tried, I actually have done pretty well. Even if I lost, I don't lost too much. Like, from a beginning to what I have done is actually very good already.
The only thing he cannot let go of his wife and two young children. But other than that, he know he cannot control. He can only plan for them in his last stage of life. And then that conversation, that continual dialogue throughout sessions make him feel that part of that is actually a relief, and part of that is more accepting to the condition.
Now, he still think about in the final stage of life what he can do. And for choosing, he choose something that I don't know when I die, can I choose or not? But then he did so well that make me so happy and proud, which is he threw a series of parties in a hospital. He got one of his precious tea leave that have been there for a long time and take a few sessions of parties with different group of people in his life, and drink the tea together.
His colleagues, friends, family, and for each one of them, to thank them to glorify the moment, to talk about the sadness, and say goodbye. And of course, finally, after all that, he still have to leave. He have to die. But in that process, it makes me feel like he is one of the very rare people that has become very acceptance of dying and try to make the best of each moment and reliving the moment until the very last. Yeah, so that's one of the cases.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah. Thank you for the beautiful story. And yeah, very touching in so many important aspects of that too. And I like how you also included in your listening the listening to ourselves as well, which is also such an important aspect. Thank you for fleshing that out in such a beautiful example.
But I also wonder too, besides cancer and issues like this, for people who'd like to explore this method, Note, Know, Choose in more depth, can you mention any books or resources out there that might also be helpful for people to learn a little more about this?
GEORGE LEE: Thank you so much, Nathan for this opportunity. So our recently published a book, The Guide to Buddhist Counseling, in intervention session, I talk about this Note, Know, Chose model with different techniques and different cases that I've tried to apply the technique to. And to be very honest, I think if you're interested in this book, you should also get Monica's book and our book because those are all new wisdom that-- I mean, like no matter how much I try and write in there, there's some wisdom that we have-- our unique insight too.
And to be honest, even though I use this knowledge of this book, I still use like what Monica wrote, and what are other author wrote in our book, in our daily practice. So hopefully, it will give some insight.
And just a brief note about the Note, Know, Choose, it's not just for cancer. It's for everything, even when we are practicing meditation. Noting your body, noting what is going on now, your mental state, knowing the causes of them and choosing, say like, to notice, to let go, to be compassion is a continual thing that we can all remind ourselves in every moment. There's a new choice point to do something. So hopefully, this is one way to incorporate Buddhist wisdom in a easy term to remind all of us on cultivation.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you. And are there other situations or cases in which you've found this model really useful to apply?
GEORGE LEE: Yes. There was another case that I was working with, and that is a young girl who has a lot of suicidal urges and thoughts, and especially when-- you think about relationships, she get triggered when she has an emotional reactivity. She tends to self-mutilate. Or one time, she took like a Tylenol to try to hurt herself. Not to the point of committedly killing herself, but at least hurting herself to cope with the urges.
So noting, similar to what happened, always starting with listening. Always starting with using all five aggregate-- to feel, to observe, to listen, and to understand, and check what we understand. And then I realizes that every time when she have any thoughts of being abandoned, of any time of being lost of her source of security, such as the boyfriend is not available, dumping her, rejecting her, any kind of separation or rejection like that, she get really, really upset and would trigger a lot of emotional hilarity.
So chanting, grounding, or one thing that I do is called happiness grounding, which is help her look at the surrounding and describe anything that she find beauty in and focus there. Use the eyes, use the smell, use the touch to focus on sensations in the present moment. And some of those skills were able to help her calm down a little bit. When she calm down, the knowing phase is to go back deeper into our clinging to the self notion.
Clinging onto, like how she wants to be-- like, because she grew up from a family of very chaotic situation-- psychotic siblings will be violent. Father was absent. Mother being critical. And the best support in the family is a sister who actually suffer from physical disability. In all the situation, he could not build up a sense of self that is safe, that is a cure, and self-sustaining.
Since she was very young, she need to rely on other people, especially the relationship, to feel safe. And a lot of times, she projected her inner desire of safety as fantasies on the romance. And then every time when she have a relationship, she will jump right in, and then try very hard to find a man to help her get out of her own family. But all the time, it actually resulted in disappointment. And every time when she get hurt, she just become more and more emotional and try to grabs even more.
So reflect on those kind of childhood, their experiences in the past relationships, helping her see the pattern and help her know that oh, this is how I created this self notion that I have to rely on other people and fantasies to live. So that I try to help her see-- I'll talk, like, this is actually what Monica taught me. Regardless of all the suffering that you have, regardless of all the causes and conditions that make you suffer now, even if you didn't cannot change it, what would it take to still find some happiness?
And she find her joy in her new job, in connecting with people, in teaching, in training the new generation. So besides focusing on all the conceptual proliferations that she thought would bring her happiness, she really genuinely started to get in touch with her inner part that actually bring her joy, which is the connection of people and appreciating how she can actually feel good devoting her energy and time to flourish the next generation.
And then she chooses to do more of the things that make her happy instead of just relying on other people. So this is how the Note, Know, Chose model goes. And then every time when she make a choice, I teach her to note again, to notice again, and know whether it's satisfying or not, and choosing to do again and again. So slowly, she makes some changes and doesn't need to come back to see me, which is happy, which is good. Because like, I love to see people, but people come to see me, I wish that they would never come back because they will be happy.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Because that means things are going much better, right?
GEORGE LEE: Yes. Yes.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Yeah, thank you. And just maybe before we close out our conversation together, just for a little bit, more about your own role at Hong Kong University. And you help with a Buddhist counseling and Buddhist chaplaincy programs there, as I understand. Do you also apply this and these methods to your training with students over there?
GEORGE LEE: Yes, yes. So I'm one of the key founders of the Master of Buddhist Counseling Program at the Center for Buddhist Studies in the University of Hong Kong. We try to be one of the earliest pioneers to promote, to introduce an approach, to integrate our psychotherapeutic techniques and Buddhist wisdom into a way of contemporary counseling based on Buddhist teachings.
And this is our six years of running a program, and things are going pretty well. So in the program, at least for the classes that I teach, I really emphasize on a Note, Know, Choose model. And first, the noting. Can we actually all, when we think that we are going to help people, can we actually secure a good foundation of spiritual advancement mind cultivation for ourselves so that when we say that oh, we preach Dharma, but we should be the first one to benefit from Dharma.
I keep telling students that if you are going to sell insurance, if you don't buy it yourself, it wouldn't be meaningful. So that is kind of-- if you want your client to be happy, happy counselor, happy client. So then what we do is happy teacher, happy student. We all have our own cultivation.
And in the program, there are many ways to help students find a way to learn, like yoga, traditional Buddhist meditation to help them develop a committed practice plan so that they can continually cultivate themselves. So that when they are being with their client, they are more effective. And being with their own life, they actually happier.
And knowing is the most difficult part in the program. People come to the program, they keep thinking that I'm learning all the cool intervention and technique to help people, but I didn't know that. The first client and final client that we have is always ourselves.
So in the program, there are a lot of different kind of reflections and contemplations on our past, how do we construct our sense of self, and how do we cling on to them, and what is the better way to live our present moment. Something like that.
So in the program, many students actually get through a lot of challenges in their life. And finally, they become happier at the end. But in the middle of processing that, practicing Dharma can be very, very difficult and brings more suffering at the moment. But after that, they are OK.
And choosing is a lot about interventions. In the programs, based on a research, based on clinical experiences, we have developed a variety of techniques to teach the students so that the role plays through different kinds of class exercises, they all get to learn different ways to practice different kinds of Buddhist counseling technique. And then they need to be the first one to find helpful in order to help other people.
So basically, this is the gist of the program. And in essence, it's all about training ourselves to be more skillful to live our life so that when we see our clients, we will be more sensitive more compassionate to being with them. So that's the gist of the program.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Right. And thank you so much for sharing both on your chapter and your work and your wisdom.
GEORGE LEE: Thank you.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you. And so now, we're going to shift over to Dorje Khandro. And Dorje is the author of a wonderful chapter in this book, entitled, "In the Charnel Ground of a Dying Latinx Man, Practicing with Emilio, El Niño Fidencio, and La Santa Muerte." She tells a beautiful story throughout this chapter. So I definitely recommend for those who've got the book and not yet read it, or to those who might be thinking about it. Also, just to note briefly-- was it Lion's Roar or Tricycle?
DORJE KHANDRO: Tricycle.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Tricycle is going to publish a somewhat abbreviated version of this chapter as well in an upcoming issue. So it's a beautiful story. Check it out. And one of the big themes coming through this chapter also is dual religious belonging. And I was wondering, could you speak a little to this and the role in care and such?
DORJE KHANDRO: Well, let me back up a little bit and relate it a little bit also to the story that appears in the book you edited. First of all, most of my work has been with migrants in the US-Mexico border. Initially, with Mexicans increasingly with Central Americans. And now, with people from all over the world. And we're talking about thousands of people coming in every week, every month, and so forth.
And where I've met them, it has not been usually in an office or in a hospital, a traditional office or a hospital. I've met them in my car, in shelters, in tents with unsheltered, homeless migrants, in places that were what I would call, non-institutional places. The story that I relate in your book that you edited begins with my work in Juarez.
And I was just doing some work, helping people from an NGO, fill out applications for asylum there, and have the people that were there at the time, it was an easier time than now, apply for asylum. And well, this was not working very well. So I went-- before I came back to the United States to have dinner, at a place in Juarez. And I met a woman by the name of Mercedes, and I want to read from my article.
I met Mercedes, a woman who was waiting tables. She told me she had tried to cross the border several times without success and was going to try again the following week. It was the last evening I was to spend in Mexico before returning to my academic post in California. When I told her this, she asked me if I could mail a small box to her son who resided in San Diego at a Casa de Curacion, which the translation is House of Healing.
She said that he was very sick, and she wanted to send him a small image of El Niño Fidencio and some remedies, home remedies. She was afraid that if she mailed the box in Juarez, it would get stolen. Against my better judgment, I agreed to mail the box on the other side of the border. But I warned Mercedes that if my car was searched upon crossing the border, US Customs officials would probably think that the Remedios were illegal drugs, and I would get into trouble, and the box would be confiscated.
Nevertheless, Mercedes begged me to take the box and gave me a big hug and a kiss while saying a prayer to protect me from harm. She then assured me repeatedly that El Niño Fidencio would look after me. The following day, I crossed the border, with the estampita and Remedios box in my backpack, and without any trouble.
I had planned that once I was in San Diego, I would FedEx the box to Mercedes' son. But when I read the address, I realized that on my way home, I would be passing by the facility where he was living. I decided then to deliver the box in person.
The door of the small house where the box was addressed was open. And when I walked in, the three men who were sitting in the living room watching TV, at first, paid little attention to me. The one side of the TV set was in the altar with pictures that I assume were from family members, and also pictures of Catholic Saints. In front of the pictures, there were small glasses of water, a bottle of rum, cigars, and freshly cut flowers.
One of the men who said his name was Gonzalo welcomed me when I told him that I had come to deliver a box to Emilio. He immediately noticed my interest in the altar and said that he was the cuidador, caretaker, and that the pictures were of and his wife's ancestors and ancestors of the men that were currently living there. He added, the others are from La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Catholic Patron Saint of Mexico, and other Saints.
Then he asked, do you know their names? Yes, I think so, I responded, as I tried to remember the pictures from the altars of the Catholic churches that I had frequented as a child in my Native country. I proceeded to list the Virgin of Guadalupe, Saint Jude, San Cipriano, San Diego, and San Santiago. Then I looked to the small table tucked away in a corner and saw a standalone picture of an amber-colored skeletal figure dressed as a bride, holding a scythe and surrounded by candles, dried flowers, dollar bills, bones, and other offerings.
Gonzalo smiled and said, I imagined you do not know Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, Our Lady of the Holy Death. Yes, I actually do, I responded, feeling somewhat proud. Gonzalo nodded and smiled at me again. Yes, I said, she is the patrona, patron of this home. Shortly thereafter, Mercedes' son Emilio came into the room assisted by a woman whom Gonzalo introduced as his wife and said she was a curandera, traditional healer.
So here began my journey with La Santa Muerte or the Holy Death. This was many years ago. And at the time, it was said that was La Santa Muerte was the patron mostly of members of drug cartels, particularly the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez cartel. And I said, oh my god. And very, very controversial to the extent that Mexico, the country of Mexico considered it a threat to national security.
And the police was always destroying altars that were in public places, and so forth. Although, they kept away from the original altar to a Santa Muerte in Mexico, which was in a very problematic area of the city called Tepito.
Anyway, so I began to work with Emilio. And that is the story. And he was very ill in the late stages of AIDS. And he was very, very, very committed to the practice of La Santa Muerte. I was not familiar with how you practiced with La Santa Muerte. And he was also very interested in Buddhism. And so we had many, many conversations we shared a lot.
And then one day, he asked me, could you please give me a Buddhist practice that I can do, because I've heard that Buddhists really try to help everyone without exception, the same way that La Santa Muerte. La Santa Muerte does not discriminate. It doesn't matter if we're gay. It doesn't matter if people are addicted. La Santa Muerte is always with us.
So for a while we practiced together tonglen, giving and taking, which is a Mahayana practice. And then he would visualize at the top of his head la Santa Muerte, and I would visualize His Holiness, Dalai Lama or my idem. And so we began doing these practices. And it was a kind of spiritual fluidity, more than a dual belongingness or multiple belongingness that I found in that home.
Conceptually, I'm very familiar with the literature. I love the recent book by Duane Bidwell, When One Religion is not Enough. But I had never really witnessed the spiritual fluidity in a home with so many people. Some were practicing Catholicism, pretty traditional Catholic tradition and La Santa Muerte. Others were very much beholden to El Niño Fidencio, who was a healer in 19th century Mexico that a lot of people are very devoted to him and to other healers, and so forth.
So that was an incredible experience for me. However when Emilio left to go to Mexico to die essentially, I stopped going to la Casa de curacion, the healing house. I kept in touch with them by phone. And then when they all went back to Mexico, I kept-- by mail, and then eventually, by email.
So anyway, that was just in the back of my mind. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was doing some volunteer clinical work in a hospital in Tijuana. And every weekend, I would go there. And suddenly, more and more people appeared to be involved in La Santa Muerte. And more and more people appeared to be interested when I told them that I didn't know very much about La Santa Muerte, but was willing to work with them.
And they would ask me what I practiced, then I said, I'm a Buddhist. And then they became really interested in Buddhism. And this continues to this day. And it's become more and more the case. For example, I just saw in the Reddit platform somebody asking a couple of days ago, "I'm a Buddhist, but I'm being called by La Santa Muerte. What do I do?" So in my practice--
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Can you show the image of--
DORJE KHANDRO: Yeah. There's in the chat room some images already that John freeze. But if you want to put the image of the three Santa Muerte. OK, this is the image of La Santa Muerte. La Santa Muerte is always portrayed, first of all, as a deity, but it's a deity that has never been a human being. This is not like Fidencio. It's not even like the Buddha. It's not even like Jesus.
This La Santa Muerte always been a deity. And it is the presence of death in our lives. It's always a bony lady with a cloak. And I guess, in English, you call this a scythe or something, s-c-y-t-h-e. And then you have a globe. And the symbology of this is that the cloak grants protection or invisibility. And this is very, very important to migrants and to everybody, but to migrants, in particular.
The globe is to say that she has dominion, and dominion of the Earth and of our lives. And the scythe is having to do with harvesting of souls. But most important, the body, the bony body is the symbol of impermanence, that we're here, and it's very impermanent. So I might as well do as well as we can with the time we have left.
So what happened after this and what still is happening in my life is for whatever reason, coincidence, synchronicity, if you're a Jungian, is that I am called by people increasingly or meet with people increasingly in situations where they are in difficult problems, whether they're dying, whether they're being evicted, whether they're being afraid because they have an illness and they think it's not going to be cured.
And I see them in what I would call non-traditional places or third places. I see them in cars, and on the street because as you probably know, we have a tremendous amount of unsheltered homeless people these days. And California is a good example of it. Many of them are migrants. Many of them are Latinx. There are other people. So
I do a lot of my work in cars. Also, sometimes I go to hotel rooms when-- motel rooms that they have had for a night or two. Sometimes I see them, as I said before, on the streets. Sometimes I see them in shelters on the other side of the border. Sometimes I've seen them in bars. And immediately, there's this kind of celebration of death in their lives. So we've come up with several approaches to working with Buddhism, what I called Heart Practices and La Santa Muerte.
I met with about four practitioners of La Santa Muerte, including a priestess. And I also read a magnificent book that if you ever want to read something much better than what I'm telling you now about La Santa Muerte by Tomas Prower called La Santa Muerte. He's a mortician actually. He's not a scholar. But he attends to a lot of people and works as a priest of La Santa Muerte
And so I've become kind of an attendant to La Santa Muerte. And I don't pretend to be a practitioner of La Santa Muerte or a priestess of La Santa Muerte. I just say that for some reason, she has come into my life. That I'm a Buddhist, and so together with some of my clients, with the work of Tomas Prower that I don't know personally, but I've been in communication with him, I've developed with my clients many processes of what they would call communion with death, which would be related to the Santa Muerte dressed in black. Colors are very important in this tradition.
I'm very much involved in what they asked me to do, purification for different reasons, and it's the Santa Muerte in white. I use a lot of the paramitas from the Buddhist tradition to deal what they call destiny, and I call karma. And then the red-- and there are others in other colors, the red, Santa Muerte is to deal with legal problems, wanting to get out of jail, and so forth.
My clients are migrants, people in jail, people who have just been released from a cult like La Luz Del Mundo, and other people that I don't like to say or don't like to ask them what they do. So that's what the article is about, people at the periphery.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: And just to also wrap some of this up, could you compare the difference, in a couple of minutes, of what working in non-institutional settings like that, what's different as compared to meeting in an office? And what that difference brings or how it might help you connect with them or deal with that particular-- with those people in that particular setting?
DORJE KHANDRO: Well, this is something I would like to bring up because not only was I working, and still continue to a certain extent, working in these non-institutional spaces by myself and with some other people, but I used to be an academic and I used to teach teachers, and counselors, and so forth. And particularly, I taught people who did social service work in the communities. These were students who were training to be counselors or teachers, and so forth in the community, and they were serving marginalized communities, and so forth.
And then occasionally, I would get a call, an urgent call in my office and a student would called me and said, there has been a shooting at the building and somebody is dying or is dead or something like that. And I would say, and? And she would say, we need you here or we need a psychiatrist or something like that here. I said, you can work with the people. You're trained in this. It was like always-- this is happening in these marginalized communities. We need an expert here.
And the expertise was not only in them. The expertise was in some of the people who were there dealing with the problem. And we didn't need to superimpose an expert in it. Sometimes yes, we could call a counselor, a psychiatrist, or whatever. But they did not have a sense of the expertise of people in those communities, that to be quite frank, and sometimes was much greater than mine.
I have things to offer them. They had things to offer me. So I had to teach my students to make sure that they listened not only to the problems of the people that we were assisting, but the resources, the assets in those communities. And I said, these people have walked for a month from Panama to here without any resources. And you're telling me that they don't have any resources? Please, try to work with the resources. Try to find-- and one of the resources was La Santa Muerte. That's one thing.
The second thing was that I learned to take my Santa Muerte tool kit. Because with La Santa Muerte, you have to pay a lot of attention to candles. For example, the light, and in the different colors. You have to pay attention to incense, and that's probably a legacy of the Catholic Church. You have to pay a lot of attention to different artifacts that communicate the presence of La Santa Muerte.
And so it's very interesting. I never thought I would have to carry a bag with all these things, but it helped me a lot. And then it helped me a lot relating to your cafes to go and have a drink maybe before. And I don't particularly drink. But believe me, I have had tequila more than I want to even think about it. And so I told one of my lamas, I'm breaking my vows every day. And he said, OK, go ahead. I haven't listened to this.
So it's a very different kind of thing. You become a friend, part of a family, and so forth. And these are where people at the margins live. And it's not only dealing with issues of death. It's dealing with issues of, for example, being gay in the middle of a marginalized community. It's different than being gay with my students in the colleges.
So that's what I do. I no longer-- well, I'm part living in retirement, but in retreat. Not in retirement, but in retreat. But I no longer work from an office. I went the other day to see-- I mentioned it to you, to see somebody who was dying, and he was dying in a shelter.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you so much for sharing. And the stories and the examples, powerfully important examples. And thanks to both of you for being with us today and sharing your wisdom. We're going to transition now. I think, Monica is back, and we might have some questions as well from the audience.
MONICA SANFORD: Thank you, everyone for such wonderful presentations and conversation. I've learned so much just listening to you and reading your chapters and reading your other works. So we have a couple of questions, and I'm going to encourage anybody else who is watching. Go ahead if you have questions and add them to the Q&A, to the chat.
But one question that came in, and I think maybe George and Dorje, you're probably more qualified to answer. This is, what is the difference, if there is one, between Buddhist informed psychotherapy and psychotherapy-informed Buddhist spiritual care?
So it's a little bit about the difference between how chaplains are trained and what they do and how psychotherapists are trained and what they do, and how we kind of cross some of those boundaries while understanding our scopes of practice. But it's the difference between Buddhist-informed psychotherapy and psychotherapy-informed Buddhist spiritual care. Would anyone like to take on that one?
DORJE KHANDRO: How about, George, you go first.
GEORGE LEE: Sure. Sure. Well, I think, just like Nathan talked about same word of pain, there will be 10 people, 10 different definitions. I would just give my understanding of what might be some differences. So a short answer is that, I think, nowadays, it's not too much difference. But originally, from my understanding of say, like, psychotherapy and spiritual care, psychotherapy originally more about symptom-focused. Like less of a religion and spirituality at least, from my training.
I think American Psychological Association in a very recent time to develop and endorse like religion, spirituality, and have their own division. But more traditional psychotherapy, they kind of don't talk too much about that. Or when they talk about that, they talk about maybe the psychology or how is it a worldview of a client instead of having a spiritual connection.
But when you do spiritual care, from my understanding, we need to cultivate interfaith understanding and the discussion, may be spiritual, maybe religious, maybe faith-based, maybe more about meaning. So initially, they are a little different camp. But I think, when time progresses, I think it's in a way that spiritual care and psychotherapy, they start to acknowledge the value and essence of each other, so that it's like a Venn diagram emerging, and they are more and more overlapping areas.
So when we come to the key question, what is the difference between Buddhist-informed psychotherapy and psychotherapy-informed Buddhist spiritual care, I don't think there can be a lot of differences. Especially all of us as a spiritual care provider or psychotherapist, we have our own view, and perhaps nowadays, a more integrated view between spirituality and psychotherapy. So it really depends on the person doing that.
And for me, particularly, when I do so-called Buddhist counseling for my model, the default is, I try to take early Buddhist teachings as a school of psychology. And when I use that theoretical orientation to talk to my clients, I usually don't mention too much about religions or faith. I just use the wisdom to help them to think about say, how can we use multiple courses and conditions to view the events? How can we see more life isn't impermanent? What is your attachment? Those kind of things that we don't need to talk about-- Buddha or Buddhist, for those kind of things.
So for me, even though it's all informed by Buddhist wisdom, well, I don't need to use the term Buddhism or have any kind of more spiritual things, unless, unless it is helpful for a client, then I would do more about spirituality or religion, where may be suited together. We may talk about interpretations. We may introduce four immeasurables or different kind of concepts. But I don't know too much about psychotherapy-informed Buddhist Spiritual Care because I'm trained as a chaplain. So maybe Dorje can help me a little bit in that. Thank you.
DORJE KHANDRO: That was a very good explanation, George, and I agree with most of what you said. What I would add is that I don't identify myself as a Buddhist psychotherapist, whether informed or not. If I am asked, and if people come to me to ask me things about Buddhism, I will talk about it and talk about my practice, if they ask me.
What informs me is the parameters. I don't think I would be the same person that encounters a client or a friend if I were not Buddhist. And if they asked me about what Buddhism has made, has it made a difference in your life, which is usually what they ask me, then I talk about it. But I don't go in there to think about informed or the difference between the two. So I think, that's what I would say.
For me, spiritual care is being present. It is sharing, like you said, the wisdom of my tradition and other traditions, but without making it necessarily an interfaith kind of discussion or syncretic kind of thing. I work with what the person brings to me and who I am.
GEORGE LEE: Yeah, I would like to just add something that I've learned from a role model that I have, because seeing you guys really reminded me of him. His name is Professor Luis Gomez, and maybe many of us still remember him. Before he passed away, I have a privilege to saw his lecture and have a conversation with him. And at that time, I have not developed anything like that.
And then I asked him, so Professor Luis Gomez, you have a PhD in Clinical Psychology. You have a PhD in Buddhist studies. You are expert in both field. What do you see as a Buddhist psychotherapy?
And he said, there's no such thing as a Buddhist psychotherapy. There's no Buddhism. There's no psychotherapy. When you sit in a room, there's only that person sitting across to you. Your only job is actually to listen to that person, and that's it. What Dorje have reminded me of what he said.
And it actually-- I mean, years later, I feel more what he said of how sometimes that at least, I am clinging on a certain kind of who I am, the concepts and thought that are just a Monica said. I know more than you. I should offer to you. But when we let go of them, it's just two people connecting. It's just a humble listening to another person's suffering. It just accompanying, being present, like Dorje said.
DORJE KHANDRO: Exactly.
GEORGE LEE: And this is the most important lessons.
DORJE KHANDRO: And sometimes you have to fight with yourself to do that. Before His Holiness, Dalai Lama became a celebrity, I was his student. And I was very young and very Cuban at the time. So I was always talking about it and doing all the so-called stereotypical Cuban things.
And one day, I said to His Holiness, I think I'm not going to be a Buddhist. And he said, why? And I said to him, you know, Buddhists are too quiet. You just don't talk very much. And I feel so lonely here. I mean, I was in Dharamsala for a year, and nobody used to talk, or hear music, or something like that, except music in the gompas, and so forth.
And he said, well, maybe your task here is how to become Buddhist and keep being a Cuban. And he said, sort of like, OK, so that's your task and not talk about it anymore. And so I've just taken not to talk about it. And I'm not sure if I'm still that Cuban and I'm not sure if I'm that Buddhist, so.
MONICA SANFORD: Thank you, both, so much. We received another question in the chat. And I dropped in a resource from the chat that you've already named, Dorje, is a book by Duane Bidwell. It's his other book, the one that's coming out. But the question is, Mark wanted to know, is there a difference in counseling a child or possibly even a teenager through advanced cancer and an adult with advanced cancer? And George, I don't know if you've experienced that or worked with families of children going through this process. And maybe if you want to address that.
DORJE KHANDRO: No, but I think George should be first.
GEORGE LEE: I am embarrassed to say I actually start this as a child therapist, but I don't think I did so well. But anyway, I would share my insights. I think, working with children, either with cancer not with cancer, one other thing very important for all of us to know is that we cannot rely too much just on talking dialogue or just sitting there listening and assuming that they will tell us things.
When I do counseling with children, it's a lot about play, art, using different mediums for them to express, using different ways to make them feel safe, and being interested in their world. And don't judge them. Like, play with them. Draw the processes. And usually, they-- I mean, some children are very articulate, but most children are that they need different mediums to help them express themselves.
Cancer, death, feeling scared, having questions of what will happen, why am I so painful, why me, what will happen next, all those kind of things. We can use different toys, different artwork to have them express. So in a way, I think you may say there's a difference working with children, but sometimes adults, with us, I mean, a part of us are actually children. Part of us, we just let our language for ourselves. We're just dwelling into all those kind of mental conceptualizations and cannot express ourselves freely.
So I would say those kind of techniques initially developed for children. Some of them is actually very helpful for adult. Let them draw out their fear. Play it out. Play with them. Use sensory, toys. I think that bring a very different dynamic.
And I also think, no matter how scared we are, how lonely we are, when we're able to connect, we can still in the connection. Try way to do some fun, feel some peace, and then actually, I think sometimes it can help us see how dukkha is impermanent when we're able to connect, have a little fun, and have a little peace together.
DORJE KHANDRO: I was a faculty member and a therapist and a psychotherapist at the School of Medicine at the University of New Mexico. And there, I worked with what we would call Community-Family Therapy. And we brought in teachers. We brought in the family. We also had individual counseling with the child. And that was very, very effective.
And then I left the University of New Mexico and began teaching more in schools of education. And I thought it would be very, very interesting to bring child therapists to talk to the teachers because they were going to have a lot of kids with cancer. And I thought that that was extraordinarily useful.
So I think there's a need not only to talk in Buddhist chaplaincy about counseling the student with cancer or nothing, but working, like you said, with the larger framework where the child lives and plays. And I'm not certified in sand play, but I've used some sand play and I find it very effective. And so I agree with you.
MONICA SANFORD: Well, thank you both so much. We are at 7:30, so we've been going for 90 minutes. So thank you to all of our attendees who have stuck around that long. This will be recorded and we will post it up on the HDS YouTube channel. So if you want to watch it again, or if you want to send it to a friend of yours, you'll be able to do that.
I know we had almost 100 people registered. And oftentimes if they're anything like me, they might register for things they know they can't attend because they want the email with the recording later. I'm guilty of that. So we will be posting it up there and everyone will get a chance to see it. But I want to thank all of you so much. Thank you, Dr. Michon. Thank you, Dr. Lee. Thank you, Dorje Khandro for all of your beautiful wisdom and your stories.
I also want to send a special shout out to a person not on the screen, but very much lurking here in the Zoom, Jonathan Makransky, who is the coordinator for Multireligious Ministry at Harvard Divinity School and works very hard to put these together, as well as our IT staff, Bob and Robbie, who makes sure that all of our Zoom needs are always met. So thank you to all of the people who are supporting us in the background, and to all of you, our attendees, who came and contributed your questions. And I hope this has been wonderful experience for you.
May we dedicate the merit to all suffering beings, that all beings may find happiness, that all beings may find safety, that all beings may find health and ease and ultimate liberation. Thank you so much and have a lovely night, everyone.
DORJE KHANDRO: Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Nathan. And great meeting you, George.
GEORGE LEE: Great to meet you, Dorje. Thank you. Thank you for your wisdom.
NATHAN JISHIN MICHON: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Buddhist Ministry Initiative.
SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2023. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.