抄録
Practice of taking care of the sick among ordained practitioners during
the Buddha’s time seems to have carried critical importance. Therefore, five
conditions of a good caregiver for the sick and five conditions of a difficult
patient to take care are elaborated in Vinaya. This paper surveys the context
as to why the practice of nursing had such an importance in Buddhist practice
from the standpoint of mindfulness meditation and modern clinical education in
nursing. The author will share the insights obtained from university education
of spiritual care about the third condition of a good care giver for the sick
(giving care with loving kindness, not from an expectation of something); the
awareness of the unconscious motivation to become a care giver will support
him/her to survive and attain emotional maturation through the difficulties of
clinical practice.
Roshi Joan Halifax created the G.R.A.C.E. program in order to prevent
burnout syndrome in terminal care, with her students who practice Buddhist
meditations and also are educators in the medical environment. We will
examine this G.R.A.C.E. program from the perspective of traditional
understanding of Buddhist meditation practice: mindfulness (sati-paṭṭhāna),
the three steps of learning (sīla, samādhi, paññā) and the four boundless hearts
(appamaññā). Especially in the analysis of the near-enemy and far-enemy of
four boundless hearts explained in Visuddhimagga, the emotional maturation of
medical practitioners in the clinical human relationship will be examined from
the standpoint of integration of ambivalence psychoanalytically.
Towards the end of this paper, readers will hopefully have some better
understanding about how ancient meditation practices had a fundamental
impact on the humane maturational process and how we can improve modern
medical practice and education by utilizing those ancient experiential wisdoms.
