Abstract
Though the word "spirituality" has been used widely in various disciplines since the 1980s, the definitions and meanings of this word are rather vague, sometimes even contradicting each other. Since this word has various meanings and implications depending on the context in which it is used, we must begin to show who uses this word in what context and clarify their strategies in order to understand the concept more comprehensively. On the basis of some investigation, the users of this word can be classified into three main groups: the professionals engaged in human care, the scholars of religious studies, and the advocates of new age movements. Each group tends to emphasize a different aspect of "spirituality" in each particular context, and pays little attention to the use of the word by other groups. For example, the professionals of the first group, especially the medical professionals, emphasize the aspect of the search for the meaning and the purpose of human life and death, while they do not lay much emphasis on the aspect of the relationship with super-human beings or the transcendent. In this paper, I will bring out the interrelationship among the different meanings of "spirituality," and show the potentialities of the concept in wider context, focusing on the common background in which we need this concept in different contexts as the medium between religion and secularism.
