Spiritual Care in the G.R.A.C.E. Program

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore G.R.A.C.E. program that was initiated as a practice of compassion by Joan Halifax Roshi, one of the representative Buddhists in USA. G.R.A.C.E. is designed to become a clinical practice of Buddhist-based yet nonreligious spiritual-care for dying people as well as a program to prevent burnout of caregivers. This program was introduced into Japan in 2015 by members of the Japanese Association for Transpersonal Psychology and Psychiatry. This paper describes Halifax’s work, the development of this program, essential components of compassion (attention, affect, intention, insight, embodiment, and engagement), and basic stages of the practice (1 gathering attention, 2 recalling intention, 3 attuning to self, then other, 4 considering, 5 engaging, enacting, ending). G.R.A.C.E. is a training program of somatic, affective, cognitive, and spiritual aspects so that they can interact each other to create a condition for compassion to emerge. This paper also points out a limitation of compassionate action by describing two modes of caring that include the caring of action and the caring of being. Compassionate caring does not only rely on action but also comes from the depths of being that is diversely called by Halifax “the vastness of our original nature,” “our true nature,” and “deep ground of being.” The nature of compassionate caring lies in the nondual identity between action and being.