Buddhist chaplaincy has been variously conceptualized and practiced by a growing field of scholar-practitioners. In addition to contributing to the conceptualization of Buddhist chaplaincy and the formulation of training programs, we see an opportunity to consider how the dharma might not only support individuals and their families in times of acute suffering, but also how dharma might support our contemporary movements for justice and liberation.
While movement chaplaincy has been practiced arguably for generations—though may not have been named as such—no theorization of what Buddhism, per se, might offer our current movements for justice and liberation (beyond common, yet important, skills of accompaniment and bearing witness) have been published.
This roundtable, therefore, is designed to help us begin to explore Buddhist contributions to movement chaplaincy, including phenomenological approaches to dharmic vision/moral imagination/pure perception; ontological frameworks that illuminate the roots of movements, the “heart” of the work (thus breaking the binds of internal conflict found in some movement and justice spaces); and explorations of praxis that integrate such theological approaches with current on-the-ground work in movement spaces.