[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Help with hospital chaplaincy for Hindus
Submission for: soc.religion.hindu
Subject: Re: Help with hospital chaplaincy for Hindus
MEliyahu (meliyahu@aol.com) wrote about the need to meet the needs of Hindu
hospital patients.
The concern for the needs of Hindu patients is commendable and timely. For
too long, patients of all faiths other than the Christian and, perhaps, the
Jewish have lacked the opportunities for spiritual care they deserve.
At present, I am the only Hindu involved in a Clinical Pastoral Education
program sponsored by the Canadian Association of Pastoral Practice and
Education in my city, and perhaps the whole country. I may also be one of
the first Hindus in Canada to have provided emergency chaplaincy services
for people of all faiths to a major general hospital. MY CPE program is
part of my effort to prepare for Hindu ministry, broadly defined to include
the services (rituals) normally provided by a pandit, but also the pastoral
and education aspects more normally associated with the Christian concept
of ministry. A prime concern for me is that not only Hindus but all
people, regardless of their faith, receive the kind of spiritual care most
in keeping with their respective traditions, personal beliefs and
individual needs.
CAPPE, and I believe the American equivalent, have done much to make
spiritual care a respected part of institutional (hospital, prison, etc.)
life, but have been hampered by the fact that virtually all the people
involved have either been Christian or Jewish. Having said that, I think
the organizations must now move with much greater urgency to correct this
situation so they are really promoting interfaith chaplaincy. To their
great credit, the Christian hospital chaplains I know who are connected
with CAPPE have shown much openness to other traditions, and enabled Hindu
(and other) patients to benefit as a result.
The fact you're setting up a program in a new institution gives you a
tremendous opportunity because you are starting from scratch. In Canada
and the US, our societies are so diverse, that we can no longer ignore any
tradition, and we also need to see what may be appropriately learned from
one tradition and used to work with people in other traditions. In the
process of doing this, as I see from my work consulting with different
institutions here, there's need to realize that spiritual care is
everyone's business.
Nurses, for example, need to have sensitivity to the differing spiritual
care needs of their patients. They need to offer the possibility to a
Hindu patient of having a shrine in their room, know for the Muslim patient
that we are about to begin Ramadan, and that the Native American patient
may wish to smudge. They need to be aware also, of when meditative
techniques may be able to provide pain relief and peace to a cancer patient
overcome with pain and at a point further medicating may create other
problems.
One of the biggest concerns I have is the fact that many of us when we are
hospitalized do not think about our spiritual needs and, as a result, do
not make them known. I have had a number of Hindus say to me, "I never
thought I could have pictures in my room," or "I thought they would say no
if I asked to have my shrine, or a special puja." We Hindus need to know
what to ask for (ie. whatever is most important to our own individual
spiritual practice), and to ask knowing our requests will be respected.
One case in point: Last year at Mahasivaratri, I asked a young man with ALS
I visit regularly if he would like the panditji come to his room to do the
puja. He was delighted--and so, for that matter, was the pandiji who had
never done a puja in a patient's room before. Through discussions with
nursing staff some months prior, we had already established an altar on
this patient's dresser. Although the nurses had previously used the
dresser as a place for keeping some of the many supplies this man needs,
they willingly agreed to honour the dresser as a holy area and welcomed its
conversion to an altar.
Re your list of items, here are some suggestions:
1. Ritual items to be provided by the institution
This perhaps depends on whether you can have a working arrangement with a
local panditji, or priest. If you have a good arrangement, the pandit may
wish to provide his own items. Also, patients will probably have items at
home they can bring.
2. Reading materials to be provided by the institution
The Bhagavad Gita in English, Sanskrit, Hindi and other Indian languages.
Easwaran's English translation is the one I use most, and find people
respond best to, especially youth. You should also have copies in
different languages of the Ramayana and the major Upanisads. Many Hindus
would appreciate reading something such as Hinduism Today, a wonderful
newspaper published from Hawaii.
3. Information on holidays
Your best bet is to have a local contact, probably a panditji, who has an
almanac, and can brief you on the major days, as well as special days which
may have significance based on what part of India a person is from, or the
beliefs of their particular approach to Hinduism.
I would think that your other questions could also best be answered by a
panditji in face-to-face meetings, although I'd be glad to discuss them
with you. I think you need to be aware of the need to ensure that the
panditji is open to discussing and informing you of Hindu traditions
different from his own. Most pandits have such openness, but some may be
reluctant to talk about anything other than their own approach.
Daly de Gagné
