Chris Berlin, Counselor to Buddhist Students and Instructor in Ministry

“Whether we can foster inner healing through connection with God, or through meditation practice, or any other sort of religious lens, there’s really a lot of potential we have that we’re not always aware of.”

HDS Culture

I think that many people who come to HDS are following an impulse that stems from their faith, from their heart, from the desire to be of benefit somehow—or at least a curiosity and interest in how that works, from a scholarly standpoint, theological standpoint, or a standpoint of doing ministry.

Path to Ministry

The big turning point for me was meditation practice, and seeing what is possible from a more contemplative view—how that can really transform one’s life. Because of that perspective, I got interested in studying religion academically, how it interfaces with psychology, and I thought for a little while about going into ordained ministry. But having had a father and grandfather who were ministers, I knew the terrain well, and I personally wasn’t called to follow that path. So, for me, chaplaincy was an option, and I always knew I wanted to investigate what’s possible through one-on-one counseling and spiritual care.

For me, the study of religion, of psychology, and of contemplative practice seemed like a very fluid sort of confluence of different approaches. But the goal always felt like it was the same, which is to get to know yourself better and find out that you’re more than just the things that are wrong with you—that there’s a whole lot there that’s right with you even if you don’t feel it in the moment. Whether we can foster inner healing through connection with God, or through meditation practice, or any other sort of religious lens, there’s really a lot of potential we have that we’re not always aware of. My work has always been about what kind of potential is there that somebody may not feel they have, a kind of “spiritual resilience.”

Teaching Method

The way that I teach is to make it very personal. If we’re doing a class on end-of-life care, in the first paper we have students write their own obituary and reflect on what comes for them. Then we process this together in a safe, peer-holding space. One reason for this approach is to have already begun to do this work for ourselves before attending to others, say, who are facing the end of life. It’s important to have done that personal work so we know where we are with it, or at least we’re familiar with our own internal dialogue around dying, and having a way to work through the fears of our own mortality and impermanence. I think then we’re better able to attend to other people without ourselves “shutting down” out of fear. So, for me, it’s about making it personal with our students, and writing reflection papers to integrate the readings and the theories into those reflections. For just about every paper I assign, I ask students to think of a personal experience and apply it to things that we’re working on in class.

On Chaplaincy

Being a really good listener is helpful to others—being receptive without trying to “fix” a person’s problems is an important starting point for a chaplaincy encounter. Usually the fixing impulse comes from a desire to be helpful, but can occur through our own ideas of what we think someone needs.

When people are vulnerable, whether they’re sick or at the end of life, it’s better to help them rely on things that they’ve already relied on in the past. Maybe they have a faith practice from their family, their tradition, that’s there for them. If it isn’t, then we seek to explore together new pathways to a spiritual connection of some kind.

Some people, at the end of life, embrace their faith even more. It’s like all the artifice gets stripped away and they’re left with what’s most important within their own spiritual heart. Other people tend to lose their faith; they have the opposite experience of falling into a crisis mode—what we can call a “spiritual crisis”—and then experience a profound absence of those resources that otherwise would be helpful to them. The interesting thing, though, is that as a chaplain, I will often visit someone in that situation and yet I will see in them that which we may call “spirit,” “Buddha-nature,” or a loving presence that is clear and awake. It’s just that they can’t see it in themselves because there’s so much in the way: anger, betrayal, or maybe a theology people may use around why they’re sick, perhaps feeling punished or unworthy in some way. And so we may explore other narratives—other spiritual outlooks, emotional matters—to see if clarity may allow for a more helpful, resilient way of seeing things. Hopefully, this will help lift the burden somewhat it and find greater freedom through a different understanding.

My Faith

I was raised Protestant but rejected Christian theology for a while when I was younger. I had to get away from it to rediscover it on my own terms, and I found that through other spiritual disciplines, such as Vedanta, Buddhism, and Yoga philosophy, Christianity began to have an incredible new meaning for me. I wouldn’t say I’m “born again,” but I do feel like, in the words of the late Marcus Borg, I discovered Jesus again for the first time. For me, meditation practice sort of came together with the mystical aspect of Christ. I was intrigued by that, and so when I went back to read the New Testament, I read it with a whole new lens.

Meditation

How would I define meditation? I would say it’s the intentional practice of coming to know oneself in a much deeper way from a standpoint of non-judgment and direct awareness. Wisdom then arises by fully experiencing the present through this state. At least, this is one of many ways to define it.

Buddhism

There’s a lot of discourse around the question of whether Buddhism is a religion, a philosophy, a practice, a psychology, or a science. I’d say it includes all of these. And yet it isn’t any of these on their own without the texts, the Sutras, the ritual aspects, the teachings of liberation, the different lineages and traditions, the practice communities themselves, and the cultures that integrate Buddhism.

In China, for example, there’s a long history of Buddhism being interwoven into Taoism, Confucianism, and the honoring of one’s ancestors. In Japan, you find a unique blending of Shinto and Buddhism. And so, it becomes challenging to define Buddhism, but I think there are some common threads, strands of teachings, and practices and principles that run through most lineages and sects, and those are pretty integral, whether it’s Korean Zen, Tibetan Vajrayana, or Theravada Buddhism in Bangladesh.

So, what are those strands? Basically, we’re talking about soteriology. There’s an assertion in Buddhism that the core of who we are is not our thoughts, feelings, concepts, ideas, but rather something more profoundly subtle, a sense of bright, open awareness, or luminous presence, that is already awake and imbued with unconditional love and the good heart of compassion. The task then becomes freeing ourselves from suffering and its causes; this is the point of Buddhism in most traditions. The tricky thing is that Buddhism tells us there is no enduring, unchanging and conceivable self, but that can so easily be misinterpreted. There is an experience of consciousness, of awareness, of love, of a vividness of mind, but the second we try to comprehend it in a conceptual way other than through direct insight, we are at risk for being misled.

Often people will mistake Buddhism for a sort of atheist tradition, which it absolutely is not. Some people are attracted to it for that reason. There can be sort of a perception of nihilism about it that they find enticing. But if there’s one thing that characterizes Buddhism, it is practice. It’s how to calm the mind, how to settle it, and to come to know its underlying natural state.

Mantras

For a couple of years now, I’ve been enjoying setting Buddhist chanting to guitar music as a devotional, contemplative practice. Darren Becker and I have been doing this for a while now, and I just finished writing a piece to the Manjushri mantra. Manjushri is the Buddhist deity of wisdom. In Vajrayana Buddhism, these deities are not taken to be literal entities outside of us, but they are reflections of our own underlying qualities. Manjushri wields a sword representing spiritual wisdom. You see this in Hindu religions, too—the demons of spiritual ignorance are beheaded by the fierce, sword-wielding wrathful deities of spiritual wisdom. The symbolism is that wisdom is as clear, fine, and sharp as a sword. It is completely pure and easily cuts through ignorance. Manjushri, though, is not seen as a wrathful deity, but is pictured holding a sword for the same reason.

Wisdom and compassion are seen to be among the two most important principles in Buddhism, and they’re basically both sides of one experience, so the mantra that I’ve been working on lately is that of Manjushri: Om Ah Ra Pa Cha Na Dhi-hi. There’s no single direct translation, but it’s basically a recognition of the essence of all things as being empty of inherent nature, not subject to being possessed or being lost, and able to be perceived through a clear awareness of things just as they are. That’s the basic meaning of that mantra, and I combine that with the syllable hum in the heart. When you chant hum, you can feel your heart opening, and there’s a strength to the compassion that arises. It’s not a vulnerable, soft, “mushy” quality, but there’s a power to it. And so, the hum and the Manjushri mantra together are very powerful for me.

Interfaith Healing

In Andover Chapel, we had a day-long interfaith vigil for peace in the Middle East and Europe in Andover chapel. I brought in readings from various traditions, including some Sufi poems. I think that in a place like HDS, there is wisdom in the fact that we study together from all these different backgrounds and that we do it with similar intentions—the same desires for peace, for learning, for love—and for deepening our faith practice by learning from each other, and doing so together in a way that actually deepens our own faith through these encounters and enriches the fullness in the apparent space between us.