WELCOME TO THE JUNE NEWSLETTER

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work hard to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.”

—August Wilson

May this find you in the midst of this late spring with time to reflect. This month we will be celebrating! On June 5th we will be graduating 27 Foundations in Buddhist Contemplative Care students, and on June 16th we will have a graduation of our 13 Clinical Pastoral Education Chaplain Interns. In honor of all the incredible training, contemplation, and direct care that our students provided in this academic year, we will feature two of their voices in each newsletter for the summer months.

In this issue, we have news about our incoming students, the 10th Anniversary of Health and Healing at Beth Israel. Meditation for chronic pain, and two wonderfully written pieces by our students, Barbara Ende and Chetra Kotzas. A reminder, all are welcome to join us on Monday nights to meditate and talk together, and as you will see in the wish list, we are looking for donations of meditation cushions.

Bows,

Koshin + Chodo

Co-Founders

NEWS

2010/2011 NYZCCC's Contemplative Care Trainings

We are pleased to have such a rich new group of applicants and students for the coming academic year. Both of our core training programs are now full—Foundations in Buddhist Contemplative Care and Buddhist Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE certified chaplaincy training). Our new Foundations class has students from the NYC metro area and as far as Virginia and New Mexico—it is a wonderfully diverse group. In the coming year, we are now offering 4 units of CPE (which has grown from one just two years ago). We have several students who are going into their third and fourth year of training with us, and these students are beginning to specialize their training in several areas: Pain and Palliative Care, Pediatrics, Oncology, and Emergency and Intensive Care. It is a pleasure to watch the growth of the NYZCCC learning community.

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Organic Elegance: A Benefit for the Continuum Center for Health and Healing

On Tuesday, May 4, noteworthy New Yorkers came together to celebrate the 10thAnniversary of the Continuum Center for Heath & Healing, an innovative and thriving initiative of Beth Israel Medical Center, and to honor Donna Karan for her generous support of the work being done on the Oncology Unit of Beth Israel Hospital. Koshin opened the evening with a blessing, after dinner there was a wonderful rare performance by Elvis Costello, and Chodo closed the evening with a meditation. NYZCCC is a proud to partner with such a wonderful organization as Beth Israel Medical Center’s Continuum Center for Health and Healing.

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Meditation as a Way of Being with Chronic Physical and Emotional Pain: A Talk At Beth Israel

Koshin and Chodo gave an experiential session to a large group of mainly elderly folk at Beth Israel Ambulatory Center. The registrants were led in both silent and guided meditations that they can use as tools to help with emotional and physical pain. One of the participants offered, “This was the first time I have felt relief in my eighty six years!” “I never knew I could feel so free.”

By Barbara Ende, NYZCCC CPE Student

Barbara Ende lives in northern Westchester with her husband and various animals. She works with developmentally disabled adults and came to Foundations and then CPE as a way to round out her professional experience which has been based primarily on the medical model. Barbara began a Buddhist practice about eight years ago and this has increased with learning and commitment since being with NYZCCC. “I look forward to Chaplaincy work, in some form, being core of my professional work at some time in the future, and I am very excited about the growth and possibility I see with NYZCCC.”

In 1977 when I was a freshman in college in Pittsbugh PA, I walked into a department store and for reasons I still don’t understand, I had a panic attack.  It was a watershed event, the most defining of my life.  At that moment, I became an anxious person.  Many people, when experiencing an initial panic attack, worry that they are having a heart attack, stroke, going crazy and quickly look for a cause or at least reassurance that it is not something medically significant.  My immediate response to the panic was humiliation and my over riding concern, true still today, was that no one see.  This then was the genesis of an emotional life concealed and the day I stepped furthest away from spiritual relationship.  

As I look back, I’ve wondered how this relates to my present experience of the holy.  Of grace (my favorite word in the English language)?  How could it not relate?  My experience with panic defined my relationship with fear and this world: painful, unpredictable, and inevitable with no where to go for respite. I moved through my life in a constant state of readiness, tight, armored, and defensive.  And then, about eight years ago, the bottom fell out.  I had a crisis in my family that left me adrift.  I had no choice but to reach out and look for another way to manage my terror.  I met a woman who was troubled and quite sad but had a deep serenity too.  She spoke to me about her Buddhist practice and how she was able to take her fear and her suffering and put space around it.  She could put it into context.  My relationship with Liz was my true introduction to faith.  I believed her.  For the life of me, I didn’t know why I should, but I did. 

[To read the full piece, click here.]

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No Words

By Chetra Kotzas, 2009/10 Foundations Student

Chetra E. Kotzas has a MA in Psychology, Theology and Education and holds three Teaching Certificates in the field of education. Some of her children’s poetry appears in Song and Dance (Simon and Schuster), Hamsters, Shells, and Spelling Bees (The “I Can Read” series by Harper Collins) and School Supplies (Simon and Schuster). Her photography and poetry appear in the coffee table book, A Cats: A Century of Tradition.  She balances her hospice work by restoring the gardens of the Jacques Marchias Tibetan Art Museum on Staten Island.

Debra sits, nodding off, wheel chaired; snoozing through parts of her day and awaiting the next noise to jostle her awake so she can participate in whatever commotion stirs the nursing home that she has lived in for the passed four years. Alzheimer’s Disease, Debra’s constant companion, slowly creeps about in her mind leaving her confused and in need of care by a professional staff.

[To read the full piece, click here.]