care
Transforming care through contemplative practice and meeting illness, aging, and death with wisdom and compassion.
Help to comfort, help to support, help to instruct, help to inspire
The New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care (NYZC) offers relationship-centered support, using the caregiver’s training and practice as the primary source of loving action. Contemplative caregivers seek to understand causes of suffering and to explore and nurture sources of strength such as resilience and compassion.
Our students
Our students (including Integrative Medicine Fellows, doctors, nurses, social workers, and lay caregivers) provide contemplative care to the sick, dying and suffering. We care for patients, families and staff through our medical partners: Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York Presbyterian Medical Center’s Cornell and Columbia Campuses, Beth Israel Medical Center, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s Hospice, as well as hospices, hospitals and Integrative Medicine practices across the country.
One patient at a time, NYZC manifests its mission of treating those who are suffering with the wisdom, compassion and equanimity of the Buddhist teachings.
Bring connection and care into your life
We’ve forgotten as a culture how to really take care of people and how to come from a very quiet place inside ourselves to reach out and to touch another person to care. Two of the questions we always come back to in our work is: ‘How intimate are you allowing yourself to be with yourself?’ —and how does that transfer into your ability to be a caregiver? In the end—when everything else is being let go of—kindness, compassion, and love are really all that remain.
“It’s not so much a question of trying to get someone to the place of where they’re accepting death, but to the place of being out of suffering around the death.” – Sensei Chodo Robert Campbell GC-C
testimonials
A Community Transforming Care
Guiding Teachers, Sensei Chodo Robert Campbell GC-C and Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, oversee the extensive education and clinical training of the ZenCare team. Those who have received training at NYZC and are active members of our community hold advanced degrees in related fields such as Social Work, Nursing, Psychology, and Pastoral Care and Counseling.
Dr. Robert Ira Lewy Contemplative Care Initiative
New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care is pleased to announce The Dr. Robert Ira Lewy Contemplative Care Initiative offering education, training, and on-going support for physicians and healthcare providers. This initiative will enable NYZC to expand its training in relationship-centered care that draws on the contemplative practice of the caregiver as the primary source of wisdom and loving action. We dare to be brave and creative, becoming intimate with our own suffering to alleviate the suffering of others.
The expansion of training, education, and support for caregivers is made possible by the generosity of Dr. Lewy. This project is currently in development. Please check back for further details.