Buddhist inspired resources for physicians and other health care professionals.
Posted in Prison Outreach on Sep 26th, 2008
Powerful film about an experiment introducing vipassana meditation into a maximum security prison. From the NYT review: The teachings of the Buddha infiltrate a maximum-security prison in “The Dhamma Brothers,” a thinking-head documentary about finding answers within for those who can’t get out.
Filmed in 2002 at the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Ala., one of the [...]
Posted in Addiction Medicine, Prison Outreach on Sep 26th, 2008
Article appearing in American Jails Magazine, July/August 2003
Final outcome results from the recidivism study (Murphy, 2002) revealed that approximately half
(56%) of the inmates completing a Vipassana course at NRF recidivated as measured by returning to King
County Jail (KCJ) custody within two years, compared with a 75% rate of recidivism in a NRF General
Population Study (Murphy, [...]
Posted in Prison Outreach on Sep 26th, 2008
Vipassana Meditation Courses for Correctional Facilities (http://www.prison.dhamma.org/)
Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka has been successfully offered over the last 10 years within prisons located in India, Israel, Mongolia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, U.K., and the United States. Since all courses are 10-days in length and residential in nature, they are held within the walls of a [...]
Posted in Death & Dying, Hospice on Sep 22nd, 2008
Qual Health Res. 1998 Nov;8(6):801-12; McGrath P.
Centre for Public Health Research, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
The hospice vision of providing democratic and humane care of the dying needs to be operationalized in the “real world” of health care bureaucracies. It is at this interface between idealists and the demands of mainstream health care that [...]
Posted in Compassion on Sep 22nd, 2008
Hum Health Care Int. 1996 Apr;12(2):E12; Aung SK.
Alberta Medical Clinic, 9904 106 Street, Edmonton, AB T5K 1C4, Canada.
Loving kindness (metta), a traditional Buddhist concept, implies acting with compassion toward all sentient beings, with an awareness and appreciation of the natural world. The giving of metta, an integral part of Buddhist medicine, has the potential to [...]
Posted in Medical Ethics on Sep 22nd, 2008
Dev World Bioeth. 2008 Aug 7; Fenton A.
Dalhousie University, Canada.
This paper integrates some Buddhist moral values, attitudes and self-cultivation techniques into a discussion of the ethics of cognitive enhancement technologies - in particular, pharmaceutical enhancements. Many Buddhists utilize meditation techniques that are both integral to their practice and are believed to enhance the cognitive and [...]
Posted in Death & Dying, Grief on Sep 22nd, 2008
Death Stud. 1997 Jul-Aug;21(4):377-95. Goss RE, Klass D.
Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
This article is a contribution to the cross-cultural study of grief. The Bardo-thodol (sometimes translated the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and the ritual associated with it provides a way to understand how Buddhism in Tibetan culture manages the issues associated with what [...]
Posted in Death & Dying, Grief on Sep 22nd, 2008
Disabil Rehabil. 1997 Oct;19(10):442-51
Edwards M.
University Support Centre, University of Western Australia, Australia. medwards@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
The Zen Buddhist contemplative tradition involves several meditation and instructional techniques that have strong phenomenological and theoretical connections with the experience of loss and the process of grief. From experiences which occurred during personal encounters with individuals (three of whom had a disability) [...]
Posted in Medical Education, for nurses on Sep 22nd, 2008
J Holist Nurs. 2007 Dec;25(4):228-35; discussion 236-7
Ross R, Sawatphanit W, Suwansujarid T.
Kent State University, USA.
PURPOSE: This study examines the Buddhist beliefs and practices of Thai HIV-positive postpartum women as ways to live with their infection. METHOD: Seven HIV-positive postpartum, Buddhist, Thai women were interviewed. Principles of hermeneutic phenomenology guided the study. FINDINGS: All women in [...]
Posted in Addiction Medicine on Sep 22nd, 2008
AIDS Educ Prev. 2006 Aug;18(4):311-22
Margolin A, Beitel M, Schuman-Olivier Z, Avants SK.
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06519, USA. arthur.margolin@yale.edu
Spiritual Self-Schema (3-S) therapy is a manual-guided intervention for increasing motivation for HIV prevention that integrates a cognitive model of self within a Buddhist framework suitable for people of all faiths. In this controlled [...]