When the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI) at Harvard Divinity School launched 10 years ago as the first of its kind program within a divinity school at a research university in the United States, it provided an opportunity.
“The start of the initiative was an opportunity for us to think creatively about how we might develop a program at HDS to train chaplains and prepare students for engaged Buddhism. And that was really exciting,” said Cheryl Giles, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling and a core faculty for the BMI.
Founded in 2011 following a grant from The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, the BMI trains future Buddhist religious professionals in ways appropriate to modern, global conditions. To train these scholar-practitioners, it draws on the strengths of Harvard’s faculty resources in the academic study of religion and Buddhist studies, while also supporting the field education of Buddhist ministry students in hospitals and other sites of pastoral care. In its 10 years of existence, the program has brought more than 20 international fellows to HDS and hosted multiple conferences, including a series on Buddhism and race.
As HDS plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the BMI with a special event on October 27, several alumni recently spoke about how the initiative has trained and prepared them in their lives and their work.
Nancy Chu, MDiv ’15, PhD candidate Stanford University, former associate editor Lion’s Roar magazine
Nancy Chu grew up in a Chan monastic community in California called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. In 2011, she arrived at HDS just as the BMI was getting started.
“It was very much a way of supporting students who were in Buddhist ministry and allowing them to find their own paths,” said Chu. “They didn’t come in and tell us what they wanted Buddhist ministers to be. It was more like, here’s a program, here’s an initiative to support you, and we want to see what Buddhist ministers coming out of this will look like and what they will do.”
Chu recently spent a year as an associate editor at Lion’s Roar magazine, promoting the voices of Buddhists of color. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at Stanford University and is conducting field research while living at a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan called Xiang Guang (Incense Light) Temple, home to the Luminary order of Buddhist nuns. Her scholarly research focuses on how Buddhist nuns face pain with greater resilience through monastic practices of overcoming attachment to the body.
Nearly a decade earlier while at HDS, Chu received a Buddhist ministry grant to travel to Taiwan to spend a summer with the Buddhist nuns with whom she now lives. She credits that grant as the foundation for her current work.
“Because the BMI offered these extra grants to students, I was able to come here without too much trouble or difficulty. That BMI grant has served as a cornerstone for the research in my next decade in life,” she said.
Bhante Kusala, MDiv ’17, Dharma teacher, monastic, spiritual care provider
Bhante Kusala is a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka. He entered the monastic life at the age of 16 and came to HDS in 2015 as a Buddhist Ministry Initiative International Fellow, and decided to pursue a master of divinity degree, graduating in 2017.
Kusala’s coming to HDS was partly influenced by HDS Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures Charles Hallisey’s visits to Sri Lanka. Hallisey turned out to be Kusala’s advisor. Kusala said it was challenging being an international student attending a school in the United States, but Hallisey made it easier for him and other monks.
“Professor Hallisey was always there supporting us. He understood our difficulties. English was not our first language, and he knew Pali and that made everything easier for us,” Kusala said.
Kusala is offering support to people wherever he can, whether it’s distributing food or building homes for people in need in his native Sri Lanka, visiting patients in hospitals in Toronto near where he now lives, or making teachings available for anyone online.
While at HDS, Kusala took full advantage of the field education and chaplaincy training opportunities and served as a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. His training at HDS gave him the confidence, he said, to offer support to patients from all faiths, not just fellow Buddhists.
“Compared to a monk who has never had this experience before, when I approach a patient in a hospital, I know how to approach the conversation, how to hold the conversation, and how to end the conversation,” he said. “I have the confidence that I can manage any situation—from birth to end of life. We are trained to offer spiritual care, and I am so grateful for that.”
Harrison Blum, MDiv ’12, director of religious and spiritual life, Amherst College
Harrison Blum grew up in Boston in a Reform Jewish family, but late in high school he considered himself a “spiritual free agent.” He began studying and practicing Buddhism while in college.
When choosing where to attend graduate school, Blum considered another institution that might be better for him as a Buddhist, he said, but explained that he chose HDS because “as a minister who is Buddhist who wants to serve a variety of people, Harvard would be better for me … I cared about doing meaningful work for the next several decades and not just for the next few years as a student.”
Blum attended HDS when the Occupy movements took hold across the United States. He and other students served as protest chaplains to the movement in Boston, taking turns sleeping at the encampment.
“We were not just in the classroom. We were not just in our field education internships. We were where we thought we were needed, which is these activist or social change situations,” he said. “I felt like I was being trained by BMI to be many things and not just an intellect—also someone with a heart, someone with commitments, someone with values, someone who wanted to be integrated with my thoughts, my feelings, my relationships, and how I live in the world. I found it holistic.”
Blum finds his time at HDS—and his following years of experience as a direct spiritual care provider—gave him the formation for his work now as director of religious and spiritual life at Amherst College, where he supervises the school’s chaplains and offers spiritual counseling and leads programs with students.
“I’m very focused on preserving and elevating spaces for, and ways of, being rather than doing. With that comes a commitment to preserving wonder and gratitude and mystery and humility,” he said.
Maria Azhunova, BMI International Fellow ’22, director of the Land of Snow Leopard Network
Maria Azhunova’s parents were Indigenous activists, and she says she followed in their footsteps.
Azhunova is from the Buryat Republic in Southern Siberia, Russia. As director of the Land of Snow Leopard Network, she and the organization focus on the conservation of not only snow leopards and their ecosystems, but also the revival of the Indigenous cultures and spirituality.
“Most of them are rooted in reverence of the sacred animals such as the snow leopard,” she said.
She came to HDS for the 2021-22 year as a BMI International Fellow.
The snow leopard can be found in the mountainous regions of 12 countries across Asia. Azhunova said the organization emphasizes the leadership of the Indigenous communities and has many diverse members, making it very multifaith and multicultural.
“I wanted to learn how to thrive in multireligious communities and organizations,” she said.
During her time at HDS, Azhunova launched an online seminar series that connected elders and Indigenous culture practitioners from her network with Harvard students and faculty.
“We want to have a presence and dialogue with Western educational institutions and for Indigenous knowledge to have the same value as Western knowledge,” she said.
Azhunova has not returned to Russia since the start of its war with Ukraine, and she is mobilizing the Land of Snow Leopard Network to help refugees fleeing the violence and military mobilization and conscription of ethnic minorities.
“A lot of things have shifted because of the war in Ukraine,” she said.
—by Michael Naughton
Monica Sanford, assistant dean for multireligious ministry, contributed to this report.