With Paula Arai

Explore how you can weave ritualized healing activities into your daily life.

Established teachings and practice guidelines developed over the millennia fuel and inform each person on their journey of healing, yet each person must explore what is most helpful in the conditions of their own life. Communities can cooperate in discovering the qualities, skills and practices that are most in tune with the socio-cultural conditions of their time.

Drawing on the experiences of elder Japanese Buddhist women, we will explore how they engage in healing activities with their communities, families and hearts. Their homespun rites use everyday objects and common materials—such as cleaning clothes, teacups, and brush and ink—in inventive ways to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, anguish and loss.

We will consider whether and to what degree their principles, approach and methods can be enlisted or transposed to develop effective healing rituals in Western settings. Ritualized practices often require translation as they move into new environments, because rituals are most effective and meaningful when they are homespun with the textures, sounds, smells, aesthetics, values, assumptions and idiosyncrasies of the people who create them.

Paula Arai, author of Women Living Zen: Japanese Buddhist Nuns (Oxford University Press, 1999) andBringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Buddhist Women’s Rituals (University of Hawaii Press, 2011), received her PhD in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University. Her current project,Liberating Compassion: The Art & Science of the Heart Sutra, includes a book, workshops, public presentations, and exhibitions of paintings by a Japanese contemplative scientist that encodes Buddhist metaphysics into scientific and everyday images.