abstract: Buddhist-Christian dialogue has, for many years, emphasized comparisons of doctrines and practices among the two groups of religious traditions. Rarely have these dialogues focused on practical topics such as spiritual care, and even less rarely have they drawn from qualitative studies of either group of religious practitioners. This article fills that gap through considering three questions about the delivery of spiritual care, theories of caregiving, and meta-professional questions from the perspective of qualitative research with Buddhist chaplains working in predominantly Christian contexts. Data are drawn from interviews and surveys conducted as part of various studies between 2017 and 2022 to provide a descriptive overview of the following: first, how Buddhist chaplains respond to suffering drawing on their Buddhist practices; second, how Buddhist chaplains integrate and experience non-self within their caregiving; and third, how Buddhist chaplains perceive and experience Christian hegemony within their education, clinical training, and work (employed or volunteer). Buddhist chaplains have been noted by colleagues for the unique presence they bring to situations of suffering. This presence is connected to non-self in important ways that are little understood by non-Buddhist colleagues and supervisors and, therefore, sometimes discounted or pathologized. The spiritual invalidation thus experienced by Buddhist chaplains is one aspect of working within Christian hegemonic structures.

abstract: Comparative theology aims at seeing one's own tradition and the other in light of each other, which calls for a solid methodological foundation. Comparative theology can benefit from a global historical approach that involves the hermeneutic project of tracing historical trajectories of reinterpreting ancient traditions comparatively and the postcolonial project of enhancing non-Western voices of self-articulation. This essay shows how modern reinterpretations of Augustinian Christianity and Tiantai Buddhism can reframe their ancient doctrines, drawing on relevant philosophical strands from Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Teruji Ishizu (石津 照璽), and Keiji Nishitani (西谷 啓治).

abstract: "[T]rue Christianity cannot exist without both the inward experience and outward practice of justice, mercy, and truth," writes John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism. For him, belief and behavior, motivation and praxis, collapse dialectically into one. The Kyoto-formed dialogist Masao Abe identifies one strength and one weakness each in the poles of Western and Zen thought. For him, the West understands the importance of ethical behavior but cannot understand the oneness of all things. Conversely, Zen Buddhism is deficient in its conception of ethics but more actualized in understanding the interdependence of all things ( pratītyasamutpāda ). While his Western interlocutors include a disproportionate number of heirs to the Wesleyan tradition, Abe himself never deals directly with Wesley. This is presumably because of the latter's European Modernist philosophical and theological commitments. Still, putting these diverse worldviews in creative dialogue with each other might do more to resolve Abe's twofold tension than does his conversation with more "likely" interlocutors. If Abe is correct that "the practical problem par excellence" in Buddhism is integrating the "oneness of practice and enlightenment and that the West tends to bifurcate existence to its own detriment," Wesley can be invited into the conversation to stand in the gap between these challenges. For the Methodist patriarch, understanding and ethics are two sides of one coin in his emphases on "practical divinity" and "social holiness."

abstract: Ever since the Jesuits came to Japan and first met True Pure Land Buddhists in Japan, Christians have drawn parallels between Shinran's thought and the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. For the Jesuits, this was more an accusation than a compliment, but later scholars, not limited to Protestant ones, have been more sympathetic to this purported affinity. It is not unheard of to translate Shinran's favored term shinjin as "faith," even in Buddhist circles. However, this is not without its perils. The potential for misunderstanding is magnified by the lack of consensus even among Christians, let alone English-speakers more widely, about just what such "faith" might mean. Regardless of whether one is Catholic, Protestant, or something else entirely, Christian scholars formed within the English-speaking world live in a world where "faith communities" are distinguished from a supposedly neutral secular mainstream and where "faith" itself is assumed as the polar opposite of reason. Even those who insist, with the likes of St. Anselm, that faith is a prerequisite to reason are not immune to the effects of the Enlightenment air they breathe. One may therefore approach the imputation of "faith" to Shinran, which is necessarily a comparative endeavor, with some trepidation.

abstract: The possibility of authentic Buddhist-Christian belonging and practice has largely been affirmed or dismissed on the basis of the individual participant's different understandings of their respective faith traditions. Here, I suggest that the philosopher Gillian Rose's speculative thought offers a complimentary lens through which to engage in the conversation, particularly those themes imbricated in her speculative thinking around the broken middle, inaugurated mourning, or "working through," recognition, and appropriation. A different kind of dialogue emerges from her thinking that refocuses engagement from merely being a presentation of different views to a humanizing and deeper regard for dialogue partners across their differences, with implications for wider interreligious encounters and peacebuilding.