By Kate Lockyer
Venerable Tsultrim, a Buddhist Spiritual Care Practitioner at Karuna Hospice Service, believes that resilience comes from vulnerability.
This is the topic of a resilience workshop she is running in November, open to all.
“We often see vulnerability and fragility as a bit of a weakness, but my perspective is that they’re actually superpowers,” Tsultrim said.
She said by recognising our own vulnerability, it is easier for us to recognise it in others, allowing us to be less harsh, less judgemental and less critical.
“Anybody can benefit from coming – it’s really a very introductory workshop that’s only two and a half hours, but I think people will walk away with a greater sense of their ability to be resilient.”
The workshop will also cover Buddhist practices, like mindfulness, that can help people navigate stressful situations.
“One of the beautiful things for me about Buddhist principles is that they are very applicable to day-to-day life,” Tsultrim said.
“I don’t regard Buddhism as a religion… it is a very practical way of living a life and understanding the mind… that’s why I fell in love with it.”
She has learned a lot about resilience having worked at Karuna House helping people of all faiths through their experience with terminal illness.
“Death is such a difficult topic for us… We tend to get involved with this death denial and taboo and that’s when fear and anxiety often arises.
“(Death) is as normal and natural as birth, and I think often we struggle to get our head around that because we relate sadness to badness; so when we’re sad when death occurs, we’ve been conditioned to think that that is also bad.
“But sadness exists because we’ve loved and we’ve experienced joy.”
“What really we want from a palliative perspective… is to help people have peace of mind, whether it’s the people dying, or their families and carers and friends.”
The workshop will be held on November 17 at Karuna House, 10am – 12:30pm, for $20 per person. Register at events.humanitix.com/strengthening-resilience-in-difficult-times or email events@karuna.org.au for more information.
