On Tuesday, 28 September, Southern Thailand’s Chanae District was rocked with violence, as a roadside bomb causing a one-metre-deep crater injured four police officers and killed two, according to the Bangkok Post. The bombing was the most recent manifestation of a little-known conflict that continues to rage in the region.

Although the conflict has intensified in the last two decades, there is a long history of dispute between Buddhists and Muslims in Southern Thailand. Stretching back to the early 20th-century, when ethnic Malay were forcibly incorporated into Siam, the sectarian conflict has persisted as both sides fought over values, language, customs, and resources.

Recognising the need to build trust after more than a century of intermittent violence, Ven. Napan Santibhaddo Thawornbanjob and Kriya Langputeh, decided to work together to counteract predispositions toward suspicion and violence between their communities.

Since meeting in 2017, they have worked together to convene community visits and provide dialogue training for Buddhists and Muslims in Southern Thailand.

They believe the connection they’ve formed, and their efforts at replicating that relationship, not only provide a path toward positive peace, but can inspire others to walk a similar road in facing challenges in their own communities.

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Krista Liang sat relaxed, but reflexive, on a wicker chair in front of the white-and-gold, bell-shaped stupa tucked into a small courtyard at the Bodhicharya Buddhist Center in Berlin, Germany. Taking a moment’s pause from her meditation, she started talking about death — of all things — with those around her.

For Liang, death isn’t a taboo topic. From her Buddhist perspective, it is like any other facet of life — birth, marriage, or taxes.

“Death and dying are vitally important in Buddhism, there’s a constant reminder of it,” said Liang, “the Buddha says that anything that is born on earth, dies.”

That is part of what attracted Liang to Bodhicharya in the first place.

Meditative art at the Bodhicharya center in Berlin, Germany. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

Located in Berlin’s hip, alternative Friedrichshain neighborhood, Bodhicharya isn’t only known for its meditation, yoga, and tai chi classes, but its mobile hospice service — Hospizdienst Horizont.

Hospizdienst Horizont aims to maintain the quality of life of the critically ill and dying with a Buddhist orientation toward death as transition. Michaela Dräger, staff-member at Horizont, said their trained “volunteer companions” provide compassionate care for their patients’ mental, emotional, and spiritual health until the very end.

Hospizdienst Horizont is part of a broader trend in providing Buddhist spiritual accompaniment for the critically ill and dying in Europe and North America.

From Berlin to California, diverse communities are calling for Buddhist and other, non Judeo-Christian spiritual perspectives to be integrated into existing palliative care, hospice service, and chaplaincy programs. This “Buddhist end-of-life movement” not only testifies to an aging generation of Buddhists in the West — both converts and immigrants — but to the felt need of non-Buddhist patients seeking spiritual accompaniment at the end of life.

It is also confronting conventional Western views of life and death.