51-0 Spirituality and Living with One’s Spirit: From Four Big Questions of Human Existence to Construct Indigenous Theories for Spirituality and Career
| Yung-Jong Shiah | Shu-Hui Liu | Chih-Hung Wang | Sung-Hsien Sun |
| National Kaohsiung Normal University | National Changhua University of Education | National Changhua University of Education | National Taipei University of Education |
No matter where you live and what cultures you belong to. You may be encountered in four big questions of human existence. Where do I come from? Why I am in this life situation? Why do I suffer? How do I find salvation? The current issue focuses on spirituality and career along with six accepted papers to echo for these four big questions of human existence. We combined previous research and the six accepted papers to provide the conclusion as fol1ows: (1) The spiritual growth leads to overcome the pain. No matter what religions you belong to or not. Spiritual learning and exploring spiritual issues during counseling would help to overcome suffering and gain spiritual growth. (2) The religions provide worldviews and career views. The western monotheism stresses on the connection or close to the God leading to the individualistic worldview. The cultures of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism aim at the cultivating self-enlightenment process to transform the self or one’s spirit to the good, nonself and authentic self. The self-enlightenment process leads to self-cultivation and the harmony worldview. There are emerging counseling studies and models to utilize the ideas of Buddhism. For example, the mindfulness originated from the Buddhism have been supported its benefits by many empirical studies. The study of the Karma Belief Scale development in our current issue could be used to assess the karma belief among the Buddhist and Taoism believers, with an aim to reveal another possible perspective to enhance mental and body health, and life adjustment. (3) We live in spiritual ways. One needs to make his or her career choice, select spiritual beliefs to apply them in the life world and understand one’s life situation to live with one’s spirit. Choosing to live with one’s spirit between life beliefs and goals is a repeated spiral and transforming process. Obtaining necessary abilities to live one’s own script in the life word could be enhanced by certain training models. Accordingly, we provide following suggestion for future research. (1) Based on the current spiritual and counseling empirical studies, we could develop related theories. (2) To open more dialogues and connection between career and spirituality could develop related theories linking spirituality to career. Then spirituality and career could be complementary to develop a helping professionalism with a more holistic development. (3) That the development of self-enlightenment models derived from the wisdom of Chinese cultures of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism is the core to construct indigenous theories for spirituality and career. The wisdom of Chinese cultures of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism could be the sources for the cultural consciousness program of Taiwan counseling professionalism. During the developing process of indigenous counseling and indigenous counseling psychology, it is worth to combine Modern western counseling theories and our cultural heritage with local living experiences. The article urges that we could draw on the Professor Kwan-Kuo Hwang’s multiple philosophical paradigms to analyze Chinese cultures of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism as the basis to construct indigenous theories for spirituality and career. Accordingly, the indigenous theories for spirituality and career employing the Chinese cultures will be transformed to microworlds of scientific knowledge. Two analyzed examples of self-enlightenment models based on the Chinese cultures are presented. Specifically, the Buddhist self-enlightenment model suggests that we apply the self-cultivation principle by obeying certain precepts, practicing compassion, and absorbing wisdom. The aim of all this is to see through and overcome the delusion of the self, transforming self to nonself. The nonself state is authentic and durable happiness. Finally, we are calling for Chinese scholars to cultivate themselves towards to self-enlightenment then to comfort the others and construct new and modern Chinese indigenous counseling psychology based on merging our cultural roots and the western scientific knowledge, along with ongoing communications and dialogues with the Western academic societies.
Keywords
Career, Confucianism/Buddhism/Taoism, indigenous counseling psychology, self-enlightenment, spirituality.
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