We are happy to welcome Dr. Sean Hillman, a long-term practitioner of Buddhist and Hindu traditions, who has studied and worked in the field of medical ethics for many years. This talk will explore how religious traditions, such as the Buddhist Vinaya which features early medical procedures and care, can provide a framework for modern healthcare through narrative ethics. Sean will review the advantages and challenges of utilizing diverse textual traditions to address contemporary clinical decision-making.
When: Sunday, May 10th, 2026, 10:00 am 12:00 pm EDT
Where: To watch the teachings online on Zoom, please register here (this is a very simple and quick registration process by email). You can also watch the sessions live-streamed on Facebook or YouTube.
The Buddhist monastic discipline code may well be the earliest codified medical manual (per Zysk), featuring impressive medical implements and procedures over 2500 years ago such as naso-gastric tubes (which we still use prominently in modern medicine) and various cranial, surgical and dermatological procedures, to name but a few. Bhagavan Buddha had a personal physician, the renowned Vaidya Jivaka, and early monastics gave and received various types of health-related and end-of-life care between each other. But what framework was used to direct and set boundaries to such care? Some academics, such as Damien Keown, have explored the Vinaya (Buddhist discipline codes) with the purpose of finding some ethical direction for modern medicine with a sense of urgency that may betray a lack of ethical (religious or otherwise) underpinnings for the practice of medicine in general. “Narrative ethics” can refer to ethics pulled from or influenced by previously existing prose texts, and ancient religious texts such as The Hindu Mahabharata epic, the various Buddhist Vinayas and Jain monastic discipline texts such as the Bhagavati Aradhana have all been mined to some extent by modern scholars to assist modern healthcare clinicians and decision makers.
In this talk, Sean will review the advantages and challenges with using narrative ethics in healthcare decision making (including from non-Indic traditions such as the monotheistic Semitic traditions), from both philosophical and lived perspectives.
About Dr. Sean Hillman
Dr. Sean Hillman (Tenzin Sherab, Rogini Dasa) is a Hindu-Buddhist Jagannathi practitioner, linguist and philosopher, following various core Indic religious traditions together. Sean has spent five years living, studying and practicing in India (mainly Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka) including periods of academic residence with Jain scholars and monastics in Delhi, Jaipur, Moradabad and Varanasi. He is a lifetime student of Tibetan, Hindi and Sanskrit. He achieved his doctorate in Religious Studies from University of Toronto (with two collaborations, Bioethics and South Asian Studies) using medical anthropology, textual and legal history and analysis for his India-based ethnographic doctoral study on end-of-life issues among religious adherents. Sean was ordained as Rabjung from Sera Khenshur Lobsang Jamyang, Getsul and Gelong by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and was a monastic for 13 years.
As a Householder, his vocations have been in healthcare consultation, education and wellness (Ethics Lead for Durham system Lakeridge Health for 10 years), corrections chaplaincy (at all security levels), officiating life rites (100+ ceremonies) and creating music/music environments for the purpose of community-building. Sean’s latest education development work is a mobile pediatric disability music program (Acoustic Resonance Initiative) based on pitch-work using intuitive music instruments and machines. This work is grounded in the philosophies of Social Role Valorization (SRV), a form of radical inclusivism, and Anahata Nada (“unstruck sound”), which holds that all beings and phenomena possess an essential hum or chord that Acoustic Resonance pitch & breath training seeks to help people attune to.
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