After becoming a Buddhist nun, Bonnie Shoultz shaved her head as a symbol of leaving home and renounced attachments to material things, relationships and expectations.

Shoultz, the Buddhist chaplain and head of the Syracuse University Student Buddhist Association, has since been helping students cope with depression, anxiety and stress by offering meditation sessions.

She has been offering these services for almost 10 years after retiring from the research center in the School of Education in 2005.

“I ended up coming here to Hendricks Chapel to learn meditation, and I wanted to experience more about what it was all about,” Shoultz said. “It called to me. I guess you would call it a vocation.”

This vocation has since lead to her chaplaincy and to her leadership of the Student Buddhist Association, which offers six meditation sessions per week as of the fall 2014 semester.

Shoultz said these meditation sessions have had multiple benefits on students of all different faiths and are being integrated into the campus curriculum, including a new minor in mindfulness and contemplative practices offered by the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics.

“If you really want to move forward, you should have an academic base,” Shoultz said.

As part of this academic base, contemplative practices are being brought into the classroom in a variety of ways. One professor in the communication and rhetorical studies program even utilizes yoga and meditation to complement students’ coursework.

Shoultz knows the benefits of meditation from firsthand experience, as she struggled with addiction before and after being ordained.

“In the case of many (monks) who are in an urban setting, we do have a home, we do have relationships, we do have possessions and we may even have addictive behaviors,” she said.

Shoultz’s own personal addiction was computer games, the most recent being the Chinese tile game Mahjong, which was initially hard for her to give up. Years have passed and she still has refrained from playing.

Now, as Shoultz balances being a nun and a chaplain and her own personal urban life, she continues to focus on leaving the door to Buddhism open for curious students.

“Almost everyone that comes to Buddhism comes through suffering and some inside knowledge that there must be a better way,” Shoultz said.

Published on September 10, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Jesse: jlnich02@syr.edu