Developing “ the Pure Land on Earth” : A study of the relationship between religion and the quality of life of cancer patients

• Main Authors: Tsai-Ju Chien, 簡采汝(釋常妙)
• Other Authors: 釋惠敏
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/w677rf

碩士 === 法鼓佛教學院 === 佛教學系 === 97 === (Background and purpose) Since the modern Buddhism has a trend to practice the concept of “The Pure land on earth” in different fields. Nowadays, diverse cares were performed in cancer patients and the role of religion and spiritual care become more noticeable so that we are interested in if cancer patient’s religion and faith has the correlation with their quality of life. Thus we not only design a questionnaire to measure the correlation between cancer patients’ religion and their quality of life, but also review the relative documents and texts about the concept “the Pure land on earth”. (Methods) This study contends both quality and quantity aspects. In quality aspects, we trace the origin of the concept of The Pure Land on Earth and promote the concept of “the buddha-field is pure only to the extent that the mind is pure” (心淨則國土淨)。And we also discussed the opinion of how Buddha Drama treat the end of life and how Mahayana thinking is applied in terminal care and hospice. In quantity aspect, the questionnaire has three categories, the first (A): the patient’s background and behavior of the religion. The second (B): the patient’s attitude to the religion and faith, the third(C): the McGill MQOL iv questionnaires which has four domains (physical, psychological, spiritual –exist, and social support). Total 156 valid materials were collected from cancer patients in oncology ward. The data was analyzed by SPSS version 11.0. Statistical analysis was conducted using Pearson’s product moment correlation, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. (Results and discussion) This study showed that the cancer patient’s attitude to religion has apparent correlation to their quality of life, especially in the domain of spiritual-exist. This interesting finding may encourage the clinical spiritual hospice workers that a total care for cancer patients is needed. And a positive, optimistic religion faith may help cancer patients to imprve their quality of life and go through the difficulties in the end stage of life. If we could always keep the original spirit of hospice in mind, and devote ourselves to the total care of patients, that may just be a practice of “The Pure Land on Earth.