Spiritual And Emotional Intelligence As Internal Mechanisms For Strengthening Buddhist Character

Character education in the digital era necessitates proactive pedagogical frameworks that strengthen students' internal psychological capacities. This study aims to empirically examine the simultaneous and partial influence of spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence on the strengthening of Buddhist character. Employing a quantitative approach, the research involved 145 high school students across grades X, XI, and XII at SMA Ahmad Yani Binjai. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression, with Buddhist character operationalized through the traditional Dasa Pāramī (Ten Perfections) framework. The findings reveal that both independent variables exert a positive and highly significant impact on character formation. Partially, spiritual intelligence contributes 38.91% to the structural model, functioning as the internal value orientation system, while emotional intelligence contributes 37.13%, serving as the essential self-regulation mechanism. Simultaneously, spiritual and emotional intelligence account for 76% of the variance in the strengthening of Buddhist character (F = 224.617, p < 0.001). The study concludes that robust character formation is not an isolated cognitive process, but rather the result of a complementary integration between spiritual meaning-making (moral knowing) and emotional regulation (moral feeling) to produce definitive moral actions.