From the Buddha to the Dalai Lama: Awakening Hearts & Minds Through the Ages

8-Week Online Class with Philip Schrodt
Thursdays, 7-8:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-0400)
2 September-21 October

This course will provide a systematic overview of Buddhist history, approaches, and practices from the perspective of the U.S. in the early 21st century. We will first review how Buddhism spread from northeast India through most of Asia and recently to the West, and the three major approaches: Theravadan (including IMCC's Insight approach), Mahayana (best known through Zen), and Vajrayana/Tibetan. We will then look at common core concepts in the Buddha's teachings, review some of the most commonly encountered suttas, and then discussion some of the variety of meditation practices currently practiced. We conclude with a discussion of various ways Buddhism is currently evolving in the US.

Each week will have links to a two or three short readings available on the web, usually through the resources of the Lion's Roar magazine: in keeping with the common practice in on-line courses these will be made available on a weekly basis. The format will be roughly forty minutes of lecture followed by a twenty-minute Q&A period, though the Zoom link will remain open for longer Q&A.

Link to course registration : https://www.imeditation.org/event-4308788

Link to brief biographies of speakers and IMCC

Questions? : Email schrodt735@gmail.com

Topics

Week 1: Introduction and Historical Overview

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Week 2: The Historical Buddha and the Theravadan Tradition

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Week 3: The Mahayana Tradition and Zen (Susan Stone)

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Week 4: The Tibetan/Vajrayana Tradition

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Week 5: Fundamentals

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The wonderful people at Lion's Roar have put together many readings on each of these: pick a couple you find interesting and/or may wish to become more familiar with from this list.

Week 6: Suttas

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Pick a couple of these from this list and read (or skim) the originals, and usually you can also find some commentaries.

Week 7: Meditation

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Week 8: Current trends in American Buddhism

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Susan Stone supported the development of this course.