I’ve posted a copy of my teaching notes from Class 2 of the course “Important Topics in Mainstream Buddhism”.

The teaching notes were written in an outliner program (Omni Outliner Pro, for those who are interested), and the web page it created from the outline is a dynamic page; the little triangles to the left of the outline items are actually buttons, and you can use them to collapse and expand outline sections. That should make it a little easier to get an overview of the approach that I took to the topic – the Buddha’s Dhamma.

The first element in the outline is a link to the rendering of the Buddha’s first teaching, “Turning the Wheel of the Law” – the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. That’s the single most essential teaching in Buddhism, and all the other teachings derive from it or expand on it in one way or another. A number of years ago, a young linguistic scholar in Britain claimed that her linguistic analysis of the language of the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta indicated that it could not have been composed by Siddhata Gotama. A prominent monk in Thailand was interviewed and asked about that claim, that the man we know as the Buddha could not have delivered that core teaching; what would be the impact of that finding, he was asked, on Buddhism. He chuckled and answered, “Well, whoever delivered that teaching, that was the Buddha.”

Throughout the teaching notes, I’ve included passages of text from several sources:

• The definitions of Pali terms – expecially the Pali terms for the eight factors of the Buddha’s path – are taken from the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary; they’re a little confusing, but I just look for the meanings and the etymologies of the terms and ignore the references to the Pali texts in which those terms appear or which provide commentary on their meaning. I’ve found the Pali-English Dictionary site enormously useful in my study of the Buddha’s teachings, and I think that it’s quite marvelous that such a distinguished scholarly tool, which was only available to graduate students and professors at the world’s top universities just a decade or so ago, is now freely available, with a decent user interface, to anyone with a web browser.
• The passages from the various suttas are all taken from the excellent Access to Insight website. If you are interested in extending your understanding of Buddhism and the Buddha’s teachings, you would not be wasting your time to browse that site, just following links that look interesting, and begin to develop a sense of how it all holds together. Many of the teachings at Access to Insight are presented in two or three different translations, and all of the translations are scholarly, clear, and graceful. There are also a number of essays by prominent Buddhist teachers and monks, and pages of helpful references to good books and other useful websites.

I’d be interested to know whether you find the posting of these class notes helpful. Please use the Comments to give us your thoughts, ask questions, or suggest ways in which I might make this site, and the class itself, more interesting or more helpful.

I’ve posted my teaching notes from yesterday’s class. In future classes, I’ll make an effort to produce something with a little more narrative structure, and to get that posted in advance of our class; if I can’t do that (which, given the work load I’ve taken on, is likely to be the case on any given week), I’ll do what I’ve done here, and post the slightly cleaned-up outline of my teaching notes a day or so after the class; in either event, it should save you the trouble of taking detailed notes (if you’re the sort inclined to take notes).

I enjoyed the class yesterday; I appreciate the attention you gave me, and I thought your questions were perceptive and important. I think this is going to be fun. As we get into the course, the amount of time I spend talking should diminish, and the amount of time we have for questions and discussion should increase. I’m looking forward to that, and I hope that you are as well.

If you have additional questions, second thoughts, comments you’d like to make, please use the Comments feature of the blog software – just click on “Comments” below. I’ll pay attention to any comments you make, and if you have a question, I’ll do my best to answer it.

In the eight weeks of this course, we will look into eight topics that have concerned the followers of the Buddha since the very early days of his teaching. To the extent that there is some consensus within the Buddhist community regarding these topics, it is partly that consensual understanding that defines Buddhism itself, and to the extent that there is disagreement, it is the nature of that disagreement that distinguishes one Buddhist tradition from the others. I make no claim that these are the most important topics in Buddhism; someone else might make another list of eight that’s different, but any list is bound to cover, in some way or another, such topics as the Dhamma, the nature of Enlightenment, and the notion of kamma.

The topics I’ve chosen, and the order in which I’ve chosen to present them, will, I hope, result in a comprehensible and reasonably accurate overview of the Buddha, the path he taught, and the fundamental unity of the many traditions that have developed their very different ways of practicing the Buddha’s path.

I will introduce each class by talking about the day’s topic, trying to explain what it is that makes it a distinct topic, and what it means in the context of Buddhism in general. Whenever possible, I’ll use the Buddha’s own words, as those have been transmitted in the Pali Canon, as the starting point for my explanation, although I will also feel free to use classic texts from later Buddhist traditions, especially those of the Mahayana traditions of Nepal, China, and Eastern Asia. When the topic is one (as it almost always will be) that is interpreted differently in different Buddhist traditions, I’ll do my best to explain what those differences are and what their significance is to those who practice in each tradition.

The last part of each class will be devoted to questions and discussion. I am particularly interested in exploring how the ideas of Buddhism appear to those who follow other traditions, both classical Western religious traditions and the more skeptical philosophical traditions that underlie humanism, atheism, and scientific materialism.

We will be making heavy use of the Internet for the readings that I will recommend for each class; there’s a wealth of material out there, much of it of very high quality—intelligent, scholarly, useful. If you don’t have an Internet connection, or if you are not comfortable with using it, I’d recommend that you make some arrangements with a friend to print out the study texts each week. The class is simply too large for me to print those out for all the members.

What follows is an outline of what I plan, at this point in time, to be discussing in each class; if it turns out that this is more ambitious than we can handle in an eight-week course, the outline may change.

• Class 1: Who (and what) was the Buddha?

  “The Buddha” is a descriptive term, similar to “the Christ”; it means, approximately, “the awakened one”, and Buddhist tradition views Siddhatta Gotama, the Buddha we know, as the latest in a long line of Buddhas, each separated from the next by eons. In this class, we’ll look at the life of Siddhatta Gotama, the man whose teachings we’ve received, and we’ll explore the way in which various traditions view his Awakening, his person, and his Buddha-nature.

• Class 2: The Dhamma

  The truth that the Buddha taught, indeed, the fundamental truth about how the world works, is known as the Dhamma (Dharma in Sanskrit, which is the more familiar term for most Westerners). In this class, we’ll look at what that word means, with special reference to the formulation of the Dhamma that the Buddha presented in his first sermon and which establishes the foundation for all the rest of his teachings:

  • The Middle Way

  • The Four Authentic Truths

  • The Eightfold Path

• Class 3: Dependent arising

  This class will build on the preceding class, taking a more detailed look at the idea of contingent existence that provides the dynamic for the establishment of the Dhamma. The idea is simple: everything is process, and every process unfolds dependent upon pre-existing conditions. But when you apply that idea to concepts such as the “self”, or “perception”, it can get complicated pretty fast. And very interesting. And uncommonly convincing and relevant to the processes we see unfolding around us.

• Class 4: The nature of the Buddha’s Enlightenment

  In this class, we will build on the understandings we’ve developed by now to re-examine exactly what happened when the Buddha became enlightened, when he “woke up” to an understanding of contingency and the nature, cause, and cessation of suffering in this world. We’ll look at the nature of nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit), the state that the Buddha experienced and in which he dwelt following his awakening, and we’ll examine how the ideas of Enlightenment and nibbana have been understood by various Buddhist traditions.

• Class 5: Kamma and rebirth

  This one is a sticking point for many Westerners, particularly those who are attracted to Buddhism because of its non-theistic nature. We’ll see how kamma (Skt. karma), i.e. intentional action, determines who we are and who we will become, and we’ll see how those notions derive from the Brahminic culture in which the Buddha lived, the radical way in which he re-interpreted them, and how they might be understood to co-exist comfortably with rationalist world views.

• Class 6: Buddhist cosmology

  The Buddhist canonical texts are full of gods, but those are very different from our Western Abrahamic Yahweh. In this class, we’ll see where the elaborate and complex Buddhist cosmology developed out of Brahminic traditions and how the Buddha re-interpreted those traditions to bring them into the service of the ethical path that he taught.

• Class 7: The Pali Canon

  Here we will examine how the Buddha’s teachings were preserved after his death, how they were compiled into several different canons, how those different canons relate to one another, and how the canons themselves and attitudes toward them have changed through the ages.

• Class 8: Schools, traditions, lineages: the transmission and transmutation of the Dhamma

  As the Buddha’s teachings spread from Northern India, where he lived and taught, the different varieties of Buddhism that developed took on forms and practices derived from the cultures into which they spread. We’ll see how that process occurred as Buddhism moved to the South, the North, and the East, and how it is occurring now as Buddhism continues to evolve distinctively Western forms.

I’ve over-committed myself for the fall, teaching two courses at the University of Cincinnati’s Osher Lifelong Learning Center, and leading a Dharma Study Group at St. John’s Unitarian Church. I’ll be using this site to coordinate all of those activities.

All three programs are pretty full, which says a great deal about the intensity of interest in Buddhism in these troubled times.

Here’s more info on each program, along with a link to the syllabus/overview page for the program.

• OLLI Course: The Teachings of the Buddha. From the OLLI catalog course description: “In this course, we will examine eight of the most significant and widely known of the Buddha’s discourses.  In our discussion of each discourse, we will look at the events in the Buddha’s life that provide the context for the discourse, and we will see how the ideas discussed in the discourse relate to the historical development of Buddhism and how those ideas remain relevant to the task of maintaining sanity and equanimity in a confused and turbulent world.  The course will be presented as a general introduction to the Buddha’s life and thought.”
• OLLI Course: Important Topics in Mainstream Buddhism. From the OLLI catalog course description: “We will discuss some fundamental concepts of Buddhism, including Dharma, the Law that governs the natural world as well as the results of our ethical decisions; Karma, ethically significant action; Buddhist cosmology and the Buddhist understanding of how events unfold from preceding conditions; Nirvana, the characteristic condition of an enlightened mind; and the Eightfold Path to enlightenment.  We will also look into the history of Buddhism and how different traditions understand the fundamental ideas.  Finally, we’ll look at how Buddhism came to the West and the shape it’s taken here.”
• Dharma Study Class. “The Dharma Study group will take as its study text “In the Buddha’s Words”, an anthology by the Brooklyn-born monk Bhikkhu Bodhi. The texts in the anthology provide an excellent introduction to the Pali Canon, the oldest and most probably authentic source of the Buddha’s teachings. The class will be organized as a discussion group; each week, we will read one chapter of our text and, after a brief introduction to provide historical perspective, we will look at how the teachings we’ve read fit into Buddhist doctrine and what we can learn from them about how to live happily and with a measure of equanimity in a world marked by impermanence and widespread suffering.”