LUSB - FALL SEMESTER CLASSES
TURNING THE DHARMA WHEEL
10-week course on essential Buddhist teachings
Saturdays, 9:00am – 10:30am PT
October 1 – December 10, 2022
A traditional way of learning Buddhism is called Anguttara, ‘adding one’ – wherein the teachings of the Buddha are presented numerically in increasing order, such as the Three Poisons, the Four Noble Truths, and then the Five Aggregations. This 10-week course uses a similar method of interlocking systems to explore fundamental Buddhist concepts and their interrelations. The ideas presented in each week’s session grow in complexity and systematically build on previous session topics, thus ‘turning the wheel of Truth,’ or Dharma. This is the first of a three-part Buddhist Studies Program, designed to introduce basic Buddhist practices, philosophy, and history. Even if you are already familiar with these teachings, the intention of this course is to present them in a new way.
EIGHT SCHOOLS OF BUDDHISM
8-part series on the History of Buddhism
Tuesdays, 9:00am – 10:30am PT
September 20 – November 8, 2022
The ‘Eight Schools’ is a traditional Buddhist classification system from medieval China and Japan that categorizes different Buddhist practices and communities that arose in India during the first thousand years of Buddhist history, from approximately 400 BC to 600 AD. This course uses a similar classification system to present the origins and foundational teachings of eight major trends in Buddhism found in the world today, which are essentially remnants of the schools from this medieval system. This course is the third part of the LUSB Buddhist Studies Program, designed to show how the essential teachings and deeper philosophies presented in the first two courses have been put in to practice throughout history.
ADVANCED STUDY: MIND-ONLY BUDDHISM
8-week advanced course on Yogacara Buddhism
Thursdays, 5:30pm – 7:00pm PT
September 15 – November 3, 2022
One of the oldest philosophical questions concerns the relationship between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ - the mental world of ideas and thought, and the physical world experienced by our senses. Are mind and consciousness simply emergent results of the physical world, or is ‘the physical world’ merely an idea entertained by a conscious mind?
This course is an introduction to the ‘mind-only’ teaching of Yogacara Buddhism, an idealistic school of Buddhism that arose around the the 4th-century AD in the Gandharan region of what is today Afghanistan. This school has come to represent the so-called ‘Third Turning’ (or phase) of the teachings of the Buddha, in which the concept of Emptiness (indicative of the ‘Second Turning’), is taken to the logical conclusion that the ‘physical world’ is merely a conscious construction, similar to, but not the same as, a dream. The focus of this course will be understanding the Yogacara model of eight consciousnesses, which includes the so-called ‘Storehouse Consciousness’ or ālaya-vijñāna.
This course in available to participants who have already taken the Turning the Dharma Wheel course and the Wheel of Becoming course on Dependent-Origination. If you have not taken the LUSB introductory courses but would still like to attend, please let me know as there is always room for exceptions.
