Buddhism

Course Number 687 -- 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by: Professor Malcolm David Eckel -- Boston University
 
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Lectures

	Part I

		Lecture 1: What is Buddhism?
		Lecture 2: India at the Time of the Buddha
		Lecture 3: The Doctrine of Reincarnation
		Lecture 4: The Story of the Buddha
		Lecture 5: All is Suffering
		Lecture 6: The Path to Nirvana
		Lecture 7: The Buddhist Monastic Community
		Lecture 8: Buddhist Art and Architecture
		Lecture 9: Thervada Buddhism in Southeast Asia
		Lecture 10: Mahayana Buddhism and the Bodhisattva Ideal
		Lecture 11: Celestial Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
		Lecture 12: Emptiness

	Part II

		Lecture 13: Buddhist Philosophy
		Lecture 14: Buddhist Tantra
		Lecture 15: The Theory and Practice of Mandala
		Lecture 16: The "First Diffusion of the Dharma" in Tibet
		Lecture 17: The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism
		Lecture 18: The Dalai Lama
		Lecture 19: The Origins of Chinese Buddhism 
		Lecture 20: The Classical Period of Chinese Buddhism
		Lecture 21: The Origins of Japanese Buddhism
		Lecture 22: Honen, Shinran and Nichiren
		Lecture 23: Zen
		Lecture 24: Buddhism in America

Share Professor Malcolm David Eckel?s fascination with this remarkable, lively, 
and challenging religious tradition. 

	In its 2,500-year history, Buddhism has grown from a tiny religious 
	community in northern India into a movement that now spans the globe. This 
	course is a survey of the history of Buddhism from its origin in India in 
	the sixth century B.C.E. to its present-day status as a major world 
	religion. It is meant to introduce students to the astonishing vitality and 
	adaptability of a tradition that has transformed the civilizations of India, 
	Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan and has now become a lively 
	component in the cultures of Europe, Australia, and the Americas. 

	No doubt you can picture the Buddha -- seated serenely, feet crossed in front 
	of him, hands folded in his lap. But who was the real person behind this 
	image? What did he have to say about the nature and purpose of life? What 
	were the origins of such concepts as reincarnation, nirvana, karma, and Zen, 
	and what is the Buddhist understanding of them? Buddhism is your opportunity 
	to trace the evolution of a theology that is both familiar and foreign, and 
	prompts us to think in new ways about the definition of a satisfying and 
	productive life.

	The study of Buddhism can be a great challenge to people who have grown up 
	in the Western world. It does not share many of the central beliefs of 
	Western religions, such as the concept of a single, almighty God, or that 
	each human being has a permanent "self." Buddhism also has been transformed 
	in so many ways, as it has swept across the different cultures of Asia, that 
	it often is difficult to decide what Buddhism actually is and how it should 
	be studied.

Buddhism As an Unfolding Story

	Professor Eckel begins by saying that "Buddhists love to tell stories," and 
	approaches Buddhism as the elaboration of a series of stories. Throughout 
	this course, he acts as a storyteller as well as a lecturer, recounting the 
	tales that have been told through the centuries to elaborate and explain the 
	Buddhist view of life.

	The story of Indian religion goes back to the Vedas and the Upanishads, the 
	ancient Indian texts that predate the life of Buddha and presented the 
	Buddha with a series of classic religious questions. An early hymn in the 
	Rig Veda posed a question about the origin of creation and the nature of 
	reality:

		". . . Who can tell the source of this creation? The gods are on this 
		side of the creation. Who knows, then, where it came from and how it 
		came into being?

		Where this creation came from and how it came into being --  perhaps the 
		highest overseer in heaven knows, or perhaps even he does not know."

			 -- Rig Veda 10.129

	In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, a sage by the name of Yajñavalkya explained 
	the process of reincarnation and compared it to the movement of a 
	caterpillar from one blade of grass to another. This image posed a profound 
	question about the fate of the soul in the cycle of death and rebirth:

		"It is like this. As a caterpillar, when it comes to the tip of a blade 
		of grass, reaches out to a new foothold and draws itself onto it, so the 
		self (atman), after it has knocked down this body and rendered it 
		unconscious, reaches out to a new foothold and draws itself onto it."

	The entire history of Buddhism -- and all of the lectures in this course -- can be 
	understood as a procession of stories, responding to the earliest religious 
	questions about the nature of reality and the cycle of death and rebirth.

	These stories begin with the rich religious culture of India, the culture 
	into which the Buddha was born, and which made it possible for him to craft 
	his own distinctive solution to the problems of life and death.

	The stories then proceed to the life of the Buddha himself, Siddhartha 
	Gautama. Born into a princely family in 566 B.C.E., he eventually renounced 
	his life of privilege and became an Indian ascetic. After years of struggle, 
	the pivotal moment in his life came when he sat under a tree and "woke up" 
	to the meaning of life ("Buddha" means "Awakened One"). This awakening was 
	the realization that "all of life is suffering," combined with an 
	understanding of the path that led to the cessation of suffering, and to 
	nirvana.

	The stories then examine Buddhism after the Buddha?s death. They trace the 
	interpretation of his teaching, or Dharma; the development of the early 
	Buddhist community and the remarkable evolution of Buddhist philosophy as it 
	emigrated from India to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), China, Japan, Tibet, 
	Southeast Asia, and, ultimately, the Western World. 

A Remarkable Capacity for Change

	One of the most fascinating aspects of Buddhism is its extraordinary 
	diversity. As it adapted to new challenges in India and the rest of Asia, 
	Buddhist beliefs went through significant, even radical, changes.

	Early Buddhism was a tradition of self-reliance: awakening came (if it came 
	at all) solely on the basis of one?s own efforts. In the Mahayana movement, 
	or "Great Vehicle," Buddhists emphasized the importance of compassion and 
	concern for others. The Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva ("Buddha-to-be" or 
	"future Buddha") did not attempt to go straight to nirvana but returned to 
	this world to help others along the path.

	As Mahayana Buddhism spread across India and Central Asia, it added the 
	concept of "celestial bodhisattvas," advanced practitioners of the 
	bodhisattva path who reside in the heavens and are able to save earthly 
	beings who call on them for help. With these new ideas, the Mahayana 
	movement transformed the traditional emphasis on self-reliance into an ideal 
	of salvation by faith and reliance on an other-worldly savior. This 
	tradition of Buddhist devotion has become extremely popular in Japan today, 
	and is also widely represented in North America, where it seems to bear 
	surprising similarities to Christianity.

	Buddhism also changed as it encountered other cultures in Asia. In China, 
	Buddhism took on a distinctly Chinese face, becoming more respectful of 
	duties to the family and the ancestors, more pragmatic and this-worldly, and 
	more consistent with Chinese respect for harmony with nature. In Japan, the 
	Buddhas were reconciled with the local deities, known as Kami, so that both 
	could be worshipped together.

	The Buddhist ability to embrace change may seem puzzling to Western minds. 
	But change lies at the very core of Buddhism. The Buddha himself espoused 
	the doctrine of "no-self," a belief that there is no such thing as a 
	permanent identity. Instead, the human personality and all of reality are 
	constantly changing. Mahayana Buddhism elaborated this idea when it 
	developed the concept of "Emptiness," the view that nothing exists in its 
	own right, and that everything is "empty" of identity.

	Buddhists believe the concepts of no-self and Emptiness are far from 
	negative: they invest their religion, and life itself, with limitless 
	possibilities. If everything is constantly changing, then it is possible for 
	everything to become new. If everything is an illusion, then there is no 
	barrier to accomplishing anything.

A Tradition of Political Activism

	Buddhist values are not always limited to aspects of life that we would call 
	strictly "religious." Buddhism also has a lively tradition of political 
	action. This tradition began with King Asoka, emperor of the Maurya Dynasty 
	in India from 269-238 B.C.E. Asoka waged a campaign to conquer the Kingdom 
	of Kalinga that was so brutal that it prompted him to convert to Buddhism. 
	He then proclaimed himself a "righteous King" who would protect and 
	promulgate Buddhist teachings. 

	Asoka?s ideal has been imitated in traditional Buddhist cultures throughout 
	the Theravada ("tradition of the elders") countries of Southeast Asia, as 
	well as in the Mahayana countries of Tibet, China, and Japan. A striking 
	contemporary example of the intersection between religious and political 
	values in Southeast Asia is Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (formerly Burma), 
	the daughter of General Aung San, the country?s national hero. Aung San Suu 
	Kyi became the leader of the movement against repressive military rule and 
	was eventually placed under house arrest, where she continued to speak out 
	in favor of the democratic opposition. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 
	1991 for her efforts on behalf of democracy, human rights, and ethnic 
	reconciliation. 

	Even more familiar to us today is the work of the Dalai Lama, who has helped 
	lead Tibetan Buddhists through a period of deep political and cultural 
	difficulty, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent 
	campaign of resistance to Chinese domination in Tibet. His public 
	involvement in many significant issues --  including human rights, the 
	exploitation of the environment, and the oppression of minority peoples -- has 
	made him one of the foremost spokesmen and most visible symbols of Buddhism 
	in the contemporary world. 

The Buddhist Story Spreads West

	Buddhism?s capacity to transform itself, and in the process to influence new 
	cultures, continued as it came in contact with Western nations. Since the 
	end of the 19th century, Buddhism has become a respected part of life in 
	countries far beyond its traditional home in Asia. 

	Early Western converts to Buddhism interpreted the religion for their 
	countrymen. In the 1880s, Henry Steele Olcott traveled to Ceylon, converted 
	to Buddhism, and created a "Buddhist Catechism" that embodied what has been 
	called a "Protestant" form of Buddhism, designed to make it more acceptable 
	to Western sensibilities. Olcott?s efforts also reshaped, to some extent, 
	the way Buddhists in Ceylon perceived their own traditions.

	Today, almost every variety of Buddhism has been adapted for an American 
	audience. Fascinating new Buddhist communities, such as the Buddhist 
	Churches of America, have taken hold on the west coast and in Hawaii. 
	Centers for Zen practice and for Tibetan Buddhism have been established in 
	North America, often making it possible for American converts to receive 
	training and assume positions of leadership. 

	Buddhist influence has also permeated many aspects of Western culture. Often 
	a person?s first contact with Buddhism has come through reading 
	"Siddhartha," by German author Herman Hesse, or the novels of Jack Kerouac 
	and works of such Beat Poets as Gary Snyder. African-American author Charles 
	Johnson uses Buddhism to explore the change of consciousness that takes 
	place when ex-slaves experience freedom.

	The widespread and continuing appeal of Buddhism, Professor Eckel contends, 
	always comes back to its stories -- of the Buddha himself, and of the ways in 
	which others have lived their lives in the attempt to follow his example.

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