Teaching Buddhism New Insights on Understanding and Presenting the Traditions

Buddhist studies is a rapidly changing field of research, constantly transforming and adapting to new scholarship. This creates a problem for instructors, both in a university setting and in monastic schools, as they try to develop a curriculum based on a body of scholarship that continually shifts in focus and expands to new areas.

Teaching Buddhism establishes a dialogue between the community of instructors of Buddhism and leading scholars in the field who are updating, revising, and correcting earlier understandings of Buddhist traditions. Each chapter presents new ideas within a particular theme of Buddhist studies and explores how courses can be enhanced with these insights. Contributors in the first section focus on the typical approaches, figures, and traditions in undergraduate courses, such as the role of philosophy in Buddhism, Nagarjuna, Yogacara Buddhism, tantric traditions, and Zen Buddhism. They describe the impact of recent developments-like new studies in the cognitive sciences-on scholarship in those areas. Part Two examines how political engagement and ritual practice have shaped the tradition throughout its history. Focus then shifts to the issues facing instructors of Buddhism-dilemmas for the scholar-practitioner in the academic and monastic classroom, the tradition's possible roles in teaching feminism and diversity, and how to present the tradition in the context of a world religions course. In the final section, contributors offer stories of their own experiences teaching, paying particular attention to the ways in which American culture has impacted them. They discuss the development of courses on American Buddhism; using course material on the family and children; the history and trajectory of a Buddhist-Christian dialog; and Buddhist bioethics, environmentalism, economic development, and social justice. In synthesizing this vast and varied body of research, the contributors in this volume have provided an invaluable service to the field

Todd T. Lewis is the Murray Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities in the Religious Studies Department at The College of the Holy Cross, where he has taught since 1990. Professor Lewis is one of the world's leading authorities on the religions of the central Himalayan region and the social history of Buddhism.

Gary DeAngelis has taught Asian Religions for forty six years at Boston University, Brandeis University, Clark University and for the last twenty nine years at Holy Cross College, also serving as the Associate Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Holy Cross. His primary areas of teaching and scholarship have been Chinese and Japanese religions with a particular emphasis on scared space, pilgrimage, and ritual.

Acknowledgments
Editors' Preface
Introduction: Tensions in the Field of Religious and Buddhist Studies - John Strong
Note on Transliteration of Asian Languages
List of Contributors

Part 1: Updating Perennial Course Subjects
1) Teaching Buddhism as Philosophy - Mark Siderits

2) Teaching Nagarjuna - Roger R. Jackson

3) Teaching Yogacara Buddhism Using Cognitive Science - William S. Waldron

4) Teaching Tantric Buddhism in an Undergraduate Classroom Context - David B. Gray

5) Rethinking the Teaching of Zen Buddhism - Steven Heine

Part 2: Reimagining the Content of "Buddhism"
6) In Defense of the Dharma: Buddhists and Politics - Thomas Borchert and Ian Harris

7) Conveying Buddhist Tradition through its Rituals - Todd Lewis

Part 3: Issues in Teaching, Practice, and Connecting Students with the Tradition
8) Teaching Buddhism in the Western Academy - Jan Willis

9) Teaching Buddhist History to Buddhist Practitioners - Rita M. Gross

10) Deconstructing Identity Categories and Cultivating Appreciation for Diversity: Teaching Buddhism and Feminism - Hsiao-Lan Hu

11) Teaching Buddhism in the World Religions Course - Challenges and Promise - Gary DeAngelis

Part 4: Buddhism and the American Context
12) When The Iron Bird Flies: Seeking Western Buddhism in the Classroom - Charles Prebish

13) Conveying Buddhism in the Classroom: Working with Assumptions on Family and Children - Vanessa R. Sasson

14) Teaching Engaged Buddhism in Uncertain Times - Christopher Queen

Part 5: Buddhism in New Academic Fields
15) History of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue - Paul O. Ingram

16) Teaching Buddhist Bioethics - Damien Keown

17) Buddhist Environmentalism - Leslie E. Sponsel and Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel

18) Buddhism and Economic Development - Laszlo Zsolnai

19) "We Can Do No Less:" Buddhism and Social Justice - Anna Brown

Index