Indian & Tibetan River of Buddhism

مقدمة من

شعار المنصة
متاح الآن إلى 2024-06-28
36.00 ساعة تعليمية
متوسط
اللغة :
الإنجليزية
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The course begins with a survey of the origins of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-first millennium BCE, as well as its transformation in the first millennium CE into the Sanskrit-language-based Mahayana Buddhism(s) that permeated the monastic traditions and flourished in India until around 1100 CE, and that persists up to present day in East Asia, Central Asia, and Vietnam.

The Tibetan aspect of this course surveys the Tibetan and Central Asian reception and development of these Indian Buddhist traditions that occurred in two distinct historical periods: (1) from 650 CE until ca. 850 CE, and (2) from ca. 950 CE to the present.

During the first period, the Indians' and Tibetans' massive efforts to translate into the Tibetan language the Sanskrit and Prakrit contents of the great Indian monastic university libraries resulted in the reception and preservation in Tibetan of the most essential parts of what was destroyed in India during the Persian, Turkish, and Tajik invasions and occupations in the early second millennium CE. These translations also enabled that Indian style of Buddhism to spread into the Mongolias and the Manchu empire in China. In addition to addressing such reception and preservation, we will also survey the unique ways in which these Indian forms of Buddhism were further developed in the Tibetan and Central Asian cultural spheres (throughout their histories, and especially in the second period that began after the destruction of Indian Buddhism).

Finally, we will explore 20th-21st century manifestations and developments of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the global modern world. Although in the modern era Tibet itself has lost its Buddhist culture internally due to the Chinese communist occupation and cultural revolution, that Buddhist culture has been maintained and developed in exile and diaspora, and its worldwide spread is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of American and European forms of world Buddhism.

المدربين

Robert A.F. Thurman
Robert A.F. Thurman
Robert Thurman holds the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. Educated at Philips Exeter and Harvard, he then studied Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, and Asian languages and histories for fifty years with many teachers, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama (C. U. Ph.D., hc, 1989). He has written substantial scholarly works, founding and editing a new series through Columbia University Press, Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences. He also writes popular books, lecturing all over the world in the "public intellectual" tradition, with special concern for ethics and human rights in general, and the fate of the endangered Tibetan culture and people in particular. His main academic interest is in the Indo-Tibetan philosophical, scientific, and psychological traditions and their history, with a view to their all-too-little-known relevance to critical contemporary currents of thought in philosophy, science and spirituality, especially concerning the undeniable role of mind in nature.
Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning
Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning
The Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) builds learning experiences on campus and online to support excellence and innovation across educational programs at Columbia University. Working in close partnership with the Columbia teaching community, CTL is committed to advancing the culture of teaching and learning for professional development, curricular enhancement, and academic excellence. Through its programs, services, and resources, we support the purposeful use of new media and emerging technologies in the classroom and online to foster the success of Columbia’s instructors and students.