We are looking forward to a full 2025 spring semester, with a broad range of course options from which to choose, including:
FOUNDATION LEVEL
BUD 600 | Analytical Meditation II
Analytical meditation: a form of debate without a partner.
The function of analytical meditation is to bring the view being studied into one’s own experience. It lifts the words out of the book and places them into our heart. The words go from being out there to being part of our innermost being, integrated. That is the essential function of analytical meditation. Through this effort to analyze we become curious about how our mind works.
Though this process, the view being contemplated is examined.
- Does it make sense to me?
- Is it something I fully comprehend?
- Why is this taught here and now at this point on the path?
- Do fully agree with this or not?
This is an examination of the validity of the view that is being studied. That is why the buddhist tradition is wisdom tradition.. It emphasizes strengthening one’s own prajña. As Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche has said, the Buddhist path does not begin with an answer but with a question. Questioning and seeking answer is the heart of analytical meditation. That is precisely what it is. It involves training in the skill of formulating the question about the view, about reality, and then seeking the answer. Curiosity is the mindset of an analytical meditator. That’s why Manjushri is portrayed as a youthful, curious 17-year-old.
BUD 600 Course Description:
This course is a systematic training in the meditation of special insight in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. The students learn the skills to gain certainty in the view of emptiness through the practice of the Four Mahāyāna Yogas, cultivating inferential wisdom and bringing it to personal experience.
Additional Course Description:
The instruction for the spring 2025 course on the practice of the Four Mahāyāna Yogas will be based on the Buddha Nature tradition, as it is preserved in Uttaratanta of Maitreya.
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BUD 530 | Mind & Its World IV: Vaibhasika and Sautrantika Philosophical Traditions
Faculty: Susan Stewart and Arne Schelling
About this course: This course presents the path and result of foundational Buddhism as found in both the Vaibhasika and Sautrantika philosophical traditions, based on The Gateway that Reveals the Philosophical Traditions to Fresh Minds root text. The path consists of calm abiding and superior insight. Key topics such as the 4 Realities, the 4 Foundations of Mindfulness, the 12 links of dependent origination, and the 37 branches of enlightenment will be discussed. Each topic will have an experiential component of analytical meditation.
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INTERMEDIATE LEVEL
BUD 620 | Paths and Bhumis: The Path to Enlightenment
FACULTY: Israel Lifshitz
This is semester 2 of this course, an exposition of the Buddhist path based on The Presentation of Bhumis, Paths & Results in the Treasury of Knowledge root text. Students continue to learn what is necessary for entering and progressing on the path and what the goal of spiritual journey is, through exploring the five paths, and the ten bodhisattva bhūmis, as well as the result: nirvana, kāyas, wisdoms and enlightened activity.
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ADVANCED LEVEL
BUD 692 | Treasury of Valid Cognition and Reasoning
Faculty: Acharya Lama Kelzang Wangdi
Course Description:
This course is the continuation of an in-depth study of Treasury of Valid Cognition and Reasoning, (tshad ma rigs gter) by renowned scholar Sakya Pandita (1182-1251) – an influential work that inaugurated a new period of pramana studies in Tibet by focusing particularly on Dharmakirti’s Pramanavarttika and identifying the errors of earlier Tibetan scholars, especially Chapa Chökyi Senge. We will study Sakya Pandita’s seminal work on the basis of the commentary by Jamyang Loter Wangpo (1847-1914).
This semester, we will continue and complete Chapter 5 “Investigation of the Object of Expression and the Expressor” and then cover Chapter 6 “Investigation of Relationships.”
About Sakya Pandita
Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251) is one of the great scholars of Tibet. He was renowned for the breadth of his knowledge, but particularly for his expertise in epistemology or valid cognition (pramāṇa). His Treasury of Valid Cognition and Reasoning was so esteemed that it was translated into Sanskrit and circulated in India. Non-Buddhist Indian scholars even came to Tibet to debate him, and were consistently defeated by him.
Sakya Pandita’s text has continued to be a major text in the study of pramana in the Tibetan tradition to this day. It is a source of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche’s Lorik or Classifications of Mind root text, which is taught in Nitartha’s Mind and Its World I and II courses. Studying Sakya Pandita’s text is thus crucial to deepening one’s exploration of the valid cognition tradition.
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LANGUAGE
LAN 510 | Intermediate Colloquial Tibetan (continued)
FACULTY: Nima Bhuti
This course is a continuation of the 2024 fall semester intermediate colloquial Tibetan course. This course is for students with an established grounding in colloquial Tibetan. The focus will be to gain further fluency in reading, speaking, listening, and understanding Tibetan using the Central Tibetan dialect. Classes are mostly Tibetan with minimal English.
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