Mick Jagger, Doctor Buddha, and the Four Noble Truths

Posted on March 16, 2014 by teachingasianreligions

(This post is a PG-rated follow-up to my post on Louis CK, and a follow up to the 2×2 Four Noble Truths post.)

When I was working with my sixth graders, I wanted to give them a way to think through and understand the idea of dukkha. The Four Noble Truths do not make much sense if this central idea is not grasped, but I wasn’t quite sure how to make this idea accessible to them without either bludgeoning them with the truth (impermanence, death, loss, pain, etc. — not very appropriate developmentally) or skipping over it entirely.

It was at this point that I remembered once hearing Lama Zopa Rinpoche, a contemporary Tibetan Buddhist teacher, speak about “that skinny man from England with the big lips who teaches the Lam Rim [Stages of the Buddhist Path to Awakening].” This was the way in!

Continue reading →

Doritos and Discipline

Posted on March 8, 2014 by teachingasianreligions

I still recall a conversation I had early in my student-teaching career. My supervisor and I were talking about a recent class that had gone pretty well, although I had been dealing with some boisterousness in my classes. (Typical first-year teacher things, and typical 9^th grade things.) I asked her if she had any ideas for classroom management, and she replied in her typically straightforward way, “Yes. Teach better.” Continue reading →

The Bhagavad Gita and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Nurses

Posted on February 25, 2014 by teachingasianreligions

Krishna teaching Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita

D.D. Kosambi, the Indian Marxist historian, once dismissed the Bhagavad Gita as “700 fratricidal verses.” And while this text has been extolled by champions of nonviolence such as Thoreau and Gandhi, Kosambi does have a point: Krishna – God himself who has taken on human form – urges Arjuna, the reluctant warrior, to fight in battle against his teachers, cousins, and friends. Why? Because his dharma requires him to do so. Arjuna must act in this battle in order to preserve the order of the universe, even if it means slaughtering his kin. Continue reading →

Dissected Buddha, Gonkar Gyatso (2013)

Posted on February 24, 2014 by teachingasianreligions

At the Met Museum through June 8.

Questioning Questioning

Posted on February 18, 2014 by teachingasianreligions

Socrates, from Raphael’s “School of Athens”

Recently, I was talking to a friend (and fellow blogger) who teaches Physics. In the course of our conversation after I observed her (inspiring) class, she said to me, “I never ask students a question they don’t have the tools to answer.” This statement gave me some pause. I thought to myself – only half in jest – I never ask my students a question they are able to answer.