Louis CK and the Four Noble Truths

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Louis CK teaching Buddhism

Louis CK on the debate grounds of a Tibetan monastery.

My last post explored ways to teach about the Four Noble Truths, and I want to continue that here. One of the most challenging ideas to convey is the idea of dukkha – the dissatisfaction, dis-ease, stress, unhappiness, suffering that, according to the Buddha, pervades the unexamined and unawakened life. It can be easy to tell students about this idea, but the mere telling doesn’t guarantee that the students will understand or appreciate the idea in any kind of complexity. Continue reading →

Four Noble Truths Lesson Plan, Part One

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4NT in Tibetan

Or, Why 2×2 is greater than 4

The Four Noble Truths are at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. In fact, all subsequent teachings – be they by him or by any other Buddhist teacher – fit somewhere into this fourfold structure. For years, I had presented them in a list, but more recently – especially as I’ve worked to make these ideas clearer to my 6th graders – I’ve been organizing them differently. And, as a result, the students seem to understand the underlying logic and structure of these ideas better than they might have.

There’s also the fact that I rename one of the truths. (I will have to hope the Buddha understands.) Continue reading →

Three Tough Things

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From Deborah Meier’s The Power of Their Ideas (cited in Vilardi and Chang, Writing-Based Teaching):

“For the kinds of changes necessary to transform American education, the work force of teachers must do three tough things more or less at once: change the way they view learning itself, develop new habits of mind to go with their cognitive understanding, and simultaneously develop new habits of work — habits that are collegial and public in nature, not solo and private, as has been the custom in teaching.”

What is Hinduism?

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Padmanabhaswamy temple

The Padmanabhaswamy Temple, home of recently-discovered riches beyond imagination.

What is Hinduism? Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, once famously said that “Hinduism is all things to all men.” While this definition does not seem to get us very far, it may actually be more helpful than it appears at first blush. Hinduism is an incredibly diverse phenomenon, something that has roots going back many thousands of years while also retaining an incredible capacity for reinvention, redefinition, and assimilation, at both the local and pan-Indian level. (And, of course, since the Indian diaspora, all over the world.) Continue reading →

Final Projects: The Perils and the Potential

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MIA-MATANGI

Buddhist meditation in religious and secular contexts. The iconography of the Bodhisattva of Compassion in Nepal, Tibet, and China. An analysis of Hindu art and allusion on M.I.A.’s new album. A creative art triptych about students’ views of religion. A comparison of Mallik’s “The Tree of Life” and Prince Siddhartha’s story, with some help from Joseph Campbell. An exploration of race and identity in contemporary Buddhist practice.

Continue reading →