This course is a presentation of the path and result of foundational Buddhism as found in the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika 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.
Faculty/Instructor(s): Susan Stewart, Arne Schelling
This course is a systematic training in the meditation of special insight following the approach of the Abhidharma tradition. Students learn the skills to gain certainty in the view of selflessness through the practice of the Four Applications of Mindfulness, cultivating inferential wisdom and bringing it to personal experience.
Faculty/Instructor(s): Jirka Hladiš
This course will deepen your understanding of knowable objects as expounded by the Abhidhama tradition, based on the Collected Topics root text. Students will learn methods for thinking clearly by formulating definitions, examples, equivalents and classifications, and by exploring the four types of logical relationships between two phenomena. This course also prepares students for debate, which is a highly effective method for clarifying one's understanding of the topics that are covered in Nitartha's study curriculum.
Faculty/Instructor(s): Israel Lifshitz
This course is an exposition view of foundational Buddhism from the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika philosophical traditions, based on the “The Gateway that Reveals the Philosophical Traditions to Fresh Minds” root text. Students explore foundational classifications of knowable objects: the five bases, five aggregates, twelve sources, eighteen constituents, and the presentation of causation from the Vaibhashika philosophical system followed by the Sautrantika presentation classifying all knowable objects into specifically and generally characterized phenomena, based on our experience and then a comparison of the two views.
Faculty/Instructor(s): Dr. Francis Sullivan
This foundation debate course offers a methodical training in elementary debate skills on the basis of the Clear Thinking course. Students train in formulating reasonings with correct and seeming reasons and utilize them in debate by learning how to challenge the first mode (the relationship between the subject and the reason). The debate content consists of the classification of objects in terms of entity from Collected Topics.
Faculty/Instructor(s): Christian Scott