I have a third course this semester. An "Advising tutorial," it gathers a small group of students (seven) for ten discussions around education and vocation, offering intensive advising and an academic credit. I offered a version of this as one of the pilots of this program - called "Buddhism and Liberal Arts" - and had a blast. This time someone mistyped my title, and I decided to go with the new one.Discussing readings is not central in an advising tutorial, and everything will in any case depend on what kind of interests and background the students bring, but for starters I've assembled these readings. (I'm happy to send proper details.) A significant number, I realized with some surprise, are things I discovered in Tricycle magazine.
Thich Nhat Hanh, “Eating a tangerine,” “Action precepts”
Daniel Fallon, “On the past, present, and future of the liberal arts”
Sid Brown, A Buddhist in the classroom, excerpt
Reginald Ray, “The Vajrayana journey is an experience of love, power and freedom”
“The Bodhisattva Vow: eight views”
Gary Gutting, “What is college for?”
Lodro Rinzler, Sebene Selassie, Lama Rod Owens and Qalvy Grainzvolt, “Buddhism in the next generation”
Hsiao-Lan Hu, This-worldly nibbâna, excerpt
Georges Dreyfus, The sound of two hands clapping, excerpt
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “We are not one”
Alice Walker, “Suffering too insignificant for the majority to see”
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Pedagogy”
Cynthia Thatcher, “What’s so great about now?”
We start tomorrow as we did last time - with tangerines!
