"Buddhist Modernism" wrapped up today - here's the classroom after the students had left. The room gave us nothing but trouble, being by turns too hot and too cold (sometimes both), noisy, and both dim and too bright to see much when using the overhead projector. The chairs were uncomfortable, and stuck to the vinyl floor when you tried to move them into a circle; their little desklets periodically flipped a student's things onto the ground. I commended the class for its success in forming a learning community (a sangha, one said!) despite the room. And I promised we'd find a way to get together in half a year in this very space, where we'd find ourselves nostalgic precisely about its discomforts.Easy to say on a day of beautiful winter light... Notice all those prime colors peeking in the windows!
I wonder how we'll look back on our experience together. Several students dutifully pledged that the ideas they'd encountered in the class would be with them for the rest of their lives; I said they should wait and see. Beyond encountering the many faces of Buddhist modernism we've done a lot of thinking together about the mysteries of learning ... some of it personalized, liberating, unselfing. It all might mean more to them after they have a few more semesters of college, and of life, under their belts!
