Buddhist Lives Across Time and Space

Catalog description

Explores Buddhist lives in the context of hermeneutics and theories of narratively, historiography, and myth and mythmaking. Explores the doctrinal and socio-historical messages embedded within biographies that reflect the development of major Buddhist traditions and their doctrinal interpretations. We begin in Early India and travel through China, South East Asia, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia and the present-day West. A part of the course focuses on the Buddhist lives as portrayed through contemporary Film and Media.