Dharmapala College

For Order members, particularly those involved in Dharma teaching.

Mahayana Buddhism has long dominated Indo-Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism, and yet we actually know surprisingly little about the complex origins of this significant movement in Buddhist thought and practice. Does it matter to us?

• Where and when did the Mahayana emerge?
• Among what group(s) of Buddhists?
• Was it a lay-oriented movement—-or not?
• In what ways did it seek to go beyond the more conservative expressions of canonical Buddhism?
• Why did the faculty of imagination come to have such a central role in its literature?
• How was this expressed in meditative and devotional practice?

Recent scholarship has begun to look at all of these questions anew, drawing on previously ignored sources to overturn many of the most commonly held views of the Mahayana.

Teachers—and especially those presenting the new Mitra course—will find this seminar a useful opportunity to gain an updated understanding of this crucial period of Buddhist history. The sources that were available to Bhante at the time when he was writing his ‘Survey’ and subsequent lecture series have been superseded by several decades of scholarship which reveal a very different picture.

Many of the issues that Western Buddhists are grappling with today were addressed by the Mahayana tradition, especially when it moved outside of India. A more accurate understanding of how Buddhism developed will enable us to better understand other Buddhist practice communities while also helping us to locate the FWBO in the context of the broader Buddhist tradition.

29 February, 6pm - 05 March, 2pm, at Madhyamaloka, Birmingham
With Saramati and Sagaramati

Suggested donation: £ 150

To go back to our 2008 schedule, please click here.