Spring

Japanese attitudes to religion and popular forms of religiosity. Syncretic nature of beliefs and practices drawn on a variety of interwoven concepts, beliefs, customs and religious activities of native Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian origins as background. Topics include: pursuit of worldly benefits, religion and healing, fortune-telling, ascetic practices, pilgrimage, festivals (matsuri), new religions and their image, impact of the internet, response of religion in times of crisis.

Visionary experiences - meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions - hold a central place in Buddhist traditions, and have gone on to inspire modern practices such as mindfulness and lucid dreaming. Many forms of Buddhist visionary experience are thought to involve conscious and voluntary visualizations, in contrast to spontaneous and passive visions. Through readings about visionary aspects of meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions in classical Buddhist literature (in translation) in a pan-Buddhist context, we will reflect upon the following questions: Do the modern ideas of Buddhist visualization practices truthfully represent early Buddhist understanding? What do these visionary experiences reveal about Buddhist epistemologies and soteriologies? Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Introduction to Buddhist literature through reading original texts in Sanskrit. Prerequisite: Sanskrit.

Visionary experiences - meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions - hold a central place in Buddhist traditions, and have gone on to inspire modern practices such as mindfulness and lucid dreaming. Many forms of Buddhist visionary experience are thought to involve conscious and voluntary visualizations, in contrast to spontaneous and passive visions. Through readings about visionary aspects of meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions in classical Buddhist literature (in translation) in a pan-Buddhist context, we will reflect upon the following questions: Do the modern ideas of Buddhist visualization practices truthfully represent early Buddhist understanding? What do these visionary experiences reveal about Buddhist epistemologies and soteriologies? Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Graduate Independent study in Buddhism. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required supervised internship for PhDs.