Teaching

Buddhist Language and Poetics
The New School University

This course explores Buddhist poetics of enlightenment through the Tibetan language. It is designed for acquiring specialized vocabulary to understand the Buddhist poetry of reality and meditative experience. Readings include personal reflections from Indian and Tibetan masters of meditation, spontaneous songs of realization, soulful praises, and nature poetry. Attention is given to reading classical literary Tibetan as a key to the vast treasury of Tibetan Buddhist written culture.

Buddhist Sutra Literature
The New School University

Reading seminal Buddhist texts in translation, this course examines the genre of sutras or written discourses attributed to the historical Buddha. We read and discuss several sutras drawn from the rich treasure trove of Buddhist source literature as found within the Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan language canons. Special attention is given to the Buddhist culture of the book within India, China, Japan, and Tibet. In class discussions concentrate on the philosophical, literary, and cultural import of Buddhist canonical writings, the Buddhist science of textual interpretation, practices and performances associated with sutras, and the production, translation, and reception of the Buddha’s discourses across Asia. Selected sutras will explore doctrinal themes including emptiness and nonduality, the infinitude of a Buddha’s body, cosmic time and pure lands, undying nirvana, and the meditative power of silence.

Buddhist Language and Meditation
The New School University

This course explores Buddhist mediation and philosophy of mind through the Tibetan language. It is designed for acquiring specialized vocabulary to understand Tibetan Buddhist descriptions of meditative experience. Attention is given to reading classical literary Tibetan as a key to the vast treasury of Tibetan Buddhist written culture. Readings include selections from instruction manuals on meditation practice techniques, reflections on the nature of awareness, and yogic accounts of contemplative insight.

Himalayan Buddhist Visual Culture
The New School University

Exploring the imagery presented by and representative of the Himalayan religious world, this course investigates meaning as invested in Buddhist images and the ways in which Buddhist images are seen. Thinking through the role of visual forms in the broad Himalayan cultural setting of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Northern India, we contextualize Buddhist imagery in its relationship to text, sacred space and time, pilgrimage, deity, relic, and ritual life in order to reveal the power and language of imagery within this visual culture. Special attention is given to contemplative and mystical processes of “seeing” and the imaginative and iconographic symbolism revealed by the Himalayan Buddhist visionary traditions.

Tibetan Art & Modernity
The New School University

Responding to conventions within their own spiritual and artistic heritage, contemporary Tibetan artists are renegotiating the idioms and icons of their cultural context. As mediators in an emerging dialogue with modernity, these artists are exploring complex interactions with technology, globalization, consumerism, and personal freedom. In this course, we investigate how classical imagery is imagined and represented within the formalized Tibetan creative tradition, and how contemporary artists are repurposing much of this imagery as a means of self-expression and identity formation. Particular attention is given to tensions inherent in the extraction and appropriation of sacred Tibetan Buddhist symbols, and the integration of centuries-old imagery, techniques, and materials with modern influences and media. *This course was in concert with “Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond” exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Buddhism in New York City
The New School University

“What did the Buddha teach?” “How are the Buddha’s teachings alive today?” Seeking to address such questions, this course explores the variety of living Buddhist traditions and their representative worlds in the city of New York. Traversing the vast terrain of the various Buddhist traditions and their transplants here in New York City, we give attention to identifying and discussing the multiple forms of Buddhism or the “Buddhisms,” as they have adapted to multiple cultural contexts, both ancient and modern. In doing so, we will study the philosophy and practice of early Indian Buddhism, the Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma), the Zen and Pureland traditions of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), and the Tantric tradition of the Himalaya and Central Asia (Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan). We discuss how Buddhist doctrines, rituals, myths, texts, artistic and visual media work to shape and be shaped by the cultures that Buddhism encounters, and how contemporary Buddhism in America is taking shape.

Tibetan Buddhist Tantra
The New School University

Exploring the development and assimilation of Buddhism in Tibet, this course gives attention to the ritual, visual, literary, and meditative aspects of tantra. We will examine central themes related to tantric Buddhist thought and practice including the nature of consciousness, sex and erotic imagery, death and the afterlife, guru and deity yoga, demons and emotions, emptiness and ecstasy. Particular attention will be given to Tibetan Buddhist understandings of tantra as texts and tantra as technologies for interior transformation. Course materials will draw from tantric art, meditation manuals, poetry, history, and popular mythology.

Tibetan Language & Culture
The New School University

This course explores the thought and culture of Tibetan language. We study the structure of Tibetan grammar and syntax in order to become familiar with the fundamental forms of conversational and literary expression. Particular attention is given to reading classical literary Tibetan as a key to the vast treasury of Tibetan Buddhist written culture. Contextualizing the Tibetan language, readings are drawn from a variety of genres including poetry, biography, and contemplative literature and in-class discussions concentrate on developing pronunciation skills, understanding important technical Tibetan Buddhist terminology, and employing methods of translation. 

Sacred Cosmologies of Asia
The New School University

Exploring cultural, philosophical, and scientific conceptions of the cosmos from myriad Asian perspectives, this course considers various orientations of time and space, origins of the universe, quantum realities, and related themes such as karma, consciousness, wormholes, evolution, emptiness and relativity. We discuss multiple paradigms of the cosmos as conceived by the Hindu, Jain, Taoist, Buddhist, and indigenous shamanic traditions of India, China, and Tibet. Thinking critically and cross-culturally about the ancient cosmologies of Asia, we give special attention to discussions on visible and invisible realms, classifications of beings, celestial heavens and netherworlds, purelands and polluted worlds, models of interior universes, mappings of galactic territories, pilgrimage manuals of the cosmos, modes of ecological awareness, and intersections of contemporary science and spirituality. Course materials draw from Asian folk literature, visual narratives, contemplative manuals, and popular mythology. *This course was in concert with “Visions of the Cosmos: From Milky Ocean to Black Hole” exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Tibetan Religion & Culture
Manhattanville College

Exploring the thought and practices of the Tibetan people, this course gives particular attention to the religious and cultural forces that have come to define Tibetan identity. Throughout this seminar, we investigate the pre-Buddhist indigenous shamanic tradition of Bön, the assimilation of Indian Buddhism by the Tibetans, the history and geography of Tibet as a cultural domain, and fundamental philosophical and contemplative principles understood within the Vajrayana traditions of Buddhism in Tibet. Seeking perspective on historical as well as contemporary Tibet, we develop ongoing conversations around central themes including the ritual life of Tibetan Buddhism, conceptions of death and rebirth, women and gender issues, Buddhist thought and literature, social dynamics of monasticism, the role of popular myths, poetry, and narratives, modern perceptions of Tibet, and how a trans/national Tibetan identity has been shaped in diaspora.

Mandala: Visions of Tantric Buddhism
The New School University

Envisioning the Buddhist aesthetics of enlightenment, this course explores the visual idioms, ritual practices, and philosophical principles associated with the spherical domain known as a mandala. Literally meaning “center and circumference,” a mandala is conceived as a presentation of sacred symmetry, a cosmograph, a device for meditative visualization, a psychological archetype, and a portal to mysterious realities; it serves as one of the most enduring representations of visionary art. This course examines themes such as emptiness, interconnectivity, deity, and pure perception in order to understand the cosmological and contemplative dynamics of the mandala. As we discuss the forms and functions of a mandala as related to the tantric traditions of Buddhism throughout India, Tibet, and the greater Himalayan world as well as its Shingon manifestations in Japan, we give specific attention to the imaginative architecture and iconographic symbolism of the Buddhist mandala and its possible parallel correlates with the tangible universe. *This course was in concert with “Mandala: The Perfect Circle” exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art.