Khenpo Kunga Sherab was selected as the Senior Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program at New College. Since 2009 he has served as academic advisor for a number of professors and graduate students in Canada and the United States. His doctoral research focuses on the long cultural history of practices invented by Tibetans between the 13-20th centuries to identify incarnate enlightened minds among children as the basis of the trülku (sprul sku) institution. You may have seen him on the UToronto Classical Tibetan YouTube channel. Congratulations, Khenpo!
We’re Teaching Online
For our Online Teaching Resource Fellowship project, which ran throughout the strange summer of 2020, a team of University of Toronto graduate students in Buddhist Studies gathered and annotated a robust set of online resources relevant to teaching in our field.
The beta release of their work can be found on a Google sheet, for now, but this resource is currently being transformed into another format with support of the University of Toronto Libraries – please stay tuned for that.
Other resources now available can be found at the Ho Centre’s YouTube channel, pictured above, which includes a playlist of lectures from our February 2020 conference on Teaching Buddhist Studies, among other resources.
Those of you teaching or studying Tibetan may also want to keep an eye on our developing resources for teaching Classical Tibetan online, pictured below, some of which is at our Classical Tibetan YouTube channel.
And be sure to check out our podcast, The Circled Square, found at http://teachingbuddhism.net/ as well as on iTunes and the usual podcast services.
Connecting in Uncertain Times
John Vervaeke teaches wildly popular courses in Buddhism, Psychology & Mental Health undergraduate program and in the Cognitive Science program. He also teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning, with an emphasis on higher cognitive processes that promote intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and wisdom. He is also founder of the Consciousness & Wisdom Studies Lab, and he has a popular YouTube channel.
Nowadays, he is also leading a daily meditation session, in an effort to help us all stay connected in these days of distraction. You can join these sessions each morning in his series of videos in response to the pandemic.
Arts & Science spoke to Vervaeke recently about his work on mindfulness and meditation in times of stress and anxiety – read the full article here.
Encyclopedia Donation
We are pleased to announce this important book donation to the University of Toronto Mississauga Libraries. Below, Shelley Hawrychuk, Chief Librarian of UTM Libraries, receives a donation of the Encyclopedia of Buddhist Art, a publication from Buddha’s Light Publications USA, from Venerable Chueh Fan, Abbess of Fo Guang Shan Temple, at the Dharma Day celebrations at Fo Guang Shan temple Mississauga, on December 8th 2019. This illustrated 20 volume set of books was donated by the temple and will now be housed for use by students and researchers at the UTM libraries.
Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies
In the initiative “Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies” (EEBS), established in 2019 with support from Khyentse Foundation and the Ho Centre, our instructors are creating modules for Buddhist studies courses that combine creative and/or contemplative practices that are grounded in research on the benefits of experiential education, including increased engagement, self-confidence, and compassion among student-participants. The goals of this initiative are to make student participation in classroom work more accessible, to amplify diverse voices in the classroom, and to support overall wellness and mental health among students. This project is part of our growing priority on programming that supports experiential learning, equity, and student well-being, following principles of place-responsive and trauma-informed pedagogy.
This initiative aims to bring the teaching of Buddhist Studies into the company of newly developing, dynamic educational movements that are student-centered, place-responsive, contemplative, trauma-informed, and attentive to student well-being. Well-tested approaches to embodied or engaged pedagogy emphasize the value of engaging students’ senses and their bodies in the process of studying religion, and much of our work is inspired by these approaches. This project also strives to help students feel connected to the lives of real Buddhists, historically or today, by interacting with stories, religious and aesthetic objects, movement, food, and ritual, and by taking interest in the concerns of householder Buddhists as well as monastics.
In 2019-20, EEBS work was incorporated into five U of T courses:
- RLG370 Interdependence
- RLG 201 Introduction to Religion in the Visual, Literary and Performing Arts
- RLG 373 Buddhist Institutions and Practices: Visuality and Materiality in Buddhism
- FAH 394 Sand, Stone, Gold and Crystal: Materials and Materiality in Asian Art
- RLG 370 Topics in Buddhism: Meditation and Mindfulness: From Buddhist Traditions to the Global Present
Experiential modules developed for those courses included activities where:
- Students maintained regular contemplative and wellness practices in class and at home, and class time was devoted to learning movement and breathing practices with local meditation practitioners.
- Students worked with traditional metal funnel tools (chakpur) to create sand mandalas in class and discussed how mandalas make meaning (impermanence and purposeful transience, difficulty of process and production).
- Students worked with a local Tibetan artist to sculpt torma (offering cakes) out of clay and coloured clay. They learned about the form, why they are made, and how they create substitutes for other kinds of imagined offerings
- Students worked with a local Tibetan artist to learn how to paint the Buddha’s head, studying the iconometric method used to measure a traditional Buddha head with its correct relative proportions according to the Tibetan art tradition
