REL 210
Buddhism

Dr. James Apple
email: japple@rel.as.ua.edu

Course Description: As with most religious traditions, Buddhism varies from region to region, and even from village to village. An old Tibetan saying maintains, "Every valley has its unique dialect; every Lama has his unique Buddhism." Such notions raise two related questions. First, if we were to study Buddhism in just its unique manifestations, would we be understanding "Buddhism" at all? And second, if we obscure the uniqueness of its manifestations in favor of some overarching sameness, are we discovering the "true" Buddhism? For us, at least, such questions will probably prove intractable, but they nevertheless raise a useful doubt: they suggest that if we claim to discover something that is true of all forms of Buddhism, we are claiming that we know something that is the same in all that we call "Buddhist." We claim to know, in other words, the "essence" of Buddhism, and as Buddhism comes to North America, the notion of such an essence becomes ever more important. But is the notion of an essential Buddhism even a Buddhist idea?

Spring 2003 Syllabus (pdf)