Nitartha Institute at Nalanda West presents:

BUD760 Madhyāntavibhāga: The Distinction between the Middle and Extremes (Spring 2011), Seattle, Washington

Regional and Online Semester Program - Seattle, WA

Course Description:
This course is an in-depth study of Madhyāntavibhāga by Maitreya (ca. 4th century) - a key work of Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy - based on the commentary by Ju Mipham (1846-1912), which delineates the distinctions and relationship (vibhāga) between the middle view (madhya) and extremes (anta). We will systematically proceed through its first three chapters: the Characteristics, the Obscurations, Reality, the Path of Practice and the Unsurpassable Vehicle

Faculty
Instructor: Khenpo Dr. Karl Brunnhölzl
Teaching Assistant: TBD

Meeting Times
10 consecutive Tuesdays
January 4 - March 8, 2011
Time: 7pm - 9pm PST

Required Text

Middle Beyond Extremes: Maitreya's Madhyantavibhaga with Commentaries by Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham, tr. by Dharmachakra Translation Committee, Snow Lion Publications, 2006: www.snowlionpub.com

Type of Class & Methods of Instruction:

Real time presentations with simultaneous online streaming video broadcast. The class will also have asynchronous online course with posted study questions, lecture notes, archived audio recordings of the lectures, and discussion forum. There will be an opportunity for the students to formulate questions to the instructor in the asynchronous.
Additional Class Information
Open to all dedicated students of the dharma.

Advanced: Students taking this course for credit must have completed the Foundation and Intermediate level courses, and the core courses of the Advanced Program through BUD 713.
Audit Students: Those students who are sincerely interested in attending the class, but who have not met the prerequisites for this advanced course, are invited to sit in the class, and/or take the course online.

Final Exam: The advanced students will take a final asynchronous written take-home exam the last class of the course. The exam questions will be drawn from the pool of the class study questions. Completed exams will be submitted electronically to the teaching assistant who will correct them and offer comments to individual students by email.

Register online now!

http://www.asaponlinereg.com/Default.aspx?org=773

Additional Course Description:

Maitreya's work speaks about the two sides of the same coin-mind in its confused state of daydreaming its own world versus waking up to its true nature. Like many other Yogacara scriptures, this text too describes the phenomenal world as being nothing but the product of our own essentially confused imagination and thus lacking any real existence outside of the imagining mind. The samsaric mind, which is ignorant about its own true nature, creates an imaginary split into subject and object and then becomes caught up in its own display of the subject grasping at all kinds of objects.

On the other hand, the nature of phenomena (or the mind) is described here in detail as the nonconceptual wisdom that lacks any duality of subject and object, but realizes its own primordially enlightened nature. This wisdom is not something newly produced through the path-it is said to exist primordially and is only obscured temporarily by adventitious stains (phenomena). Thus, its own natural state is always unchanging, just as the sun itself is never altered by the presence or absence of clouds. However, from the perspective of samsaric beings who do not realize mind's nature, it first seems to be obscured, thus appearing as the play of various dualistic phenomena, while later, its state seems to change into the pure awareness that is free of illusory dualistic creations.

Registration Information, please contact:
Sandra Roscoe, PhD
sandra@nitartha-institute.org