Download ISL Dharamsala Syllabus

ISL Dharamsala: “The Power of Nonviolence”
Tentative syllabus for five weeks
Week 1: Nonviolence, toleration and Indian religions
Gandhi, Selected Writings, ed. Raghavan Iyer – I would focus on satyragraha, outcastes as harijans
(children of god) and Hindu Muslim unity
Eknath Easwearon, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, a Man to Match his Mountains
Gilbert democratic individuality on Badshah Khan, the Pathan Martin Luther King http: /democraticindividuality.blogspot.com/2009/05/badshah-khan-martin-luther-king-of.htmland
and on the Egyptian revolution, democratic-individuality.blogspot.com/2011/02/power-of-nonviolenceend-egyptian-wall.html and /democratic-individuality.blogspot.com/2011/02/egyptian-democracyamerican-orientalism.html
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom ch. 6 on Akbar’s and Ashoka’s toleration
Videos:
Pico Ayer on The Dalai Lama on nonviolence: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSKzoeUPN1g
and the Dalai Lama briefly speaking about nonviolence, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp9F3mGeDh8
1. Why is non-violence a strong option in Hindu and many other spiritual traditions?
2. How does Gandhi modify Hinduism?
3. What is the role of nonviolence the struggle for Indian independence (see Badshah Khan and
Ackerman and Duvall, A Force More Powerful, chapter on Gandhi).
4. What is the Arab tradition of toleration of other “peoples of the book”? (see Maria Rosa
Menocal, The Ornament of the World) How does it relate to Buddhist toleration (Ashoka. Dalai
Lama)?
5. Why do some young Tibetans in exile in Dharamasala disagree with the political strategy of the
Dalai Lama? Is his a long term view of politics of an autonomous or possibly even a democratic
Tibet?
6. What does the explosion of democratic revolution and “the power of nonviolence” in Egypt and
Tunisia reveal about the possibilities of nonviolence in these traditions? In Tibetan Buddhism?
Week 2: Tibetan Buddhism and (mainly) nonviolent resistance to Chinese genocide
Avedon, John. In Exile from the Land of Snows (1984)
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An
Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice. Trans. and ed. by Geshe Thupten
Jinpa. (1995)
J. Landaw and A. Weber, Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice (1993)
Thich Nat Hanh, Being Peace
Alan Gilbert on Martin Luther King speaking with Thich Nhat Hanh and deciding to “Break the Silence”
about the Vietnam War, democratic-individuality.blogspot.com/2010/03/tonight-tavis-smiley-onking-on-war-in.html
1. Broadly speaking, what are the distinctive features of Tibetan Buddhism? As opposed to Zen (or
Vietnamese Zen) as represented by Thich Nat Hanh?
2. How does the art – thangkas, mandalas, transient paintings with sand – image, provide a
glimpse of Tibetan spirituality?
3. In what ways does Buddhism specially lend itself to nonviolent resistance? (consider Thich Nhat
Hanh, and Joanna Macy, World )
4. Why does Tibetan Buddhism inspire such sympathy around the world? How does this sympathy
compare with that for Egyptian nonviolence and democracy?
5. What role did Vietnamese Buddhism, in particular,Thich Nat Hanh, play in the decision of Martin
Luther King to speak out against the war?
6. Why is Buddhism so strong a force against war?
Optional:
Desmond Tutu, No future without forgiveness
Week 3: Democracy, Buddhism and a conversation concerning service learning
Benjamin Barber Strong Democracy, selections
Thich Nat Hanh, For a Future to be possible: Buddhist ethics for everyday life Interbeng
Robert Coles, The Call of Service (1994)
Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (ed.), Asian Religions in Practice (1999), selections
1. What is the democratic ideal of service to a common good? How does this relate to Buddhist
ideas of compassion and interbeing?
2. How did Robert Coles grow out of being a social “scientist” and into his experiences of service in
SNCC and with Boston school children bussed to desegregate the schools?
3. An American who comes to work on a service-learning project in Dharamasala immediately
stands in a different relationship to Tibetan hosts than she would as a tourist. Why? How might
thinking about this distinction improve our relating to Tibetans and Indians throughout our stay
in Dharamasala? How might such a conversation deepen both democracy and Buddhism, both
democracy as citizenship in a country and as standing with citizens of other countries against
predatory acts of one’s own state and others, Buddhism as a more general form of compassion?
Week 4: How might a Gandhian or Buddhist or feminist might see the contemporary corporate
destruction of food and agriculture?
Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest
Arundhati Roy, the God of Small Things.
John Powers, A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (2008)
Robert Thurman, ed. and trans., Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Plato, Republic, Book 10
1. Shiva notes that 3/4 of Indians are farmers, and most of them women. She describes the attack
of large American corporations on traditional practices, understandings, and livelihoods in
India? How can Indian farmers be sued under the World Trade Organization for producing a
thousand varieties of basmati rice by a 50 year old Texas corporation that has “patented”
Basmati rice? What happened to the ceremony of Deepavali and its dependence on mustard
seed oil? What are terminator seeds? How should we think about Monsanto’s claim that
“weeds steal sunlight”?
2. Consider Gandhi and Roy’s novel on the treatment of outcastes in India. Is the caste system
consistent with a decent society? Gandhi renamed outcastes harijans (the children of God). In
what sense is Gandhi still a Hindu? In what sense does he move toward Buddhist
understandings?
3. Why does Jung suggest that Tibetans are at a higher rung of psychological understanding than
has been reached in the West?
4. In Plato’s Myth of Er (the story of the transmigration of souls), is the soul human or animal, male
or female? What if anything enables a soul to step off the wheel of fate (the “karma” of
previous lives)? Is deep spirituality egalitarian?
Week 5: how might one think internationally about power of nonviolence?
Martin Luther King. Letter from Birmingham City Jail
Plato, Apology of Socrates
Peter Ackemann and Jack Duvall, A Force more Powerful, chapters on Gandhi, Argentina
1. Why does civil disobedience reflect and have fundamentally to do with personal integrity? In
what ways do King’s Christianity and Nat Hanh’s or the Dalai Lama’s Buddhism overlap?
2. What role does the sit-in of 50 mothers of the disappeared play in the nonviolent campaign that
overthrew the Argentine dictatorship? What are the unique features of Tibetan resistance
which draw international support and might make for a powerful and unique movement to
achieve regional autonomy for Tibet?
3. Why does the special oppression of (racism toward) blacks – a minority - ultimately yield a
successful and general nonviolent campaign in the US? What role does the division between the
national and Southern state governments play in this change? Does the concentration and
isolation as well as an authoritarian government make such a campaign more difficult in Tibet?
4. What light do the surprising democratic and nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt cast on
the possibilities of resistance in China, of a Tibetan return from Dharamasala?
We might also try to watch together two or three of these films and discuss them:
Heart of Tibet, an insight into Dalai Lama
Compassion in Exile, introduction to Dalai Lama
Reincarnation Tukos
We will met in the land of the Dakini
Dalai Lama presents The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism
Kundun
Seven Years in Tibet
Salt Men of Tibet
Gandhi
Optional readings:
S. Tammita-Delgoda. A Traveller’s History of India (4th edition, 2007)
P. Kishore & Anuradha Kishore Ganpate. India: An Illustrated History (2003)
Arthur Basham, The Wonder that was India (1963)
Barbara/Thomas Metcalf. A Concise History of India (2002)
Steven M. Parish. Hierarchy and Its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of
Consciousness in Caste Society, 101-171 (1996)
Jack Sikora, Religions of India (2002)
Sue Hamilton, Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001)
Diana L. Eck.. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. pp. 3-31 (1998)
Gavin Flood. An Introduction to Hinduism (1996.)
Peter Harvey. An Introduction to Buddhism (1990)