Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region

Heng Shun
Developing Virtue Secondary School
City of 10,000 Buddhas, Talmage, California

Home

Framework
and Text of Buddhism: A Brief Intro

Buddhist Reader

Translation
of the
Sutras

Life of
the Buddha

A New Integrative Framework for
Teaching the Essential Philosophical Principles of
Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism

I teach a one-year survey course entitled An Introduction to Buddhism for juniors and seniors at the Developing Virtue Secondary School (DVSS)- Boys Division at the City of 10,000 Buddhas, Talmage, California. This course is approved by the University of California system in fulfillment of their college preparatory elective requirement. I have also been a translator of Ancient Buddhist Chinese Sutras with commentaries and a traditionally ordained Bhikshu for over 25 years.

A few years ago the faculty of DVSS created a textbook to introduce a simple, yet very easy to understand, framework for teaching the core principles of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. Background information on this rather unique framework is given at the beginning of the "Framework and Text of Buddhism: A Brief Intro" link to the left. In addition to this text, which is focused on Buddhist philosophy and major schools of practice, a tremendous amount of supplementary materials are used in our course to cover many other important aspects of Buddhism. These include such topics as Buddhist cosmology, important historical developments, Buddhism in the modern world (particularly in America) and so forth.

With the inspiration of the wonderful teaching strategies and content of the lectures offered by the professors who directed and participated in the 2004 NEH Institute on Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region, I decided that I would like to create this web-site with the following five goals in mind:

1) To introduce this new integrative framework for teaching Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism based on the first five chapters of Buddhism: A Brief Introduction. The entire book itself is only about 120 pages.

2) To create and make available an extensive Buddhist Reader related to the subject matter contained in Buddhism: A Brief Introduction. This reader will eventually contain several hundred pages and, in addition to other material, will contain many passages from the Sutras with detailed explanations.

3) To provide articles, maps, artwork, web-links and other materials connected to the transmission and translation of the teachings of the Buddha from the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects of his time, into the three major existent Buddhist Canons in Pali, Chinese, and Tibet.

4) To create a comprehensive biography of the Buddha's life by utilizing excerpts from the major canonical biographical texts including those from Sanskrit, the Mahavastu, the Lalitavistara and Master Ashvagosha's Buddhacarita, and the 60-roll Compilation of the Events in the Buddha's Life Sutra from the Chinese canon (Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching, T. 190) as well as miscellaneous Sutras from the Pali Canon.

5) To offer other works and materials on Buddhism that will be useful to middle grade and high school teachers.

In this world hatred is never conquered by hatred
Hatred can only be conquered by loving-kindness.
This is an Eternal Dharma.
(Words spoken by the Buddha
Dharmapada 1:5)