Teaching Buddhism as a Lived Religion

Abstract

Abstract This chapter proposes an intersubjective approach to teaching lived Buddhism, where students co-create knowledge and actively engage in the learning process by bringing their lived experience into conversation with those of Buddhists. It explores how we might use embodiment, materiality, emotions, aesthetics, narrative, and moral orientation as lenses to approach the study of lived Buddhism. As we make each particular aspect of religious practice salient for our students, we provide a way for them to analyze lived Buddhism without compromising the diversity and heterogeneity of those lived experiences. When we encourage our students to attend to their own bodies, sense perceptions, emotions, aesthetic sensibilities, life stories, and moral values, and we invite them to cultivate an openness and receptivity to these dimensions of Buddhist lives, we develop their ability to concentrate on the particularity of people and situations. The chapter concludes by considering ways we might use insights from lived religion to examine the structures and conditions in which our own pedagogical practices emerge.