[Buddha-l] Book Recommendations for Undergrad Course

[Richard Hayes]

  On Jun 16, 2009, at 8:10 PM, Gruenig, Hans wrote:

> Dear Buddha-l Denizens,
>
> I'm working on re-designing an undergrad philosophy course on  
> Buddhism (which has no pre-requisites) and am contemplating text  
> options.  This course attracts a lot of non-majors seeking to  
> fulfill a "non-western humanities" requirement, so I hesitate to use  
> texts which will be stultifying to newcomers and non-philosophers.   
> I'd be interested and grateful to hear about texts that anyone here  
> can recommend as engaging for such mixed undergrad classes.  I'll  
> likely include sections on:
>
> - Early Buddhism (Theravada);
> - Mahayana Buddhism (Ch'an/Zen); and
> - Vajrayana Buddhism (Gelugpa-Prasangika-Madhyamaka / Nyingma- 
> Dzogchen).


A text that I used a couple of years ago in a similar course was John  
Holder's selection from the Pali Canon: Early Buddhist Discourses.  
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. I liked it and so did  
the students. Holder, as you know, is a philosopher, and his selection  
was motivated by those interests. Another text that you might consider  
to round things out is William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield's  
anthology entitled Buddhist Philosophy: Essential
Readings. I wrote a brief description of its contents on March 30,  
2009 here on buddha-l. I've never used the latter text in a course and  
therefore can't give you experimental feedback. I hope to use it soon.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu