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Nalanda Program

Residential Program
Dates: Jan 05, 2014 - Jan 17, 2014
Days: Sunday - Friday
Number of Nights: 12 nights

Instructor(s): Andrew Olendzki and Mu Soeng

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Program Description:
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Our Nalanda Program is designed for college-aged students. While ideal for those interested in a Buddhist Studies program, it is open to all those interested in a program that is both academic and experiential, offering study of Buddhist texts and traditions, but in a contemplative environment that emphasizes the importance of meditation as a tool for Buddhist studies and as a means of nurturing one’s own personal growth and well-being. It includes five days of close study of the classical Buddhist texts of the Pali canon, as preserved in the Theravada tradition, followed by two days of silent meditation with instruction, and finally five days of study in later Buddhist traditions and philosophical movements (Mahayana, Madhyamaka and Yogacara, Ch’an/Zen). Study days also include meditation practice in mornings and evenings along with six hours of classroom work. All participants are expected to agree to behave within the parameters of the Buddhist tradition’s five precepts for the duration of the program: 1) refraining from killing or harming living beings; 2) refraining from taking what has not been given; 3) refraining from speaking falsely or harshly; 4) refraining from sexual activity; 5) refraining from the use of intoxicants.

    About the Instructor(s):
  • Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., is a Buddhist scholar, teacher, and writer living in Amherst, Massachusetts. Trained at Lancaster University (UK), the University of Sri Lanka (Perediniya), and Harvard, he was the first executive director at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and went on to lead and teach at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies for almost twenty-five years. He has also taught at numerous New England colleges (including Amherst, Brandeis, Connecticut, Hampshire, Harvard, Lesley, Montserrat, and Smith colleges), spent two years at the Mind & Life Institute heading up their Mapping the Mind project, and has been a longtime member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Andrew has contributed chapters to many books on Buddhist psychology, writes regularly for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and is the author of Unlimiting Mind: The radically experiential psychology of Buddhism (Wisdom, 2010) and Untangling Self: A Buddhist Investigation of Who We Really Are (Wisdom, 2016). He is currently creating and teaching a number of online programs as the senior scholar of the Integrated Dharma Institute, and is Professor and Director of Mindfulness Studies at Lesley University.

  • Mu Soeng is Scholar Emeritus at BCBS. He trained in the (Korean) Zen tradition and was a monk for eleven years. He is the author of Thousand Peaks: Korean Zen (Tradition and Teachers); The Diamond Sutra: Transforming the Way We Perceive the World; Trust in Mind: The Rebellion of Chinese Zen; The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, and co-author of Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness, and Death.