The pedagogy of L2BB invites students into different ways of learning, reflecting, and making meaning.
Instead of first encountering Buddhism through textbooks or lectures in a classroom, students visit local Buddhist communities where they learn to ask questions, make observations, and synthesize their reflections.
“Buddhism is sharing yogurt.”
This student reflection might seem odd, even off: What about the Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Noble Eightfold Path, the vast historical and philosophical differences among Buddhism traditions? Yet this pithy reflection points to a central aim of our pedagogy: to introduce students to the lives and experiences of local Asian American Buddhist communities, and to learn from our encounters with these local Buddhists. Students who received the gift of yogurt at a temple, for example, came to see the deep connections between lay and monastic Buddhists, the role of mutual dana in supporting these communities, and concrete manifestations of Buddhist virtues and values.
With these rich, embodied, sensory experiences as a foundation, student questions and curiosity lead naturally to more conceptual readings about gender, monasticism, generosity, and immigration.
In this approach, people come before theory, experiential knowing before book knowledge. We cultivate a practice of questioning and wondering as we enter new spaces, rather than comparing what we see with theoretical idea(l)s of “who Buddhists are” or “what real Buddhists do.”
BUDDHISM IS WHAT THE PEOPLE IN OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES ARE DOING:
Our approach privileges the experiential and everyday by engaging with the lives and concerns of the very people who comprise these communities.
