Buddhism

Like another reviewer mentioned it doesn't go into to detail on the essentials of Buddhism. You may want to get the audiobook by Thich Nhat Hanh titled "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" for a very detailed account of the essentials. What I really liked about this courses was its coverage of Emptiness (or Sunyata) and how the different schools of thought interpret emptiness. Emptiness is a difficult concept to understand and Malcolm David Eckel provides a good introduction to understand this concept in his lectures. If you are interested in Mahayana Buddhism and how it spread and transformed into many other popular schools of thought, then I believe you will enjoy this course very much.

This is a review of the CD version of the series on Buddhism from “The Great Courses” by Professor Malcolm David Eckel. The first lecture is a general introduction to the course and the diverse interpretations of Buddhism that exist around the world. The second lecture focuses on the life and times of Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BCE), the Buddha and how he came to found Buddhism. On disc 2, lecture 3 is devoted to how Buddhists look at life on Earth. Essentially, due to the impermanence of both the joys and trials and tribulations of life, the Buddha concluded that life is, in essence, Hell on Earth because we, as human beings, are often chasing material desires and many other things that are impermanent and that in order to end our suffering, we must try and live more spiritual lives. Lecture 4 focuses on how the Buddha advises Buddhists to live and how Buddhists apply the teachings of the Buddha to their daily lives. Lecture 5 focuses on the concept of the Sangha, or Buddhist community---whether one is speaking specifically of a community of Buddhist monks in a monastery or whether one speaks more generally in terms of the Sangha as the term for the worldwide Buddhist community. This second definition of “Sangha” is similar to the Islamic concept of the “Ummah” or how Christians might speak of “Christendom.” The sixth and seventh lectures in the series focuses on the Mahayana sect of Buddhism, which is dominant in the Far East (i.e. Japan, China, South Korea, etc) and their concept of the Bodhisattva (an individual who, despite having already attained nirvana and therefore not needing to be reborn, voluntarily is reborn in order to guide others spiritually). Lecture 8 talks about the very concept of Nirvana itself---or “Emptiness,” as Dr. Eckel calls it. Lecture 9 is devoted to the role of Theravada Buddhism---the original Buddhism practiced by the Buddha, the “Way of the Elders,” as it is often called---in Southeast Asia. Lecture 10 is about Tibetan Buddhism; lecture 11 is about Buddhism in China; and lecture 12 is about Buddhism in Japan. All in all, if you really want to learn about Buddhism, I would highly recommend that you buy a copy of this course.

A good review of beginners to reaching a level of enlightenment.