An ancient wisdom for contemporary unease
Modern life offers material abundance and convenience, yet often leaves us spiritually empty: too exhausted to keep competing, unable to rest, and with nowhere to escape. Where can peace of mind be found?
Created over two years, this course begins with the pressures of lived experience and uses Buddhist thought to reflect on the self. It asks how ideas passed down for more than two millennia can respond to modern questions of suffering, identity, relationships, freedom, and death.
Four parts
- Siddhartha: the spiritual world of ancient India and the origins of Buddhist thought.
- Observing the self: Buddhist approaches to understanding the mind.
- Observing sentient beings: seeing other people and the world through Buddhist thought.
- Observing life and death: transcending life’s limits in pursuit of inner freedom.
The course explains foundational ideas including dependent origination, rebirth, karma, the Four Noble Truths, impermanence, attachment to self, liberation, meditation, awakening, emptiness, and nirvana.
Buddhism is presented neither as superstition nor as spiritual comfort food, but as an introspective wisdom between religion and philosophy. Moving beyond ritual, symbols, and inherited misconceptions, the course reveals its central concerns and inner logic—and explores how they can enrich ordinary life.
