Jones, John R. See all items with this value

2003

4

87-94

1530-4108 See all items with this value

Our first step, as always, must be to get in clear focus what it is that we are about, in "education." The fact that there are four growing Buddhist campuses here in the Los Angeles area attests American Buddhism's interest in the transmission of knowledge in the conventional sense-in ways potentially accreditable by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Yet even as we do our work with one eye on the established norms of best educational practice, we know that these standards only give us the ingredients, not the magic, of what we are about.

We as educators are called to overcome ignorance-in ourselves and in others. But in Buddhist contexts, the ignorance that we strive to overcome is not mere lack of information. Avidyā, after all, refers more to a failure of seeing than of knowing. We counter it, accordingly, by pressing toward insight, even toward enlightenment. In such a program, the imparting of factual knowledge, however crucial, always comes in the service of that larger, deeper goal.