The role of the preceptor in Buddhist education : on the basis of Haribhaṭṭajātakamālā
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Author
Boyanova, Yordanka See all items with this value
Bratoeva, Milena See all items with this value
Date
2003
Volume
4
Pages
216-226
ISSN
1530-4108 See all items with this value
Abstract
The great knowledge of the East which was born and developed in the Indian cultural area, has been emanating as a beacon light since thousands of years and the spread of Buddhist knowledge and teachings is a vivid and vital stream of this process. The glory of knowledge in Indian culture was established and sustained through the ages with the means and the instruments of a highly developed educational system which flourished during the Buddhist era.
Ancient and medieval Buddhist education in its excellence was organized into monasteries/vihāras /mahāvihāras and was built upon the incentive of a disciplined preceptor-disciple relationship. Chinese Buddhist scholar I-Tsing (VII A.D.) expressing his favorable impression of the school of learning in Nalanda where he spent so many years, gives a list of the distinguished preceptors confirming that “I have always been very glad that I had the opportunity of acquiring knowledge from them personally, which I should otherwise never possessed…”
The present paper represents the role of the preceptor in this teacher-disciple relation structure of classical Buddhist education as it is revealed in Haribhaṭṭajātakamālā. The theme is explored with regard of the default of our contemporary educational systems in the man-making process and the need of socio-educational activities for encouraging these systems as a real and meaningful confluence of mankind’s cultural past and posterity, the East and the West.
Ancient and medieval Buddhist education in its excellence was organized into monasteries/vihāras /mahāvihāras and was built upon the incentive of a disciplined preceptor-disciple relationship. Chinese Buddhist scholar I-Tsing (VII A.D.) expressing his favorable impression of the school of learning in Nalanda where he spent so many years, gives a list of the distinguished preceptors confirming that “I have always been very glad that I had the opportunity of acquiring knowledge from them personally, which I should otherwise never possessed…”
The present paper represents the role of the preceptor in this teacher-disciple relation structure of classical Buddhist education as it is revealed in Haribhaṭṭajātakamālā. The theme is explored with regard of the default of our contemporary educational systems in the man-making process and the need of socio-educational activities for encouraging these systems as a real and meaningful confluence of mankind’s cultural past and posterity, the East and the West.