LINFIELD COLLEGE
REL 380
Buddhism

Spring 2007

INSTRUCTOR:  Kate Bemis, Ph.D.            
e-mail: kbemis@linfield.edu      

PHONE:
work (503) 883-2449                            
home (503)474-0275
fax    (503)883-2369

Office: Green office building behind the green apartments off Blaine  8AM-5PM   M-F   

REQUIRED TEXTS:

The Buddhist Handbook      John Snelling
Teachings of the Compassionate  Buddha     E.A. Burtt, ed
Sitting   Diana St. Ruth
The Buddhism of Tibet      The Dalai Lama
River of Fire, River of Water  Taitetsu Unno
Zen Keys   Thich Nhat Hahn

Assigned website readings 

causes of suffering, its mitigation, the variety of styles and practices in which this attempt at mitigation appears in both the east and west.

PREREQUISITE:  none

COURSE OBJECTIVES:  This course will introduce the student to some of the central concepts, practices, and figures in Buddhism.  We’ll examine the history, major figures, texts, and teachings of Buddhism in three of its forms – Zen, Tibetan, and Pure Land.  We’ll also examine Buddhism as it appears in the West.   By the end of the course students will have a broad overview of the history, development, and current status of Buddhism and some knowledge of its key figures, practices, myths, important texts, rules of behavior, rituals, and meditation techniques.

METHODS OF EVALUATION
         
Course grade  The final course grade will be determined by the following:

Written assignments:    Each of these should turned in to me as an MS Word document by midnight on the date due and submitted in the Assignment Dropbox.  Please name each assignment with the naming conventions listed in the assignment.  This is your last name followed by the assigned title of the document e.g bemisexam1.doc.  It is your responsibility to ensure that your assignments are correctly named, attached to your email, and actually submitted.  If I don’t get it on time, the assignment is considered late and you’ll be penalized.

Class participation  The informed and active involvement of each student  in class discussion is essential for a course of this kind.  I require each student to make pertinent and substantive contributions to every group discussion.  Simply saying “I agree” to another student’s posting isn’t enough.  Posting the minimum number of times with acceptable content is a C.  The more you post and the more thoughtful your comments, the higher your grade.

Response from me   I check the course almost every day, usually several times.  I try to respond as quickly as possible to emails and questions.  There will be times during the  semester, however, when I’m traveling or in meetings all day that will prevent me from doing this.  I promise I will respond within 48 hours at a maximum to you barring any unforeseen calamity.   I read every posting by every student.  I will NOT respond to every posting by every student believe me when I tell you that I am in the course a lot.  If you have a question about the course material or assignments, you can either ask me in a private email or post your question, addressing me directly.  For example “Kate, are rebirth and reincarnation the same thing?”  or “Kate,  is the deadline for the first paper Saturday or Sunday?”  Generally, if you have a question about something, other students do too.  You can always call me with questions.

Research paper  Each student will complete a 10-12-page research paper on some aspect of Buddhism.  Possible topics include a type of Buddhism (although these tend to be rather broad), a person, a ritual, a relic, a holy site, a significant event, an historical movement, or a sacred text. You will be asked to declare your topic and get my approval by week three of the course. Each paper will be evaluated for content, style, and mechanics.  I expect each paper, at a minimum, to 1)fulfill the details of the assignment 2)be well-organized  3)be stylistically acceptable and 4)be free from mechanical errors such as typos and grammatical mistakes.  No matter how great the ideas your papers contain, they also must meet the standards for upper-level college written work.  If you feel you may have some problems with your writing skills, please contact me.
If you wish to turn in any paper early for an unofficial evaluation and some editing, I’m more than happy to do this.  All papers will be submitted through Turnitin.com, a site that compares your work to 6 billion pages of the web and checks for originality of expression.  There is a page especially for this course on the Linfield library website.  Look here for some ideas about paper topics. http://www.linfield.edu/library/dce/buddhism.html

Meditation:  A key to understanding the Buddha’s teachings is to gain some first-hand knowledge of the practice of meditation.  If you don’t have some experiential sense of Buddhism, you really don’t know what it’s about at its core.  Every student is required to meditate at least 2 times each week during this semester and to record one’s experience in a journal.  The journal will be “graded” in that you make a good faith effort and record the results.  You won’t be graded on the quality of your meditation.  Those who prefer to use a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or completely secular approach to meditation are encouraged to do so.  It is the practice that is important, not the particular religious orientation of the practice.  Yes, you can fake the whole thing and I may not know it.  But it’s really bad karma to lie, especially about meditation.

Grading scale:  I do not grade on a curve.  If you are within .5 of the next highest grade, I reserve the option to assign the higher grade, but this is not a promise and will be used only in exceptional circumstances, based on the entire body of your work in this class.  Because this is an upper-level course, the standards by which you are assessed and the grading scale used are more rigorous than those in lower division courses.
                              A       97-100                C+       81-83
                              A-      94-96                  C         78-80
                              B+      90-93                 C-        75-77                                   
                              B         87-89                 D        74-70
                              B-         84-86                F         69 & below

COURSE POLICIES

Participation  Students are expected to participate each week,  except for unusual and unavoidable circumstances. Your absence diminishes the classroom experience for the rest of the students.  Approval of absences and the assignment of make-up work are entirely at my discretion. Any unapproved absence will cause you to lose points.   If you find you have to be somewhere with no internet access, please e-mail, call, or fax me at the numbers listed on this syllabus. All of my telephones have voice mail.                                                                                                                                      

Late work  Any assignment turned in late will lose 1/3 of a letter grade per day of tardiness (from a B to a B- on day 1, B- to C+ on day 2, etc.)

Incompletes  A grade of Incomplete (I) is given only in emergency situations.  The student must request an Incomplete in writing and must obtain my permission.  All work must be completed within the time limits I set.  If you simply don’t turn in the final assignments or the final exam, your course grade will be calculated with the missed portion counting for 0 points.  Contacting me after a missed final or paper deadline to ask for an Incomplete will result in an automatic refusal except in situations i

Academic honesty  Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated.  Any student found to be engaging in either of these activities at any point in the course will receive a failing grade for the assignment, may fail the entire course, may be subject to further college sanctions.   This includes buying or downloading a paper or using “cut and paste” to create a research paper.   I expect each student to be intimately conversant with the sources and concepts in the research paper s/he turns in and to be able to demonstrate to me that the research and writing are his/her  own. Purdue University’s  discussion of plagiarism is excellent: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html  
Linfield library’s website has excellent links to style manuals and examples of citing websites.  Please use these resources when writing your papers.  I use Turnitin.com to verify all papers.

Return of course materials  I will return all work  within ten days of the assigned due date and final papers after the end of the course. 

Rules of Discussion  The classroom should be a safe haven within which individuals can discuss the widest possible range of topics without fearing retribution, ridicule, or attack.  In order for this to happen, we must assume that we are all persons of intelligence and good will who may ultimately disagree, sometimes to a profound degree, with one another but whose characters are not impugned or intelligence disparaged because of this disagreement.  The classroom is not a forum for proselytizing, nor it is a soapbox for diatribes by either students or faculty.  For the academic endeavor to succeed, we must treat each other with civility, courtesy, and respect.  All perspectives and questions are welcome, as long as they are impelled by a genuine desire for knowledge, can be articulated thoughtfully, and supported by sound reasoning.

Given the nature of this class, there is an additional caveat that must be stated.  The academic study of religion does not address the truth or falsity of any religion.  We assume that all religions are equally valid; this is quite different from saying they are equally true.  From that assumption comes the understanding that all religions, beliefs, and practices will be discussed with equal respect and openness.  This is not a demand that you believe or disbelieve anything, only that you recognize and respect the distinction between matters of faith, i.e. what you believe, and matters of academic inquiry.   For this class, matters of individual faith are left aside as we concentrate on the academic inquiry.

Difficulties  If you find you’re having problems with the class - the papers, attendance, keeping up with the reading, anything, please let me know.  I’m always available to help you, but I have to know about the problem while it’s going on and before the end of the class. Asking for help he last week of class won’t do much good.

Students with disabilities   Students with documented disabilities who may need accommodations, who have any emergency medical information the instructor should know of should make an appointment with the instructor as early as possible, no later than the first week of the term.