As our course on the Visuddhimagga wraps up, I’ll be starting a new course on the Itivuttaka. I’m still trying to make time to translate it, so the course will hopefully encourage me to do that!
It’ll be a 4 week online course, and details will come in due course.
But what I wanted to ask was, do you have any requests or ideas for how to present or cover it?
Last year I did a course on the Dhammapada, and the approach I used was to use a different focus for each talk. So one was on the philosophy, one on meditation, one on the history, one on comparative, and so on. I’m thinking of doing something similar for the Itivuttaka.
Is there anything you think is missing or needed in sutta presentations? Anything you always wished, “I wish they’d talk about this more!” (Or less!)
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to do a thorough introduction! I enjoy particularly the way you provide information about the manner and purpose with which texts were produced, their social, political, philosophical contexts, and their cultural history.
I’ve found that the prerecorded lecture plus live discussion works well for me. It also means that the recording can survive for further consumption without the need for further editing.
With the Visuddhimagga course, I am unable to attend the live discussion because of a different timezone. So it would be nice if recordings of these sessions were made. Currently this is not the case for the Visuddhimagga course as far as I am aware of.
I agree that this can be frustrating when the time is inconvenient. However, if Q&A is recorded, some participants may not want to be captured on video. In that case it might need to be a little more formally run, like the Buddhism in the time of Covid conference, where the Q&A was by chat. I’ve enjoyed being able to interact with Bhante Sujato on Zoom, but I’m not sure I would want my possibly-not-well-thought-out comments to be captured on YouTube…
On Zoom you can choose to only record the main speaker, so other people’s faces wil not be shown, though your audio will be captured if you ask a question. Questions through the chat box is also a valid option.
Also the video could be hidden on YouTube so only accessible for the people who have the link or access to the page where the video is embedded.
I think that the course will be exponentially more valuable and far reaching if it’s recorded and the privacy issues are covered by taking questions via chat. With courses and dhamma talks, I get so much more when I can listen multiple times.
I attended several of the classes. They were great, but there was quite a bit of discussion that probably wouldn’t have recorded well. The editing could be quite arduous.
@Deepika, do you know if there are plans to share some video?
So sorry for the lateness in responding and for not visiting this forum until now.
We like to take a little break before launching the next series, presenters will be Bhante Sujato and Venerable S.Dhammika. Full content will be published soon.
We will endeavour to make the some comments from the discussions from previous courses available soon, there are no plans to publish the full discussion at this stage.
Dhammapada course was given during Vassa 2019, it was 6 days of contact (9am to 4pm each day), Content was presented online and discourse, there were brainstorming sessions, discussions, individual presentations by students and group meditation. As you can appreciate to make the content meaningful we have to work on the recordings a fair bit. We hope to publish it before the begining of Vassa 2020. We discussed following chapters, Discussions were based on Literal, Moral, Metaphorical and Transcendental vies of the same.
Day 1 July 21 - Fool (bala) c5
Day 2 August 4th -Mind (citta) c3
Day 3 August 18th - Old age (jara) c11
Day 4 September 1st -Thousands (Sahassa) c8
Day 5 September 15th - Self (atta) c12
Day 6 September 29th - Happiness (sukkha) c15
Thank you for checking on it.
Anjali Bhante, we are reading one verse/day at Dhammadharini Monastery, no up to Iti62. I appreciate your comments on the value (or non-value) of the commentary, since some readers do not have access to it.
