Students & Tutors
Students
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"The system as it is, works well, and caters to diverse student needs and abilities"
- Graduate Student
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One of the strengths of the course is the amazing range of students' backgrounds. Alongside Mahayana and Theravadin Buddhists non-Buddhists also benefit from the course. Students from all over the world and all walks and stages of life have graduated. Anyone with the enthusiasm to deepen their knowledge and experience of Buddha's teachings. It is not necessary to have any academic experience. Most students have English as a first language or have a reasonable grasp of spoken and written English.
In their own words
In addition to the quotations shown on other pages here's what students are saying about the course
"After listening to so many sessions, I feel that I somewhat know Geshe-la, and have considerable respect and affection for him"
"The fact that the questions almost always relate to our own life has made me digest the material better and has made me think about how I conduct my life"
"A wonderfully well thought out course, stimulating, nourishing and tremendously useful"
Tutors
The tutors for the course are all course graduates and many have been teaching at Jamyang London for many years. They have been chosen by Geshe Tashi not only because they have a good knowledge of the topics the course covers, but they have the ability to keep the tutor groups engaged and stimulated. This is an exploration of the philosophies of Buddhism and as such the emphasis is not on acquiring knowledge but actively investigating the truths which lie within Buddhism.
It is the role of the tutor to ensure you are getting the most out of the course by encouraging lively debate within the group and by helping you discover what the course has to offer. Rather than feeding you answers their role is to engage you in the topics covered.
Tutor Groups
You will be part of a tutor group of about ten people. Your tutor will be a course graduate. This is where the course really takes off. Receiving discussion questions every two weeks linked to what you are studying on the timetable, you are invited to respond via the email discussion group. You receive all the responses from the other students in your group and so it becomes a discussion via email.
There is a real sense of "virtual Sangha" about the groups. No matter where you live you are all studying the same topic at the same time. No one person has more to offer than another, and experiential anecdotes are as important as book knowledge.
You can also join the "Tea Room", an email group for general Dharma chat open to all students starting at the same time as you. Here the conversations range beyond the topics of the course to setting up altars, dealing with the death of a pet, where the Dalai Lama is teaching - in fact anything that comes up.
Example of an email discussion group
This is an illustration of what the email discussion groups look like. A tutor posts a question in one email, e.g. 'Discussion thread C,' which is received by all students in the group (names have been obscured). They then reply to the initial question and to each others' responses one email at a time. In this way a discussion unfolds. The illustration above merely shows the list of emails in the discussion thread. This is what your email Inbox may look like in Module 1. Over time students and tutors can get to know each other quite well in this way.
More details of study activities are given in Study Experience
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