Carter 12

Cosumnes River College
Toward Effective Performance of Understanding: Methods for Teaching and Assessment of Material Understanding in the Tibetan Monastic University
Leave Term: Spring 2011
Constance M. Carter
3/19/2012

Abstract

This paper reports on a project undertaken to examine the cultural and pedagogical means by which students in the Tibetan Buddhist monastic university learn and develop an appreciation of inquiry and demonstrated understanding. The goal of this project is to determine what elements, if any, from the Tibetan model might be adapted for use in the critical thinking/composition classroom and in the wider campus community at CRC.

The report describes the method of Tibetan debate that is used to teach and assess learning in the monastic university. It also presents findings about the cultural and academic attitudes and values that support monastic education which were gained through interviews with monks—both students and teachers—at several universities and colleges in Nepal and India. Woven into these findings are observations of potentially transferrable aspects of the Tibetan model.

The report concludes with an assessment of the project and discussion of how its findings will be presented to the college community.

Please note that this report is a reconstruction of an earlier draft that was lost due to a home burglary. While some data were recovered, unfortunately significant portions of analysis completed immediately after returning to the US remain lost as they were on a separate hard drive which has not been recovered.

Toward Effective Performance of Understanding: Methods for Teaching and Assessment of Material Understanding in the Tibetan Monastic University

In the Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition, the goal of practice is enlightenment—the individual realization of “emptiness” which leads to freedom from worldly suffering, or Buddhahood. To achieve this goal—which in the Buddhist view might take countless lifetimes—monastic practitioners engage in a decades-long education that uses, as its primary methodology, a systematic and careful examination of perception and understanding. Students are asked to carefully think their way through complex and often esoteric concepts not simply to arrive at an intellectual answer that can be assessed as “correct” or “incorrect,” but to train the mind to see beyond one’s initial perception—to see things as they really are. This entails asking a series of questions that require the student to make ever-finer analyses not only of the concepts presented via the sutras—the teachings of the Buddha and other great practitioners—but also of the individual’s answers to those questions and of the mind that engages in the endeavor.

To get a sense of just how close the analysis can be, consider the following example from Colors and So Forth, the first topic presented in “The Introductory Path of Reasoning,” the first part of the Tutor Jampa Gyatso’s foundational work, The Presentation of Collected Topics Revealing the Meaning of the Texts on Valid Cognition, the Magical Key to the Path of Reasoning[1]:

If someone [a hypothetical Defender] says, “Whatever is a color is necessarily red,” [the Challenger responds to him,] “It [absurdly] follows that the subject, the color of a white [tea cup,] is red because of being a color. You asserted the pervasion [that whatever is a color is necessarily red].”

If he says that the reason [that the color of a white tea cup is a color] is not established, [the Challenger responds,] “It follows that the subject, the color of a white [tea cup,] is a color because of being white.”

If he says that the reason [that the color of a white tea cup is white] is not established, [the Challenger responds,] “It follows that the subject, the color of a white [tea cup] is white because of being one with the color of a white [tea cup].”

If he accepts the basic consequence [that the color of a white tea cup is red, the Challenger responds,] “It follows that the subject, the color of a white [tea cup,] is not red because of being white.”

If he says there is no pervasion [i.e., even though it is true that the color of a white tea cup is white, it is not the case that whatever is white is necessarily not red, the Challenger responds,] “It follows that there is pervasion [i.e., whatever is white is necessarily not red] because a common locus of the two, white and red, does not exist; because those two [white and red] are mutually exclusive.” (Perdue 222-23)

This debate is the first monastic students are given to consider when being introduced to debate as a method of analyzing a subject and demonstrating one’s understanding of why, in this case, the hypothetical Defender’s initial premise is a “mistaken view.” The purpose of this debate is not so much to understand that a thing that is white cannot be red so much as it is to introduce students to the structure of debate and to preview topics that will be studied later, in this case, “established bases.”

This model of debate, as a pedagogical tool, is quite effective in teaching critical reasoning skills. As additional topics are introduced (established bases, identifying isolates, opposite-from-being-something and opposite-from-not-being-something, etc.), students are presented with model debates which refute mistaken views, followed by explication by the Tutor of his own view of the subject of the debate along with necessary definitions, and responses that dispel objections to the Tutor’s view (Sithar 32). These three parts—refutation, explication and dispelling of objections—comprise the method of debate. Throughout, students are required not only to analyze the model debates, but to engage in their own debates on similar subjects.

Activities, Research , Travel & Findings

One of the primary questions I sought to address with this project is how students are introduced to the dialectic of Tibetan Buddhist inquiry. Prior to my leave, my understanding of Tibetan debate was fairly superficial and largely abstract. However, it was apparent that there were implications for critical thinking instruction in the courses I teach and throughout the Cosumnes River College community. In the Tibetan model, students learn by listening and studying, reflecting, and then meditating on the topics and texts presented. According to Lopon Trokpa Trulku, a monk and instructor at the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute (RYI) of Kathmandu University, the former two are activities of the conscious mind while the latter is an activity of the subconscious mind. The knowledge obtained by the conscious mind through study, upon meditation, changes a habitual pattern which then allows the student to embody that knowledge. In the monastic university, or shedra, a student’s learning is assessed by observation of his conduct—has the student internalized the concepts learned in such a way that they now inform his practice, which is equivalent to how he conducts his life? (Trokpa Trulku, Choephel). Of course, in the community college setting instructors are not able to assess students by observing the conduct of their lives, and we are required to quantify any assessment. However, we do assess their intellectual conduct—has the student internalized the concepts learned in such a way that they now inform the student’s practice within the discipline?

To investigate how the Tibetan method might influence my own teaching, I traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, and Dharamsala and Bylakuppe, India, to observe and interview teachers and students in monastic colleges and universities. I also engaged in close study of the work of Daniel E. Perdue, an American scholar of Buddhist Studies specializing in Tibetan debate. Perdue’s Debate in Tibetan Buddhism is a seminal text on the subject in English that is drawn from copious research and direct experience, as Perdue spent more than fifteen years studying within each of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism at the primary monastic universities of the Tibetan exile communities in India. Furthermore, while in Kathmandu, Nepal, I was able to interview one of Perdue’s students, Sam Vanneman, who currently facilitates Tibetan debate in English for students at RYI.

Also at RYI, in addition to interviewing Lopon Trokpa Trulku on changing habitual patterns of mind in order to facilitate students’ genuine interest and understanding, I had the opportunity to sit in for a week on Lopon Tsundru Sangpo’s Buddhist Philosophy and Hermeneutics II class. The lopon (assistant professor, roughly equivalent to an A.B.D.) lectured in Tibetan with translation by Catherine Dalton, director of the RYI Translator Training Program. During these lectures, I was able to observe techniques used to bring students intellectually, spiritually and emotionally into the classroom as well as to anchor the day’s lecture to the preceding class and to place it in the framework of the course as a whole. This anchoring and framing is not review in the way we might typically begin a class by reviewing the previous day’s lecture. Rather, it helps students to “set their motivation”—to remember why they made the commitment to study and to focus their minds for the task at hand. Initially, it may seem tedious to review the course framework at the beginning of each class meeting; however, such review serves to activate prior learning as a consequence of setting one’s motivation. This was, in practice, precisely what Trokpa Trulku had described during my interview with him. If prior habitual patterns are to be changed, it is unlikely to happen by distributing a course syllabus and introducing the course on the first day of class. Regular reinforcement is necessary.

Another of the primary questions driving this project is how students are enculturated to the monastic university. To address this question, I consulted with Geshe Tashi Dondup, headmaster of the Kopan Monastery school (primary education) and shedra in Kathmandu. When developing this project, I had an assumption about the attitudes of students entering the monastery that was based primarily on contact with numerous high-achieving representatives of the tradition who had come to the west to teach. These individuals—all of them geshes or khenpos, the highest degree available in the Gelugpa and Kagyupa monastic universities, respectively—had committed their lives to study and practice of dharma (Buddhist philosophy), and most of the individuals I met entered the monastery as young men, not boys. Learning of these monks’ motivations and experiences in entering the monastery, I developed a fairly romantic view of monastic life that had all novice monks entering the institution with a fully-formed motivation to dedicate their lives to the dharma for no other reason than achieving Buddhahood. However, this is not the case. Geshe Dondup described many of the same issues in monastic education that are encountered in the community college: under-preparedness, poor attitude toward education (low valuation), disrespect of teachers, and desire to “get answers” rather than understand and explore questions. What is necessary, according to Geshe Dondup, is to change the mind of the student in an organic, internal, philosophical way. In the monastic college this is done through non-academic and spiritual advising—directly and indirectly—and conversations and interviews with geshes (literally, “spiritual friend”), and lamas (literally, “teacher”).

This view was echoed by Geshe Tashi Tsedar and Venerables Tenzin Thinley, Karma Samten, Jampa Tonden, and Thupten Gyaltsen, all of whom I interviewed at Sera Jey Monastic University in Bylakuppe, Karnataka State, South India. Geshe Tsedar described the layperson’s entry into the monastery as being a gradual process whereby the individual is given into the care of a senior teacher. The student cares for and is cared for by the teacher who models appropriate conduct and introduces the student to the way of life and expectations at the monastery. The close relationship that develops between novice and teacher creates the “spiritual friendship” that facilitates the student’s successful assimilation into the institution. An example of this was apparent when I was invited for dinner to the home of Geshe Tsultim Choephel (brother of my own teacher and facilitator of my access to Sera Jey, Geshe Thupten Phelgye) at Sera Jey. Two monks—one an adolescent and the other (who came late to monastic life) in his mid-30s—lived with Geshe Choephel. They prepared the meal, dined with Geshe-la and me, then cleared the table. The young monks were not simply servants. They participated in the dinner discussion to the extent their English allowed. The respect they bore their teacher and his fondness for them was apparent in the interaction I witnessed. Eventually, both young monks will move into the khangtsen—the dormitory for their particular school within the monastery. Of course, in the community college we cannot have this level of intimacy and interaction with our students, but to the extent we can, perhaps we should encourage more non-academic contact between faculty and students. We do have some structured programs that pair students with mentors (i.e., Puente, Diop, Sister-2-Sister); however, these provide an artificial relationship between student and teacher. Campus activities that might foster more organic relationships between students and teachers might include those made possible by a “college hour” during which the campus community is encouraged to freely associate together. Additionally, encouraging faculty to get out of their offices—perhaps even dining in the cafeteria—may provide opportunities for students to see their teachers outside of the classroom, not engaged as teachers, but as fellow citizens. Engaging in conversation with students in an informal, unstructured way can provide informal advising and modeling of what we seek, as an educational community, to engender in our students.