While designing my course syllabus, I was focused on all of the traditional aspects: crafting learning outcomes, deciding on course content, selecting class readings, figuring out student assessment, and so forth. It never occurred to me to think about syllabus design, meaning graphic design. This is all the more strange because I was a graphic designer.

I was lucky enough to stumble across this blog by Tona Hangen (Update, also Zac Wendler) which had a profound impact on my syllabus design (I’ll discuss this more in-depth at another time). Her design reminded me of newsletters I created in the past and that insight led me to reconsider the purpose of a course syllabus. I wanted to make a document that was more than a course “contract” that was squirreled away and never thought about again.

One aspect, which I will discuss here, was the role a syllabus played in helping to frame the intentions of students. Hangen’s post does a great job of analyzing three different types of learners in her class, those who need to acquire basic knowledge, those that have that knowledge already, but want to expand their knowledge, and those who have extensive knowledge and who can analyze and assess at higher levels. Her syllabus  utilized the metaphor of scuba diving to describe the different “depths” her students would reach. I adapted these categories to the content of my course, dividing them between arhat, bodhisattva, and buddha.

During our first class meeting, these ideas are approached through conversation with my students about why they are taking my class (I’ve yet to have a religious studies major in any of my classes; I’m lucky if I have anyone whose major is in the humanities!). Typically, after listening to several comments on how this class fulfills several requirements, I begin to ask slightly more probing questions: Why this class? (Surely other classes fulfilled these requirements too!) Undoubtedly, a few start to open up about personal interests or express their genuine curiosity. I use those insights to propel discussion about the potential value of Religious Studies classes and how students can approach our class. For this summer class, I then introduced them to the three levels of aspiration (above) and asked them where they thought they might fall in the spectrum.

This is more of a reflection exercise to establish expectations and intentions than anything else. Overall I find this to be a much better introductory conversation than asking students about their majors or hometowns.

I arrived on campus a few days before classes began to find my classroom. The room number suggested that I had to go to the gym to find my classroom, so I was curious. After being directed by a few students on the basketball team, I came to find that I was slated to teach my Zen class in a dance recital room, complete with mirror and ballet barre…and no desks what-so-ever.

I immediately went to the department to see if I could switch rooms, I had no idea how I could conduct a religious studies class there. I was told that room was selected because the previous instructor  – someone I knew was wildly popular – had requested to teach there. It immediately made sense – his Zen class was all about the practice of Zen (meditation) while mine was going to be about the history of Zen (myth, lineage & literature).

This immediately struck me. I love when I find someone who has a completely different approach to the same material. I talk a lot about the history of meditation in my classes on Buddhism, delving into its correlation with cosmology, the debates over non-cognitive states, the endlessly varied terminology the English term “meditation” masks, the arguments over the modern mindfulness movement, and so forth. I encourage students to seek out meditation clubs or to sit on their own time, but I dutifully omit much meditation practice in class. Perhaps when I discuss the Seven Point Vairocana Posture and ānāpānasmṛti (Mindfulness of Breathing) will I ask students to briefly engage in sitting – to get the flavor of it.

Part of this reasoning is simply practical. Much of my lecturing on the history of meditation was developed while students were actively engaged in sitting regularly during the Woodenfish program. My lectures tried to give context to their practice – they did not need me to teach them the practice as well.

Buoyed by the potential expectations of my students who planned to meet in the dance hall, I decided to introduce what I had been calling Mind Labs – quick and simple exercises to help get students to develop their own personal phenomenology of mind. (I suppose one could call these Thought Experiments too, but I prefer Mind Labs…)

For example, when the Abhidharmists claim that mental events can only occur in quick succession, and not simultaneously, I prefer to do an exercise which asks students to determine what they think first. Another question I like to ask is whether or not students always have an affective coloring to their thoughts (for Theravādin Abhidharmists, unless a highly achieved practitioner, the answer is typically “yes”).

For all Mind Lab questions I ask that students write down responses and hand them in to me for tallying. I try to quantify the results the best that I can and identify patterns of belief. During our next meeting I will have a small discussion about the results and try to relate the discussion back to the “standard” Buddhist position.

Thus while I do not typically engage in much meditation practice during class time, I feel that there are numerous other philosophical exercises of mind that may touch upon similar aspects.