Indian & Tibetan River of Buddhism

Indian & Tibetan River of Buddhism, an open online course, explores the history and philosophy of Buddhism throughout India, South and Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Central Asia, featuring the basics of the Buddhist view of reality and its educational principles of sciences, mind and social ethics.

The course begins with a survey of the origins of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-first millennium BCE, as well as its transformation in the first millennium CE into the Sanskrit-language-based Mahayana Buddhism(s) that permeated the monastic traditions and flourished in India until around 1100 CE, and that persists up to present day in East Asia, Central Asia, and Vietnam.

The Tibetan aspect of this course surveys the Tibetan and Central Asian reception and development of these Indian Buddhist traditions that occurred in two distinct historical periods: (1) from 650 CE until ca. 850 CE, and (2) from ca. 950 CE to the present.

The course was developed by the Center for Teaching and Learning and Robert A.F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies. It is free and open to all on edX.org with an optional paid verified certificate program.