reimagining how we learn about Buddhism within and beyond the classroom
We hope you’ll join us in listening to the Buddhists (and other neighbors) in your own backyard.
By centering local Buddhist communities—especially those founded by the monastics and laypeople of Asian heritage who make up the majority of American Buddhists—we encounter rich sites of connection and meaning-making.
The pedagogy of L2BB invites students into different ways of learning, reflecting, and making meaning.
Instead of first encountering Buddhism through texts in a classroom, L2BB students visit local Buddhist communities where they learn to ask questions, make observations, and synthesize their reflections.
public-facing work created by multiple cohorts of L2BB students
You’ll find writing, presentations, and more by Phillips Academy Andover seniors and master’s students from the Klingenstein Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
“Engaging with Buddhism through physical, bodied experiences has helped me to reimagine what it means to be a Buddhist in a world that is constantly being rewritten. As a group, we have already been confronted with the idea that no stories or conditions can simply ‘be.’ Rather, they had to ‘become.’ The acknowledgement of impermanence in all its forms—in the retelling of history, in the understanding of the self—is essential to developing the flexibility needed to build practices of kindness and understanding.”
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Olivia, L2BB 2022