Overview

Course No. 6380

An award-winning professor takes you deep into the life stories and legacies of four iconic figures in world religion. No understanding of human life, individual or collective, could be complete without factoring in the role and contribution of these history-shaping teachers. Now, this 36-lecture series takes you deep into the life stories and legacies of these four iconic figures, revealing the core teachings and thoughts of each, and shedding light on the historical processes that underlie their phenomenal, enduring impact.

Speaking from multilevel personal experience with these teachings, Professor Muesse leads you in an inquiry with a dynamic double thrust. First, you’ll get the chance to reflect in depth on the most essential values of spirituality and the art of living, seen from four archetypal perspectives. Second, you’ll delve into the historical contexts and individual lives of the four sages, and how the religious and philosophical traditions we associate with them came into being.

The lectures serve as a unique window on the origins of these traditions, through their focus on the teachings, actions, and historical roles of the sages who inspired them. In uncovering the original wisdom and practices of each sage, you’ll grapple with key questions. How did each man understand the nature of the universe? How did each envision the human self? What did they each see as the path to true self-realization? In words reflecting profound and compassionate insight, these lectures bring the teachings vividly alive as they speak to their essential purpose and as they shed light on the choices we all face, moment by moment, in living deliberately and savoring life to the fullest.

Course Structure

1. A Quartet of Sages

Begin by establishing guidelines for your journey into the lives and legacies of Confucius, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Consider the “lenses” of metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, ethics, and spiritual practice for assessing their teaching and contribution, and in establishing a basis for comparing the vision and wisdom of these extraordinary sages.

Duration: 33 min

2. Confucius’s China

Explore the nature of Chinese identity in Confucius’s time as cultural rather than political, and the Chinese orientation to the past, based in the conception of an earlier era of moral kingship. Trace social and political upheavals in the Zhou dynasty that sparked intense intellectual debate, setting the stage for Confucius’s teaching.

Duration: 30 min

3. Becoming a Sage

This lecture reviews key sources for reconstructing the life of Confucius, centering on the famous Analects, a compendium of conversations and sayings. Investigate the known facts of his lineage, the unusual circumstances of his birth, his poverty-stricken childhood, and the great love of learning that defined his character.

Duration: 32 min

4. A Gentleman and a Scholar

Confucius’s personal journey reveals the traits and actions that underlay his teaching. Learn about the qualities of humility, empathy, and love of virtue that informed his life as a state official, the hardships of his period of self-imposed exile, and his final years of teaching and introspection.

Duration: 32 min

5. Heaven and Earth

Confucian metaphysics stood on the foundation of the ancient Chinese view of ultimate reality. Examine Zhou dynasty cosmology, its conception of Tian (Heaven) and Di (Earth), and the hierarchy of divine beings. Contrast this with Confucius’s nontheocentric view of Heaven as a dynamic, moral force in creative collaboration with human beings.

Duration: 31 min

6. Doing unto Others

Confucius envisioned human fulfillment as rooted in the attainment of moral excellence. Investigate the core precepts of his teaching, including ren, or uncommon humaneness, reciprocity, and filial piety as the root of human love. Consider also his conception of the junzi or “superior man”—a person of compassion, wisdom, and equanimity.

Duration: 30 min

7. How to Rule a Kingdom

This lecture explores legalism and Daoism in Chinese political thought, to introduce core Confucian principles of humane, ethical leadership. Delve into Confucius’s conception of virtue as a force with the power to transform others, and the value of ceremony and ritual in refining humaneness and creating social harmony.

Duration: 32 min

8. What a Sage Does

Confucian spiritual practice was grounded in his view of all life as a grand or sacred ritual. Learn the details of his discipline of self-awareness and introspection, and his teachings on the shaping of character through appropriate behavior, the spiritual significance of life’s daily routines, and the moral value of art.

Duration: 31 min

9. Confucius and Confucianism

The legacy of Confucian teaching is seen in its enduring influence in China over 2,000 years. Contrast the divergent perspectives of Confucian philosophers Mencius and Xunzi on the moral nature of humanity, examine their views on Confucian practice, and trace the spread and history of Confucianism in Chinese and Asian society.

Duration: 30 min

10. India at the Time of the Buddha

This lecture probes profound shifts in Indian religious thought in the era preceding the Buddha’s birth. Examine the developing conceptions of rebirth, karma, and the religious movements aimed at freedom from the cycle of rebirth. Also investigate the notions of atman (soul) and Brahman (ultimate reality), and the critical relationship between them.

Duration: 33 min

11. Siddhattha Gotama

Texts preserving the early oral tradition of Buddhist teaching allow us to reconstruct the life of the Buddha. Here, compare the mythic versions of the Buddha’s birth and youth with the available historical information, and consider how the legends surrounding his early life serve as literary expressions of his teachings.

Duration: 31 min

12. The First and Second Great Awakenings

In this lecture, explore the circumstances under which the Buddha renounced his life of privilege in order to seek the “supreme state of sublime peace.” Then follow his itinerant life of spiritual practice, including his period of extreme asceticism, leading to the transformative realization that formed the wellspring of his teaching.

Duration: 32 min

13. Knowing the World

The Buddha insisted that all knowledge claims be based in direct, empirical experience. Study his views on the nature of reality, including his distinction between nibbana (the unconditioned absolute) and samsara (conditioned, worldly experience). Conclude with an in-depth look at his notion of impermanence as one of three fundamental features of existence.

Duration: 33 min

14. Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Completing the Buddha’s “three marks of existence,” grasp the notion of insubstantiality or “no-self,” challenging the illusory perception of the self as a separate entity standing apart from the environment that gives it existence. Grapple also with insatiability, the resulting impulse to satisfy the self through endless possessions and experiences.

Duration: 31 min

15. Getting to the Farther Shore

The Buddha’s teaching comprised numerous practices designed to free the practitioner from attachments and to dispel the illusion of the “individual” self. Study his approach to perfecting wisdom and compassion through his Five Precepts of wholesome action and core practices of dana, or generosity, and meditation.

Duration: 33 min

16. How the Buddha Taught

The Buddha’s life as a teacher reveals his insight in action. First, learn about the foundation of his teaching, the Four Noble Truths, and his open embrace of people of all backgrounds as students. Then, see vivid examples of how he shaped his communication of the dhamma to the needs of different listeners.

Duration: 33 min

17. The Buddha and Buddhism

The Buddha’s preparations for his own death served as another expression of his principles. Study the final events of his life, the aftermath of his death, and the eventual spread of his teaching. Mark the distinct traditions of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism; their geographic reach; and Buddhism’s appearance in the West.

Duration: 33 min

18. The Jewish and Roman Worlds of Jesus

Setting the stage for the appearance of Jesus, this lecture discusses the turbulent times into which he was born. Learn about the complex history of ancient Judaism, the multiple political displacements and divisions within the faith, and the trials of Jewish life in Palestine under Roman rule.

Duration: 32 min

19. The Son of Mary

The available sources on the life of Jesus present markedly differing interpretations. Compare the accounts of his lineage and birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, noting the contrasting emphasis and portrayal of events, and consider what these differences may reveal about Jesus and about the intended audience of the Gospels.

Duration: 33 min

20. The First 30 Years

In assessing the scant information about Jesus’s early life, trace theological and popular conjecture about his childhood, the origins of his teaching, and the possibility of his marriage. Finally, contemplate the enigmatic connection between Jesus and John the Baptist, and their parallel declarations of the coming of God’s kingdom.

Duration: 28 min

21. The Kingdom of God

Jesus proclaimed the nature of God’s kingdom through his teaching and deeds. First, investigate the indications that Jesus viewed God’s kingdom as an earthly reality. Then, witness his teaching through his parables and healings, as they disrupt the apparent order of the world, dissolving oppressive divisions of rich/poor, powerful/weak, and pure/impure.

Duration: 32 min

22. Back to the Future

Digging deeper into Jesus’s practices and teachings, see the ways in which his conception of God’s kingdom as present reality indicates deep, direct spiritual experience. Learn about his practice of contemplative prayer, the spiritual meaning he attached to communal meals, and his ethical principles of nonretaliation, generosity, and the discipline of forgiveness.

Duration: 33 min

23. Jesus’s Christology

This lecture further illuminates Jesus’s life by exploring his conception of his own role in God’s kingdom. Examine two parallel biblical identities of Jesus—as a prophet foretelling a divine age and as a spiritual teacher. Also investigate his historical characterizations as Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man.

Duration: 31 min

24. The Last Days in Jerusalem

The final events of Jesus’s life enact the central thrust of his teaching. Follow the dramatic unfolding of Jesus’s public actions leading to his arrest, and the details of his crucifixion and resurrection as they embody his message of God’s kingdom and his vision of a new world order.

Duration: 31 min

25. How Jesus Became Christ

Examine the diverse accounts of the resurrection, their meaning to Jesus’s contemporaries, and the critical contrast between Paul’s view of Jesus and Jesus’s self-conception. Then consider a “theory” of Jesus, exploring the role or “task” of his death, the question of his divinity, and his followers’ ultimate proclamation of him as Messiah.

Duration: 33 min

26. Arabia in the Days of Ignorance

Introducing the life of Muhammad, Professor Muesse outlines pre-Islamic Arabian culture and religion. Learn about the society of warring Arab tribes, their customs, and the social ills Islam later sought to correct. Then chart the tribal pantheon of divine beings, tribal religious practices, and the culture’s assimilation of Jews and Christians.

Duration: 32 min

27. The Trustworthy One

Muhammad’s early life reveals patterns that later defined his prophetic calling. Probe the circumstances of his birth and difficult childhood, including experiences that sensitized him to the downtrodden. Follow his developing character and reputation for integrity, his long marriage and family life, and the contemplative practice that led to his dramatic revelation.

Duration: 32 min

28. I Am Only a Messenger

Witness the compelling events of Muhammad’s revelation on the Mountain of Light, his struggle to accept his calling as prophet, and the embodying of his message as the Qur’an. Then follow his emergence as a teacher and the birth of Islam, as Muhammad faces severe opposition and pressure to remain silent.

Duration: 32 min

29. Madinah

The city of Madinah played a vital symbolic role in the prophet’s journey. Investigate the ways in which Muhammad’s teaching threatened traditional Arabian life, and his efforts to secure his community in Makkah. Then follow the difficult challenges of its migration to Madinah and Muhammad’s eventual embrace of military leadership and “just” war.

Duration: 34 min

30. There Is No God but al-Lah

Study the doctrine of tawhid, the oneness and inscrutability of al-Lah, and the distinction between divine essence and the divine attributes through which humans can approach the absolute. Also grasp the Islamic conceptions of the sin of shirk (idolatry), of Jesus as prophet, and the end-time Day of Requital.

Duration: 31 min

31. The Ethics of Islam

Trace the Islamic view of the human being to the Qur’anic story of Adam and Eve and the core conceptions of human fallibility and equality. Then study the Islamic precepts of submission to God and ethical action, and the ways Muhammad’s principles improved the marital and legal status of women.

Duration: 31 min

32. The Greater Jihad

The internal or “greater” jihad comprises the spiritual disciplines of Islam. Grasp the essential practices, beginning with ritual prayer, embodying choreographed physical gesture and movement, and fasting as it awakens self-awareness and compassion. Conclude with the deep spiritual significance and complex rituals of the hajj, or pilgrimage to Makkah.

Duration: 33 min

33. The Conquest of Makkah

The last years of Muhammad’s life saw the rise of Islam as a dominant force in Arabia. Follow the prophet’s tumultuous military campaigns leading to his conquest of Makkah and political unifying of Arabia. Also study the critical events of Muhammad’s death, its aftermath, and the subsequent Shi’a/Sunni split within Islam.

Duration: 30 min

34. Their Lives Compared

Professor Muesse compares the life stories of the four sages, beginning an assessment of their significance for our contemporary lives. See how each sage redefined nobility as a matter of character and demonstrated a fearless commitment to truth, living simply, and the practice of quieting the mind.

Duration: 31 min

35. Their Teachings Compared

In their conceptions of heaven, nibbana, and God, were the four sages talking about the same thing? Compare their teachings on the structure of reality, the fundamental human predicament, and the ethical dimension of life, noting their common view of self-centeredness as the source of misery and their contrasting methodologies for liberation.

Duration: 33 min

36. Their Enduring Significance

In this final lecture, reflect on the qualities of noble living that the sages exemplified, seen in their commitment to truthful understanding, humility, contemplation, sensitivity to the suffering of others, and the transcendence of self-involvement. Conclude with Professor Muesse’s personal view of the essential teaching of each sage.

Duration: 29 min