What makes the educational experience at Buddhist Universities unique cannot be explained merely by the professional degrees they provide. What makes them so different from the experience at hundreds of other colleges and universities across the USA is that the education in professional fields and liberal arts is built on principles of Buddhist pedagogy. This pedagogy has been tested by thousands of years of history in many different social and cultural environments and now is being applied within American culture. The topic of Buddhist-based education is extremely vast, and here, we are not going to discuss it. Instead, we will focus on the Buddhist-inspired pedagogical principles followed in personal and academic lives of the faculty, students, staff, and administration, which we had a chance to observe and investigate during our fieldwork on Buddhist campuses.

Respect for All life

The first principle that appears to be the most crucial in Buddhist pedagogy is Respect for All Life. Buddhism emphasizes the notion that the only true foundation for all learning is respect for all life. According to this, a student can never become a good teacher, engineer, accountant, doctor, journalist, and so on, unless she or he has understood and begun regularly practicing “no-harm” and “loving-compassion” in terms of their behavior towards all living beings.

This approach to life in all the forms of activities is visible when Buddhist University campuses are explored. As soon as one begins to walk, there is a sense of having stepped into an environment which is different from that of most colleges and universities. Not only are the environs clean, beautiful, and harmoniously organized, but one finds oneself surrounded by an unusual silence and sounds of peace. One can actually hear nature, such as birds, waterfalls, and the rustling of leaves because they appear against the background of an ever present, soothing silence. The sounds of human activities are gentle and conducted with awareness of the presence of others. In the dining halls and lounges, loud sounds of television are absent. There are no disruptive noises from leaf blowers. Nor will we hear people speaking in loud and angry voices on their mobile phones. People on Buddhist campuses are polite, and they immediately attend to the needs of a stranger. Students or faculty members will immediately change the direction they are going to lead visitors to the building they are looking for.

Respect for all life is evident in the environmental protection programs adopted by all Buddhist Universities, as well as in their active support of animal life and widely followed reuse and recycling plans. Vegetarianism is strictly enforced on the campus of DRBU. The University of the West used to serve only vegetarian meals, but now offers a meat option for non-vegetarians. Naropa and Soka allow meat consumption (which is consistent with the traditional practices of Tibetan and Nichiren Buddhism), but educate students about the benefits of vegetarianism for human health, the environment, and spiritual progress. At Naropa and Soka, vegetarian options are always available. Practice of mindful eating is only now beginning to percolate spirituality and wellness consciousness of the Americans. At the Buddhist Universities it has already become a normaa.

Some practical expressions of environmental protection at Buddhist Universities are simple steps such as giving each student a free bicycle and free bus pass. There are communally shared cars. This approach minimizes the parking space on campus, which, in turn, brings a cleaner environment. On all Buddhist campuses, plastic, glass, paper, aluminum, food leftovers, and green waste are collected in separate containers and recycled.

Students are educated about recycling their natural talents and time, as well. The best example of this is found at Naropa University. Near the cafeteria, there is a big bulletin board where students post announcements, which read like this: “I would like to exchange a gift of picking up eatable mushrooms for a gift of knowing how to keep my room always clean and organized (worth 50 karmic points),” or “I exchange lessons of French (worth 20 karmic points each) for help with Biology.” In the fall of 2010 (during our visit to campus), there were fifty announcements of this sort. Naropa students, who are encouraged by their professors to avoid waste of any kind, have also designed a storage unit (open for the public) to which they bring things they no longer need. They bring desk lamps, blankets, frying pans, forks, etc., and place them on the shelves inside the storage unit, and then students, faculty, staff, administration, etc., can come and take them free of charge. When they need them no longer, they bring them back to the storage, and the cycle continuesab.

Right motivation for receiving education

Another important principle of Buddhist pedagogy is Right Motivation for Receiving Education. It starts from administration and faculty affirming that learning is an individual experience and everyone learns differently. Before and after enrollment, students meet with their counselors, who help them discover their natural gifts and the spiritual purpose and meaning of their life. Students are taught that the right motivation for success in education and career must rise from their own heart and mind. By following this principle, students at Buddhist Universities do not measure their success in terms of the “money power” and status they will acquire after graduation; rather, they see their years in college as the beginning of a lifelong process of self-improvement and mastering those virtues and skills with which they will be able to help the planet and all living beings.

Equanimity is crucial to developing right motivation for education; this is well demonstrated by Soka University of America. On its campus, we do not find parking spaces designating social status; there are no administration buildings to shelter decision-makers from the rest of the university; furthermore, all offices, from the dean’s to the janitor’s, are the same sizeac.

Competition is not encouraged at any of the Buddhist Universities; competition is transformed into cooperation. A distinct aspect of this non-competitive pedagogy is that grades, by themselves, are not as important as the internal commitment to learning and becoming a better person. Equal respect is shown by the faculty and administration toward a slow learner and a fast learner, toward a student who easily earns high scores and the one who fails on some tests but is willing to improve.

Mindfulness accompanies all procedures taking place in Buddhist education. This is exemplified in the decision to take a heuristic approach to measuring students’ progress. Sometimes, students receive detailed letters from a professor (describing their progress and making recommendations for further improvement) as a sign that they have earned a sufficient grade; sometimes, students who excel in taking tests are assigned to work with the students who find it difficult to prepare for them, and they work together the entire semester until student-mentor and student-trainee create satisfactory results; sometimes, students conduct their own examinations and professors incorporate the grades given by the students into the final gradesad. According to our research, a substantial improvement in students’ performance must be credited to this heuristic approach as students learn in a stress-free environment and deeply care about the process and results of their learning.

A large component of what is called right motivation for learning is motivation by compassion for all living beings, which includes all of humanity. This motivation, one student said, “leads to developing a good discipline and long-lasting work habits.” She also added that “the examples of Buddhist nuns and monks are very useful in this respect.” Monastics are present on two campuses, DRBU and UWest, where they serve as role models in terms of motivating students to develop “the right way” for success. A student from UWest summarized this by saying, “We observe how nuns and monks dedicate their lives to serving other living beings and we cannot help but start asking questions about our own commitment and dedication. These are not necessarily religious views we are asking about, but simply the question of the meaning of it all, such as going to college, receiving a degree, and so onae”.

Learning for the present, Not for some distant future

“Learning for the present,” means that boundaries between classroom and real life learning are practically nonexistent. Students are expected to learn from everything that happens in their lives, not only from what they learn in their classes. And vice versa, students are expected to use in their daily lives all the knowledge they gain through their formal study.

When students enter the classroom they are invited to meditate and reflect on the state of their mind and the purpose for receiving educationef. Professors often ask them how they apply knowledge they have acquired through their study. The subject may be business, computer engineering, or English literature. The question leads to the realization that the most important thing in learning is to know how knowledge can be applied to real life. One student told a professor that he had called his friend at another university and shared with him a particular program he learned two days ago. This friend was surprised and greatly appreciated the call, and he called him back to share something new he had learned. Another student shared that he had gone to a nearby business and offered help with bookkeeping. The offer was accepted with gratitude, and a real accounting practice began with a promise to become partners in business. Yet another student spent an afternoon at a local vegetarian restaurant, where he gave a free evaluation of resources management. Based on what he learned in his program, he was able to give useful advice and was invited to eat for free for a whole week!

Continuity of educational experience must extend from one moment to another. There is always something new to learn. This is the advice given to students by faculty and administrators who share living space with the students. Even as they take food in the dining hall they are learning what it means to be a human being. A senior nun has difficulty standing in line for lunch. This is a call for compassion. Someone asks her what she would like to eat and then serves her the requested food. Students have just learned a lesson that, when they feel sorry for someone else’s suffering, there is a way to ease the pain through appropriate compassionate action. As students go about choosing their own food for lunch, they learn awareness of their physiological needs because so many people around them are already mindful of what they eat and how much they need and this shows in their behavior. There is always something new to watch and learn from! Food and drinks are almost never wasted in this context of personal awareness of one’s needs.

At the Buddhist Universities, students have an opportunity to actively participate in growing, preparing, and serving their own food, which creates yet another vital connection between learning and practicing in the present moment instead of for some distant future. At DRBU, students grow the vegetables and fruit they later eat in the dining hall or take home to share with others. Here, students work in orchards and gardens so large that they provide nearly half of all the produce needed for the university’s annual consumption. Naropa students use a greenhouse located a few steps away from the cafeteria and, if they need more fresh food, they can use the agricultural space at the nearby University of Colorado.

Students continue learning and practicing professional and moral knowledge after classes are over. They continue being compassionate and respectful of all life because, in the dormitories, they do not smoke, do not drink alcohol, and do not play loud music. At the University of the West and DRBU, monastics reside in the vicinity of the students, and this provides for a greater measure of peace and mindfulness across the halls. Crime does not thrive on the Buddhist University campuses as it does on the campuses of so many American colleges. Attention is paid by all members of the community to how people act and interact. A janitor may follow a student to the classroom to tell her that she has left a mess in the bathroom, and the student usually goes back to take care of the situation. Everyone feels responsible for the clean environment. This behavior builds up and continues when students leave the campusag.

Learning does not end when the students leave their campuses and mingle with other people. Naropa students made a decision to share with local farmers the composted materials from their campus. The farmers, in turn, decided to share their pears, apples, and other fruit, all of which must be picked by students from the trees on the property. Students of UWest volunteer at the Buddhist Memorial Complex affiliated with the Hsi Lai Temple. By helping families who have lost loved ones, they also learn about human psychology and behavior in real time; while Soka students take their math and language skills outside of the classroom by educating members of minority communities and UWest students teach local residents how to prepare taxes. UWest, Soka, and DRBU students majoring in English often create partnerships with local kindergartens and elementary schools and volunteer as tutors to those children whose families do not speak English.

When the whole system of education is organized in such a way that every piece of information is learned for the sake of helping others, the learning process acquires a different meaning. When students see how they can make a difference in people’s lives, their enthusiasm for learning grows exponentially.