Exploring change and interdependence to promote ethics in secular classrooms

Buddha Dharma as Education
In this paper I explore how Buddha Dharma might inform the development of contemporary global education, with a particular focus on how Dharma practitioners who are people teacher educators and others concerned with the education of young people. In doing so we will look at some currents and convergences of eastern and western philosophical thought and education practices, and in so doing I hope to provide some provocations and potential ways in which the Dharma might, through skilful adaptation and visibility, improve the education outcomes of students both in the Australasian region and beyond.
The Buddha Dharma offers a path that can lead people from dissatisfaction and ignorance to full liberation. Hence, this path can rightly be considered a pedagogy of personal development. It is pedagogy in the sense that it presents both a theoretical framework in texts and treatises, and the imperative to practise, cultivate and actualise the tenets through strategic guidance for both teachers and students. The Dharma elucidates how the world we live in works and thus is predicated on three marks of existence: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and soullessness (annata). This ontology provides the foundational justifications for moral and compassionate activity, and for the cultivation of wisdom through contemplation and meditation.