This course explores key Buddhist principles as they appear in the Early Buddhist Texts, the Pali Nikayas and Chinese Agamas, covering topics like generosity, ethics, karma, mindfulness, emptiness, and working with anger and difficult thoughts.
This course presents important Buddhist principles and shows how they are described or discussed in the Early Buddhist Texts (the Pali Nikayas and the Chinese Agamas). It covers a wide range of topics, including generosity, ethics, aggregates, karma, dealing with anger, mindfulness and meditation practices, emptiness, the evils of comparison, how to deal with thoughts, bias against others, and much more. Although these texts may also serve as the basis for other Buddhist traditions, the focus will be on how they relate to Chan practice and concepts presented by Guo Gu.
This class was originally held in 2024 as a live online series and has since concluded. The recorded sessions are now available to watch at your own pace.
Each recorded class opens with a brief meditation period to calm the mind, followed by a short presentation and group discussion on the topic, where you'll hear participants sharing their reflections and the questions raised by the suttas of the week. Read the assigned texts linked below before each session to get the most out of the recordings.
Sessions can be viewed in any order. That said, because the material was designed to build a strong foundation for practice, working through the full series in order is the best way to get its full benefit.
The following videos are presented in the order they were originally taught in 2024. For full benefit, we recommend watching them in order, though you're welcome to jump to a topic of interest or skip around. If you have any questions about the course content, send us a message via chat. Enjoy!
We aim to make the Dharma affordable and accessible for all. If purchasing this course is not feasible for you at this time, please send an email to tallahassee.chan@gmail.com to request the Zoom link.
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Ashley M.
Ashley was first introduced to Buddhism in 1986 during a trip to Japan. The peace and kindness she experienced there led her to explore various practices once she returned to the United States. She has studied the Pali Canon with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington’s Sutta Study group since 2002, and she took Pali classes with John Kelly (a well-known translator and one of the founders of Sutta Central) for three years. GuoGu has been her teacher since 2021, and she has assisted him with editing many of his magazine articles about Chan.
To access course materials, you must create an account on this course website using your e-mail address.
For live courses, you will be sent a live Zoom link and unlimited access to the recorded teachings via a platform to access course files. For online courses, you will have unlimited access to the teachings on our course page.
Yes, all talks are recorded. You view any session in any order you would like.
Yes, this course is fully on-demand so you are welcome to join from any time zone.
If you are interested in further opportunities to deepen your practice, please consider opting in to our emails when you create your account. For live courses, we send course-related materials like discussion questions and syllabus changes. For all other email correspondence, we would be happy to alert you to new and upcoming opportunities for practice in-person and online. The Tallahassee Chan Center is not a commercial entity, and will not send you marketing e-mails.