P. 250, R350 or consent of the instructor,  rfnance@indiana.edu

The above course carries Arts and Humanities distribution.

When beings become Buddhas, what happens?  What is lost in becoming
a Buddha, and what is gained? The nature of what might be
called "Buddhahood"—the end point of the Buddhist path—has long been
an object of controversy among Buddhists; even the value of such
speculation is itself a subject of contestation within the
tradition. Some representatives of the tradition hold that Buddhas
are simply human beings who are no longer afflicted by lust, hatred,
and delusion; others portray Buddhas in non-human (or super-human)
terms, as beings who simultaneously possess multiple embodiments,
are omniscient, can disappear and reappear at will, speak multiple
languages at the same time, and emanate whole universes without
breaking a sweat.

This course traces some of the divergent ways in which the figure of
the Buddha and the nature of Buddhahood have been treated in Indian
and Tibetan texts. We will read a number of primary texts in
translation (together with several secondary studies), and will
explore a number of interrelated topics. Among them: Buddha as
moral exemplar; the vexed question of whether a Buddha can have
thoughts and intentions; a Buddha’s multiple bodies and their
characteristics; the controversy over “Buddha nature” as ontological
and/or soteriological postulate; the notion of a Buddha's “skill in
means” and its range of applicability; divergent emphases found in
narrative and philosophical texts; and the question of whether—and
what—historical conclusions regarding Buddhist traditions may
justifiably be drawn from the extant data.