(2 credits) Whether you are new to Buddhism or have been studying or practicing for years, this course invites you to make an acquaintance with a selection of Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, and other Buddhist scriptures (in translation) which center on compassionate responses to the suffering of ourselves, others, and the world. Since the Buddha’s time, Buddhists have needed to care for each other in old age, sickness, dying, bereavement, and so forth. Shakyamuni Buddha modeled teaching dharma, caretaking sick monastics, and counseling leaders and disciples from a motivation to alleviate and eliminate suffering, a compassionate motivation that weaves through all the stories of bodhisattvas and great teachers. Other texts clarify philosophic views and contemplations that support recognizing suffering, giving rise to the intention to act to alleviate it, and exercising skillful and efficacious means. What do we gain by reading these? We will attempt to engage with texts as “scripture,” inquiring whether scripture is more than text when words which have profoundly impacted generations of people also deeply enter into our own lived experiences of what it means to be humans. By approaching texts with the intention to listen for how they speak to us, and while considering their historical contexts, content, and worldviews, we will come to understand their place in Buddhist lives and in our own lives. Those students with interests in the broad fields of professional caregiving who seek Buddhist sources and models for their work will gain the ability to articulate some Buddhist scriptural foundations for their care of persons and communities, including whether and how diverse premodern Buddhist approaches to the suffering of others can uniquely inform contemporary spiritual care. For us all, these texts put the responsibility and capacity for easing pain, confusion, fear, anxiety, greed, and aversion – and growing in wholesome states of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity — in our own healing hands.