The Open Buddhist University organizes content from across the Web into free, self-directed syllabi on a variety of topics in Buddhist Studies.

About Our Courses

We currently offer 16 courses on the fundamentals of Buddhism.
Note: None of our courses offer degrees or certificates and therefore they don’t require any enrollment. Just click a card below to begin!

Key

  • Click the card to begin the course
  • Each course has a unique icon (e.g. ) to identify it.
  • = Lectures by:
  • = Books by:
  • = Approximate time to complete the course

Interactive Components

If you’d like to discuss what you’re learning, feel free to post your questions or thoughts on the SuttaCentral Discourse Forum or email us. Some courses contain links to (optional) Google Forms which serve for homework assignments and to collect course feedback. This site may use cookies to enhance your experience, but you can turn this off at any time in settings.

Our Courses

External Courses

Courses hosted on other websites.

Open Courseware @MIT

OBU Courses are loosely modeled on MIT’s Open Courseware, which have provided free syllabi and other course materials for a large number of their Undergraduate and Graduate-level courses since 2001. For OBU Students, I especially recommend checking out:

  • The Challenge of World Poverty
    • To understand the drivers, traps, and opportunities for global poverty with Nobel Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.
  • The Rise of Modern Science
    • To break down the ahistorical mythology of modern science by taking a closer look at its primary sources.