The Great Courses are always so well designed and produced. I listened to the 12-lecture/6-hour course but I plan to listen to the 12-hour course as well to take a second pass at the material. This was a very brief overview and I didn't have the guidebook so it was hard to keep everything straight.

Though it was brief, I think the professor did a great job of showing how Buddhism started and evolved through different times and cultures. It's such a large, diverse religion and philosophy that I think the task of reducing it to just 6 hours must have been daunting.

I feel more compassion for people who are attempting to learn and enter a new religion. It's easy enough when you have grown up in a culture that is predominantly saturated in your family's religion. But learning a different religion means learning an entirely new system of thinking and being in the world, which affects the very core perception of the self. It's hard! So it doesn't surprise me that I got a little lost when I was listening to these lectures.

This is a comparative religions course, so at points the prof contrasts Buddhism with Christianity, Daoism, Shintoism, and other schools of Buddhism to bring out the highlight of what is unique or innovative. This is quite effective for me, and these examples are what I retained the most from the course, along with the parables and anecdotes.