We live in an extraordinarily complex and challenging world. While we savor many moments of joy and contentment, stress and unease frequently disrupt our lives. This goes beyond individual lifestyle choices or psychological issues; our personal struggles intertwine with social crises that fuel conflict and harm, potentially even destroying the conditions of life itself on our Earth: climate change and global warming; social injustice and economic inequality; and mounting political polarization and violence.

In this difficult context, how do we make sense of our human condition? How can we live less stressful and more meaningful lives amidst the ups and downs of human existence, particularly in a period of social unrest and conflict? How do we contribute to creating a society in which all human beings have a secure life, democratic rights, and the opportunity to flourish?

These are the questions that the great spiritual traditions, political perspectives, and the finest works in art and literature have attempted to answer from time immemorial. Secular Buddhism is a contemporary effort to answer these great questions of life and death, focusing on how we can live a flourishing life in a world that is uncertain, changing, and often tragic.

As a naturalistic and pragmatic form of Buddhism that focuses on improving this life, secular Buddhism does not provide the final and complete answer to these questions, but it does offer an important and valuable approach.

For secular Buddhists, the value and meaning of our lives is not based on some plan or design provided by a supernatural being or process, nor on the possibility of achieving a perfect state of salvation—free of all human suffering— beyond this life. Rather, in our finite lifespan, what gives life meaning is what we choose to care about, what our most enduring and deepest values are. It is in the process of attempting to create a life based on these values that we give meaning to our lives.

A secular approach to the dharma emphasizes the values of care, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom as essential elements of a flourishing life. Our goal is to cultivate those virtues and skills which promote these values.

However, this is not a solitary process. Because we are not isolated individuals but conscious beings embedded in social and natural contexts, we cannot achieve a flourishing life on our own, separate from others. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted:

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

A secular dharmic path thus combines mindful awareness with social and ethical concerns. One way of describing the path is Mindfulness Based Ethical Living. In all our life activities, we seek to be present and aware, less influenced by habitual patterns of reactivity based on greed, hatred, and delusion. At the same time, we are mindful for a particular purpose: to take care of ourselves and others through ethical actions and speech. On the basis of mindfulness and ethics, we try to cultivate the best part of ourselves and to create a society in which all people have the opportunity to flourish.

There is no rigid formula for determining what constitutes Mindfulness Based Ethical Living in various contexts and for different individuals. Based on our varied life experiences, perspectives, and social locations, each of us needs to figure out how we integrate mindfulness and ethics as part of a life oriented toward flourishing.

In addition to bringing mindfulness and ethics to our personal relationships, some of us will focus on providing support and services to individuals who are in need and are suffering. Social engagement of this sort includes working in hospice facilities with people who are dying, offering meditation programs for prisoners, and providing services to those who are unhoused. In addition, an increasing number of counselors, social workers, and psychologists are using perspectives and practices based on mindfulness and compassion in their therapeutic relationships with those who are challenged by emotional issues.

Others, including myself, are political activists who prioritize the need to transform unjust and exploitative social institutions which cause great harm and suffering. For us, Mindfulness Based Ethical Living involves the simultaneous cultivation of positive virtues and skills—awareness, compassion, equanimity, etc.—with mindful engagement in social and political movements.

While Mindfulness Based Ethical Living will thus take many forms, the common goal is to contribute to the flourishing of all human beings. In his latest book, Buddha, Socrates, and Us, Stephen Batchelor has provided an inspiring vision of a secular dharmic path that integrates mindfulness and ethics:

….what matters in the end is whether we have led a life of care, compassion and wisdom that has played a role, however slight, in inclining human life away from reactivity to creativity, from injustice to justice, from aridity to flourishing, from selfishness to love.

Batchelor’s vision of an ethically-oriented, mindful life path was the inspiration for an international team of secular Buddhists (including myself and several other SBN activists) to develop an online course in the basic concepts and practices of Mindfulness Based Ethical Living (MBEL). The first pilot course has just been completed and new courses will soon be open for registration. We hope that MBEL becomes an important component of an emerging secular Buddhist trend.

For more information on the MBEL course, click here.