For a while now I’ve been looking for ways to contribute regularly to secular dharma practice, more widely than my fortnightly local sangha meeting. My old Secular Buddhism Australia website doesn’t get much love (my last post was March 2023). It just never gets to the top of my project list.
However, in the last few months I’ve been practising regular reflection on my experience, exploring it through regular emails to the Secular Buddhism Australia community. I also share new learning, often from the field of psychology, as it relates to human flourishing.
I’m finally in the rhythm of sending them regularly and I’ve been really enjoying hearing back from people about ways they’ve been helpful. I love receiving a reply describing how someone used an insight or practice or tip I shared.
The inclusion of the word ‘Australia’ in the title of the website and group is in no way intended to be nationalist (I’m not a big fan of nationalism in fact). It’s just a signal that this is the cultural soup in which I have stewed for most of my life and a nod to the fact that this culture affects the lens through which I see the world.
I’d like to invite you to join this email list. Here are some examples of the things I’ve written about (the links are to blog posts which are adapted for a non-Secular-Buddhist audience).
I wrote about the negative eddy(the long tail of an unpleasant experience that sucks you into a downward spiral), the fact that most thoughts arise of their own accord (not of our conjuring), the way using our phone cameras can take us out of our experience (depending on the intention for the images) and into less healthy ones, and how to discern between hungering (that leads to reactivity) and healthy human desire.
I’ve offered input to help break any craving for getting rich, I’ve looked at the deadly effects of loneliness, and visited the issue of AI friends.
I recently shared some snippets of my journey to deliver a TEDx talk in the US in October 2024, which people seemed to enjoy. The talk was titled Why chasing happiness is nuts and what to do instead. It was another attempt to contribute by building a dharma door on the high street.
Most recently I’ve been sharing my new learning about the crucially important factor of attention. So far I’ve covered the three types of attention, and the three forms of kryptonite that mess it up.
If you’d like to join in, you can subscribe here.
I hope to see you there!
2 Replies to “An invitation to a weekly dose of secular dharma”
Thank you, Lenore, for your generosity in creating these uplifting resources and making them so readily available. I’m just beginning to explore, but already feel safer here in the US during these darkening times. Especially helpful right to me right now are new perspectives on “attention:” I’m noticing much more that strength, courage, and goodness of people around me.
Thanks so much for your feedback Anne-Laure.
It sounds like you’re doing a good job of using wise attention to balance the body-mind’s natural leaning towards the negative. I suspect that in the current US environment we might soon see an uprising of just such qualities in people because to ‘do nothing’ will have such diabolical consequences.
I’m not sure if you read the post about my experience of Trump being elected. If not, you can see that here: https://www.flourishpersonalgrowth.com/post/i-had-to-act-like-a-block-of-wood
And one from a few weeks prior to that about a conversation that helped me understand a Trump supporter a little: https://www.flourishpersonalgrowth.com/post/beware-of-highs-3-certainty.