All Posts Archives - Secular Buddhist Network

POSTS:

All Posts

Meditating in a secular world

Meditative practice enables us to develop a more present, lucid and conscious connection with what surrounds us, in the precise moment and place where we find ourselves. Meditative practice does not take us beyond that present moment in its totality. If anything, it leads us deeper, to union with it.

Interview with Dave Smith on teaching meditation and the Secular Dharma Foundation

Dave Smith is an internationally recognized Buddhist meditation teacher, addiction treatment specialist, and published author. We recently interviewed Dave about his approach to being a meditation teacher and his Secular Dharma Foundation.

An unconventional glossary of Buddhist qualities, translated from meditative experience and Pali

This unconventional glossary provides us with grounded, experienced-based definitions of qualities, attitudes, skills, and concepts which are relevant to all meditators.

Defining secular Buddhism: beware of certain traps

Secular Buddhism doesn’t need to be understood as a new ‘Buddhism’ but more as a different approach to practice. This approach starts from our perspective as modern people, and thanks to this lens, revises the meaning of the teachings of an ancient tradition so that they can speak to human beings today.

New horizons for emerging sanghas: community groups and lay women dharma teachers

In a talk given to the June 2019 Sakyadita Australia conference Anna Markey discusses how there is an emergence of many small community-based clusters of intimate dharma groups in Australia, either leaderless or led by lay teachers. And many of these teachers are women.

What next? two years of path in the Secular Dharma with Bodhi College

Stefano Bettera offers his reflections on the two year course on the Secular Dharma at Bodhi College and what the next steps are for the course participants. He asserts that it is the 'creative, adaptable, non-dogmatic and unorthodox characteristic of the secular Dharma that is an opportunity' for contributing to a culture in which awareness and compassion are predominant.

Ongoing meetings of secular Buddhist groups and sanghas

Workshops, retreats, meetings and other events of interest to secular Buddhists, and the curious

How to be an ecosattva

Acknowledging the importance of social engagement is a big step for many Buddhists, since we have usually been taught to focus on what is happening in our own minds. On the other side, those committed to social action tend to suffer from frustration, anger, and burnout. The engaged bodhisattva path provides what each needs because it involves a double practice, inner and outer, each reinforcing the other.

On freedom and nirvana

A moment of freedom is a freedom from something, but it’s also a freedom to something. It’s not just that you’re freed from something, let’s say, attachment or anger or self-centredness, but that that freedom clears a space to act in a way that is not conditioned by your anger or self-centredness.

Secular Dharma Foundation: Educational tools & resources

The mission of the Secular Dharma Foundation is to foster the advancement of emotional and psychological well-being through the education and integration of mindfulness, psychology, and various therapeutic modalities.

The wanderer stilled: Martine Batchelor on meditation

Martine Batchelor discusses how concentration and experiential enquiry are the two basic elements of all forms of Buddhist meditation.

Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy and Stephen Batchelor’s four tasks

Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy (EFMT) is a new psychological approach to addressing internal conflicts like harsh self-criticism. The approach emerged out of a dialogue between Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) and the secular and contemporary Buddhist perspectives of Stephen Batchelor, Winton Higgins and Jason Siff.

From meditation retreats to dharma path immersives

While meditation retreats are extremely valuable, they are limited in some important respects. We need to develop more inclusive forms of intensive practice which help us cultivate each of the essential dimensions of of the Eightfold Path in an integrated way.

Reflective meditation retreats as a space for independent and critical thinking

In leading meditation retreats based on a reflective meditation approach Linda Modaro and Moline Whitson aim to create a middle path between a strict adherence to an intensive schedule and completely doing away with the structures and guidelines that have been considered worthwhile on vipassana retreats.

Bringing secular dharma practitioners together – the perils and joys of setting up and running a sitting group

Ramsey Margolis sets out his experience creating and sustaining a secular dharma community in Aotearoa New Zealand, and offers some practical tips on how to make one work.