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Laughing is a serious matter on the secular Buddhist path!
The lightness of laughter can help us to break the connected dualisms of right/wrong, true/false, internal/external, and us/the others. These standards ways of viewing the world keep us hooked to our ego and hold us back from the freedom to experiment, to be open, to enjoy the time we have and all our experiences, including the negative ones.
Stephen Batchelor on ‘Everyday Nirvana’
In a dharma talk given to the Community Meditation Center (New York City, USA), Stephen Batchelor emphasized that nirvana should be understood as an experience of the cessation of reactivity rather than an end state or experience of complete and ultimate freedom from the poisons of greed, hatred, and confusion.
Update on Touching the Earth
Bill Gayner provides an update on Touching the Earth, a non-teacher-centric, democratic self-help community for cultivating mindfulness as an embodied social practice. Practices include meditation, journaling, sharing and exploring meditation experience in triads or dyads, and then gathering back in the larger group to reflect on the process.
How to stop bigotry
We can practice pulling bigotry out by the roots every day in our own worlds. Identify who you treat as ‘other’, be kind to yourself about it, then focus your attention on commonality of experience - of basic human needs. Practice it again and again and again. This is wise attention.
Why Buddhism is NOT a science of the mind: a review of Evan Thompson’s ‘Why I am not a Buddhist’
Bernat Font provides a summary and review of Evan Thompson's recent book, 'Why I am not a Buddhist'. While criticizing key concepts in 'Buddhist modernism', Thompson asserts that, at its best, Buddhism can challenge our excessive confidence that science explains what the world really is like while offering a radical critique to our narcissistic concern with the self.
Take on the challenge of the unknown
We have to choose between the freedom that is the condition of an open, awakened mind or to defend any kind of orthodoxy, traditional or not. If we choose the former, we need a wisdom that is capable of capturing every moment of wonder and in the next instant letting it go without any sense of regret or bewilderment.
Transforming ourselves and transforming the world
Meditation is invaluable in developing the skills and qualities for us to play a productive role in movements for social change, but engaging in social change with others is essential if we want to fully develop these skills and qualities. We should see individual and social transformation as a simultaneous, mutually interactive process.
An adventure in embracing life
For Lorna Edwards, David Whyte's poem, 'Enough', is an invitation to reflect on how we live in the world, how we need to embrace life as it is.
Ted Meissner reflects on the past, present, and future of secular Buddhism
Ted Meissner has been interviewing Buddhist practitioners and writers involved in a wide range of lineages and approaches on his podcast, The Secular Buddhist, and is the Executive Director of the Secular Buddhist Association (USA). Ted offers his views of how secular Buddhism has evolved, its current status, and his hopes for its future development.
Lockdown reflections: transmission, transformation and ‘secular Zen’
A secular version of Zen, taking account of the disciplines and traditions of mindful meditation practice but also grounded grounded in a creative, democratic and dynamic educational ethos, can play an important role in an emerging culture of awakening in which all beings, and the environment in which we live, are valued and cared for.
Buddhism is dead! Long live ‘Buddhism’!
Whether we like it or not, to reduce Buddhism to a detached and repetitive liturgical religiosity, means to keep our heads turned towards the past and also means losing the potential for a sensitive engagement with tradition. A vibrant and living spirituality must be known, lived, and experienced in our bodies, our practices, and our way of being.
Integrating contemplative practice into life
To integrate contemplative practice into life requires more than becoming proficient in techniques of meditation. It entails the cultivation and refinement of a sensibility about the totality of your existence—from intimate moments of personal anguish to the endless suffering of the world.
SBN guidelines for contributors and readers’ comments
As a ‘hub’ or space where dialogue is fostered and resources and experiences are shared among secular Buddhists, we will adhere to certain guidelines for contributors and readers' comments which are consistent with our approach and our intention to play a constructive role in the development of a secular approach to the dharma.
Metta in the time of the coronavirus: responses of secular Buddhists to the pandemic
Several contributors to the Secular Buddhist Network website offer their insights on how we can best respond to the coronavirus pandemic. The common theme is that by fully understanding core Buddhist insights regarding impermanence, suffering, and interconnection, as well as cultivating an ethical stance of care and compassion, we can skillfully respond to this current crisis.
Dharmic existentialist ethics in a time of pandemic
Today we find ourselves in the grip of a scary epidemic. Ours is due to the coronavirus (aka Covid-19). Some great creative writers have used these occasions to plunge into their deeper human meaning, particularly Albert Camus’s The plague (1947), which bristles with dharmic resonances.
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