POSTS:

Buddha

Compassionate Responses in Our Time: A Blessed Plurality of Inner Practice and Outer Action
Yanai Postelnik explains that the Buddha’s teachings call us to find our own path of heartful practice and engagement, while honouring the range and variety of different ways others may find to express what is authentic and true for them.
I Try To Be Buddhist Just Like We’re All Newtonians
Jourdan Arensen argues that the Buddha's teachings are not cosmic truths. Instead, they provide us with a set of prescriptions for how to live ethically and cultivate well-being.
Why don't you respond?
When the Buddha refused to respond
Ramsey Margolis discusses the refusal of Gotama, the historical Buddha, to discuss metaphysical questions. Instead, his focus was on the alleviation of suffering
An interview with Seth Segall on his new book, The House We Live In
SBN interviewed Seth Zuihō Segall about his new book, The House We Live in: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism. In this book Seth offers a theory of ethics and flourishing based on Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius.
Relatively speaking – truth, diversity & wellbeing
In this article John Danvers clarifies some of the thinking around notions of truth to help secular Buddhists to develop their own ideas of what is true and beneficial.
Getting the ball rolling: a new translation of the title of the Buddha’s first teaching
Bhikkhu Santi contends that an alternative translation of the title of the Buddha's first teaching better conveys the need to take up and practice the Buddha's valuable insights, yet also to experiment with, modify, and improve them.
Towards a flourishing-based ethics
Seth Zuiho Segall brings together the virtue ethics systems of Aristotle, the Buddha, and Confucius with the pragmatists' emphasis on provisional truths and democracy to offer a new flourishing-based ethics.
The Buddha was a psychologist (maybe)
Arnie Kozak critiques the hagiographic myth of the God-like Buddha and presents Gotama's dharma as a therapeutic praxis, based on important insights about human psychology.
What is engaged Buddhism missing? The Buddha on poverty and plutocracy
In a recent dharma talk, David Loy emphasized the economic roots of the climate crisis and calls for structural, not just individual, change. According to David, 'the ecological crisis is deeply implicated in the basic structure of our economic system. . . In other words, the eco-crisis is also an economic—especially a class—crisis.'
Stephen Batchelor on an ethics of uncertainty
On 9 March 2022 Stephen Batchelor gave an online talk on an ethics of uncertainty which was sponsored by Mind and Life Europe. Stephen argued that both Gotama and Socrates articulate a situational ethics that is grounded in compassion and unknowing rather than a priori moral convictions and metaphysical certainties.
A shared commitment to human flourishing: the Young Marx, Gotama, and Epicurus
According to Tom Bulley, to move toward the goal of full spiritual citizenship, we, as secular Buddhists, need to understand how the key ideas of the young Marx, Gotama, and Epicurus can help us develop an overall perspective and practice oriented toward human flourishing for the greatest number of people.
Robert M. Ellis’ talks on his book, ‘The Buddha’s Middle Way’
In a series of seven talks based on his book, 'The Buddha’s Middle Way: Experiential Judgement in his Life and Teaching', Robert M. Ellis puts forward an interpretation of the Buddha as a potential inspiration for Middle Way practice, led by practical needs rather than by traditional or historical claims in Buddhism.