community Archives - Secular Buddhist Network

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community

SBN’s online discussion group

The Secular Buddhist Network is sponsoring an online group which meets the third Thursday of each month on Zoom. It’s a great opportunity for secular Buddhists and those who are interested in learning more about a secular approach to the dharma to connect with each other and to discuss key issues.

Dharma EconomiX

Stefano Bettera offers a spiritual perspective on social reconstruction – Dharma EconomiX – that goes beyond the anthropocentric model and focuses, instead, on practices, languages and imagery capable of healing the social and ecological wounds that we face today. Such a perspective provides us with an opportunity for a revalorisation of the individual and of the community.

Healing together

We must rediscover a view of the other that is not dominated by fear, but courageously puts friendship back at the centre, as a sincere opportunity to get to know each other, to compare notes, to build an identity that is the beginning of a process of imagining a new collective identity.

Covid or Co-life: from fear to love and community

As we face the world-wide pandemic caused by the Covid-19 (coronavirus), there is a tendency to retreat to social isolation, fear, and insecurity. In a recent online talk given to the Southsea Sangha, Bernat Font talks about the need to cultivate social connections, compassion and love in the midst of this great challenge.

Touching the earth: exploring a new, secular self-help mindfulness group approach

Touching the Earth groups aspire to treat participants as equals, where no one is paid to lead or facilitate, and each participant takes responsibility for cultivating their own path and for supporting others in cultivating theirs. The basic format involves meditation, journaling one’s meditation experience, and then exploring the meditation in triads.

UK & IRELAND

Check out the secular Buddhist groups and communities in Europe and South America.

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.

Exploring the meaning of community

The community of practitioners – the sangha – is a crucial aspect of the dharmic path for secular Buddhists. But what do we mean by community? How is a community different than other forms of collective organizations? How do we create a true community of practitioners that help each other develop their practice and contribute to a ‘culture of awakening’?

THE USA

Check out the list of secular Buddhist groups and communities in the USA.

Creating a Buddhist community – connections that work

Stephen Batchelor explains how ‘community is not something you join or something that you find. It’s something you create. Community is a practice of … forging and developing connections and friendships and relationships.’

Four bonds of fellowship that help build community

Martine Batchelor discusses the four bonds of fellowship that help build community at a Gaia House talk. What are these four bonds? Generosity, kind words, beneficial help and consistency.

Dharma and community for meditators

Winton Higgins has written extensively about democratic communities and the development of secular Buddhism. In this article Winton offers some defining characteristics of a democratic sangha.

A secular Buddhist perspective on dharmic citizenship

Winton Higgins urges secular Buddhists to be active citizens and contribute to social and political change. Given the crises facing our society, ‘nowadays politics matters like never before!’

Secular Buddhism and democratic communities: sanghas r us

Winton Higgins discusses the importance of not just giving lip service to the importance of community, or sangha, but making it a central part of our practice.

Sangha essentials – creating community & bonding

In the third of three talks given at a day-long workshop in New Zealand in 2019 Winton Higgins discusses the centrality of creating communities or sanghas in the secular dharma path.