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.
Re~Collective: online meetings for people who run secular dharma communities
For over three years, a small group of people who run secular Buddhist communities have been meeting online to discuss a variety of topics, including how their communities are organized and run, the nature of the dharma in our contemporary age, and the practice of meditation from a secular perspective.
Getting started with secular meditation
Ramsey Margolis emphasizes that secular meditation is primarily about stillness and self-observation. When we sit regularly, we become becoming mindfully aware of not just the content of our thoughts but also the emotions and mind states that inform these thoughts.
A preview of After Buddhism: a workbook
Ramsey Margolis explains how Winton Higgins’ After Buddhism: a workbook, was produced as part of the creation of a new non-profit organisation dedicated to developing a secular dharma: The Tuwhiri Project.
Inadequately translated texts can be misleading
In a talk given in 2015 Ramsey MargoIis offers a few thoughts today on the practice of translating Asian texts, and how we discern that inadequately translated texts are misleading us, as dharma practitioners, in Aotearoa New Zealand today.
Reflections for ‘Pluralism Sunday’ at St Andrew’s on The Terrace
In a talk given in New Zealand Ramsey Margolis discusses his path to secular Buddhism.
Reflections on meditation: more than me and my mind
To a spectator, meditation must seem like the most utterly selfish practice imaginable: a group of people, their eyes shut to the world, listening to their thoughts, observing their minds, noting their feelings. How wonderfully paradoxical, then, that when practised consistently it can lead to an marvellous sense of connectedness with all beings, an openness to life, and a delight in generosity.