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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mike Slott argues that the purpose of meditation for secular Buddhists is to cultivate certain virtues and insights which are crucial to promoting human flourishing in this world, not the attainment of nirvana.
In his 2015 book After Buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age Stephen Batchelor offers ten theses of secular dharma, summing up his overall perspective on secular Buddhism.
Workshops, retreats, meetings and other events of interest to secular Buddhists, and the curious
One of the most valuable sources for Buddhist insights and teachings – from both secular as well traditional perspectives – is the plethora of dharma talks available to practitioners on the web.
When Stephen Batchelor first self-identified as a secular Buddhist in 2012 he said that ‘I see the aim of Buddhist practice to be the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the eightfold path.’
