I've been saying the same phrase at the start of every podcast episode for over a decade now: "You don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to become a Buddhist. You can use what you learn to simply be a better whatever you already are."

Many people hear that and feel a sense of relief. It puts them at ease. It says, "This isn't a sales pitch. Take what's useful, leave what isn't." But every now and then, someone hears it differently. They hear it and wonder whether I'm stripping the teachings out of their tradition, handing them out like free samples at a grocery store.

That's a fair question. It's one I've sat with for a long time. And it's connected to something I've been reflecting on lately as my own work evolves: what happens when we get attached to a label, even a label we chose for ourselves?

The River Doesn't Stop Moving

Here's an image that's been sitting with me. Think of the Buddha's original teachings as a clear river at its source, flowing from the mountains, carrying the minerals of the specific geography where it began. As that river flows through different landscapes over thousands of years, it picks up the character of each terrain it passes through. Through the forests of Sri Lanka, the mountains of Tibet, the rice paddies of Southeast Asia, the gardens of Japan, the philosophical traditions of China. Each landscape adds something. Each landscape also filters something.

By the time that river reaches the modern West, by the time it arrives in our secular, scientifically oriented culture, the water has been shaped by every terrain it's traveled through. It's still water. It's still connected to the source. But it tastes different.

And here's the thing: no one is drinking the water in its "original" form. We're all downstream. Every tradition is. Thai Buddhism carries Thai cultural minerals. Tibetan Buddhism carries Tibetan cultural minerals. Zen carries Japanese cultural minerals. And secular Western Buddhism carries the minerals of scientific materialism, individualism, therapeutic culture, and the Western Enlightenment tradition. The honesty is in admitting that.

This isn't a problem to solve. It's how living traditions work. Ideas evolve the same way language does. English originated on a small island off the coast of continental Europe, but as it spread, it changed. English in Australia doesn't sound like English in Jamaica, which doesn't sound like English in rural Alabama. Nobody seriously argues that Australian English is a corruption of "real" English. We understand intuitively that language evolves, and that evolution is a sign of life, not decay.

Buddhism has always done the same thing. Some traditions emphasize preservation; others emphasize adaptation. Both impulses have played a role. But the teachings have survived for 2,500 years not because they stayed the same, but because they were alive enough to grow, to adapt, to speak to new cultures in new ways while pointing at the same timeless truths about the human condition.

The Trouble with Labels

I've been the host of the Secular Buddhism Podcast for ten years now. That name isn't changing. My approach to exploring Buddhist teachings from a secular, philosophical perspective isn't changing either. I have no interest in the supernatural, not because I think it's right or wrong, but because it doesn't resonate for me, and I only want to speak to the things that genuinely make sense to me. That's always been my lane, and it will continue to be.

But something I mentioned recently on the podcast sparked some curiosity, and I want to explore it a bit more here. I shared that my website would be transitioning from SecularBuddhism.com to EightfoldPath.com. Not as a replacement for anything, but as an addition. A new platform, a new tool, a new chapter.

And in talking about that transition, I found myself reflecting on the nature of labels themselves.

Labels are useful. "Secular Buddhism" as a label has been enormously helpful. It gave people permission to engage with Buddhist wisdom without feeling like they needed to adopt a new religious identity. It created a doorway for people who had left organized religion and were wary of anything that looked like doctrine. It helped me communicate my approach clearly and find my audience. I'm grateful for the label, and I'm not abandoning it.

But labels can also become limitations. If there's one thing I've learned from ten years of teaching Buddhism, it's that attachment to labels can become its own kind of trap. The moment any of us says, "This is what Buddhism really is," we're like the blind people in the old parable, each touching one part of the elephant and declaring it the whole truth. We've stopped exploring and started building a statue from memory. We've confused our description for the thing itself.

When I chose to call my podcast "Secular Buddhism," I never intended it to signal something separate from any other form of Buddhism. For me, the word "secular" was simply a way of describing the lens I was looking through, a philosophical lens rather than a religious one. That's it. I draw from all the different schools equally. I like them all.

What I love about the Eightfold Path as a concept is that it emphasizes action. It's not a belief system. It's a path you walk. It asks you to pay attention to how you see, how you speak, how you act, how you direct your effort and attention. It's about the doing. And that resonates for me more deeply than any label ever could.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Tools

This brings me to the other piece of what's evolving in my work, and it's something I'm genuinely excited about.

Over ten years, I've produced hundreds of hours of content: podcast episodes, books, courses, dharma talks. That's a lot of material. Enough that it would take the equivalent of 27 marathons to listen to every episode. And here's the reality: unless someone has the time to listen to all of it and the perfect memory to retain it, so much of that value remains hard to access. You might remember I discussed something useful in some episode, but which one? What exactly did I say?

So as part of this new chapter, I've built an AI-powered tool at EightfoldPath.com that's trained on my entire content library. It allows anyone to engage with those teachings conversationally, to ask questions, to explore ideas, to brainstorm. Think of it as a thinking partner that happens to have perfect recall of a decade of content.

The Buddhist traditions have a concept for this: upaya, or skillful means, adapting the method to meet people where they are. The Buddha himself was famous for teaching differently depending on who he was speaking to. To some he taught meditation, to others ethical conduct. To some he used stories and metaphors, to others rigorous philosophical inquiry. The method changes. The direction stays the same.

When the Buddha's oral teachings were first written down, imagine the concerns it must have caused. "You want to write them down? But they were meant to be transmitted person to person!" Something was lost in that transition. But something extraordinary was also gained. The teachings could now travel across oceans and survive for generations. Each new technology of transmission, from writing to printing to audio to the internet, has carried the same tension: what's lost, and what becomes possible.

AI is the latest iteration of that tension. And just like those before it, the technology isn't the teaching. It's the finger pointing at the moon.

One Kitchen Among Many

I sometimes think of what I do as writing a cookbook for home cooks. I'm not claiming that home cooking is superior to fine dining. I'm not dismissing the chef who trained for 20 years in a Michelin-starred kitchen. I'm simply saying: most people aren't going to culinary school. Most people are in their kitchens at 6 PM on a Tuesday, trying to put something nourishing on the table.

If I can take some of those brilliant techniques from the great culinary traditions and present them accessibly, that's not disrespectful to the tradition. That's spreading the nourishment. But a good cookbook should also be honest. It should say, "This is one expression of a rich culinary tradition. If it resonates, there's a whole world to explore." It should point people toward the deeper wells rather than pretending the simplified version is all there is.

The secular approach is one kitchen among many. And every kitchen, traditional or modern, formal or casual, is feeding people. That's what matters.

Still Walking

So nothing is being replaced. Things are being added. The Secular Buddhism Podcast continues as it always has, approaching these teachings from the secular, philosophical perspective that's felt like home for a decade. EightfoldPath.com is simply a new space where those same teachings, and the ideas they've inspired, can be explored in a new way.

We're all downstream. And the river keeps flowing, picking up new minerals, reaching new landscapes, finding new ways to nourish whoever's thirsty.

The path continues. And I'm grateful to walk it alongside communities like this one.