Tag: Secular Practice
A Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #3 Consciousness
We come into the world ignorant of the things we do that end up causing dukkha in our lives, and in particular ignorant of the drive for existence of our sense-of-self: that’s step #1: ignorance, and step #2: sankhara. Sankhara is simultaneously that natural tendency to develop and protect our sense-of-self taken to extremes, and [...]
A Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #2 Sankhara
In the last post I offered a fairly plain description of what was meant by “ignorance” in the first link in the chain of dependent arising. It is ignorance of what dukkha is, how it comes about, that it can come to an end, and the way to do that. I said that dukkha is [...]
What Is Secular Buddhist Practice?
We often get asked by traditional Buddhist, and people of all kinds, what is secular Buddhist practice? This is a great question, and I’ll do my best to answer, but I hope other secular Buddhist practitioners will also comment on this article to share any practices not mentioned here. Also, I want to remind everyone that we have a discussion forum that is dedicated to secular Buddhist practice, where people can ask questions and share their practice.
What is secular Buddhist practice? For the most part, secular Buddhist practice is identical to traditional Buddhist practice. In every Buddhist tradition to my knowledge, the following are vital practices:
Episode 106 :: Robert Ellis :: The Trouble with Buddhism
Robert Ellis speaks with us today about his book The Trouble with Buddhism: How the Buddhist Tradition Has Betrayed its Own Insights.
Episode 101 :: Julian Adkins, Anantacitta Tunnell, Dana Nourie :: Secular Buddhism U.K.
Julian Adkins, Anantacitta Tunnell, and Dana Nourie join us to talk about a new website dedicated to growing the Secular Buddhist community in the U.K.
Every week, I get email from listeners to the podcast, and from people who’ve found the Secular Buddhist Association site. Take this one from Michael R. just the other day: “I would like to take a moment to thank you for developing and establishing your website. It fulfills a need I’ve long attempted to satisfy. My interest and practice of Buddhism is strongly oriented along the same lines of what I perceive to be those of John Peacock’s, Stephen Batchelor’s and Steve Hagen’s. However, it was not until I encountered your site that I realized there was a community that appeared to resonate for me. Anyway, I wish merely to express my gratitude and look forward to the SBA’s continued growth.”
Be a Buddha, Not a Buddhist: Introduction to Weekly Practice
Be a Buddha, not a Buddhist is an important concept to me because the real value, as I see it, in Buddhism is not the ism but the practice itself. I’ve realized recently that I’d like to take my understanding of Buddhism into deeper territory. One of the best ways to do this is to revisit everything I’ve learned in the past, to start my practice from scratch, or with the beginner’s mind, so to speak.
Weekly Practice (Impermanence)
For this Weekly Practice we are going to explore impermanence. Don’t lament, “Oh, I know everything is impermanent!” No matter what ideas you currently have about impermanence, no matter how much you may have dug into this topic before, let’s look at it in detail this week. While most of us have a basic awareness [...]
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