Posts by Doug Smith
Buddhist Global Relief
We should all be looking for ways to help alleviate the dukkha of the world on a larger scale than just our own minds. But doing so is a much bigger program than sitting on the cushion, one that requires money and coordination. As secularists we would prefer that these projects be done without sectarian…
Read MoreOn Clinging to Views
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck I have a confession to make: I cling to views. When I was a child, perhaps the…
Read MoreOn Supramundane Freedom
In my last post we looked a bit at mundane freedom: what it is, and what it is not. We saw that mundane freedom involved volitional formations (saṇkhāras) within a more-or-less deterministic causal nexus. What made the will free is that it was constituted by our desires, rather than by those of another. That is,…
Read MoreOn Mundane Freedom
Ye dharmā hetuprabhavā hetuṃ teṣāṃ tathāgataḥ hyavadat teṣāṃ ca yo nirodha evaṃ vādī mahāśramaṇaḥ Of those things that arise from a cause, the Tathāgata has told the cause, and also what their cessation is: this is the doctrine of the Great Recluse. Vinaya, Mahavagga, I.23.5 “The most famous statement in Buddhism” — Donald Lopez, Buddhism…
Read MoreThe Footman's Snicker
Go: get a piece of paper. Write down your four favorite possessions. Write down your four favorite pastimes. Write down the four parts of your body you like the best. Write down the four people you care for most. Write down your four best personality traits. Go ahead. Do it now, then come back. I’ll…
Read MoreThe Buddha and Kesakambalī
World’s First Materialist? Secular Buddhism is often described as a kind of materialism, so it might be helpful to investigate what that meant during the Buddha’s time. The Buddha’s references to the ascetic Ajita Kesakambalī are the place to look. Kesakambalī was the first recorded materialist in India, and perhaps the first in history. His…
Read MoreOn Subtracting What You Don't Like
Here’s a tweet I got after mentioning a naturalized Buddhism: Okaaaaay…. couldn’t you do the same with any religion? Subtract the parts you don’t like? It’s a question that deserves more than a 140 character response. Editing Religions A three-character response to that tweet would be simple: yes. Given any religion, one is always free…
Read MorePractice: The Four Strivings
When we practice, we strive to become proficient. The Sanskrit term for meditation, “bhāvana”, actually means “development” or “cultivation”, near synonyms for “practice” itself. Indeed, meditation is central to the Buddhist path: to meditate is to develop wholesome mental states through mindfulness and concentration. In the Cūḷavedalla Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 44.12), the lay follower Visākha…
Read MorePractice: Working with the Hindrances
The first and biggest problems we all have in meditative practice are those constant bothers that the Buddha termed “hindrances”, clouding the clear water of awareness. He counted five, usually translated: sensual desire, ill-will, restlessness, sloth-and-torpor, and doubt. When I first heard these, I wondered, why these five? They sound like a miscellaneous grab-bag of…
Read MoreStrategies of Secular Buddhist Practice
As Ted Meissner and Mark Knickelbine have been emphasizing, practice is an essential part of any Secular Buddhist path. But it took me quite awhile to find my way to a really worthwhile practice. For many years I followed a Zen-based form of what I would term ‘free form’ meditation, oriented around samādhi, or focus…
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