Articles
Loving and Trusting Psychopaths
I enjoy listening to Interdependence Project podcasts and have found value in a number of them. The ID Project presents itself as Secular Buddhist in its mission statement. But at least in this blog post by Lodro Rinzler, which I came across when it was tweeted out by the ID Project, I believe it fails…
Read MoreSome Notes on Mindful Dialogue
Mindful dialogue has become a regular element of our Practice Circle exercises. After we introduce our topic for the evening, we break up into dyads and take turns mindfully listening to our partner, and to our own minds and hearts as we try to speak what is true for us in the moment. Mindful dialogue…
Read MoreRegarding "Superhuman States"
Sometimes, although not nearly as often as in later traditions, it seems as though the Buddha of the Nikāyas is a kind of superman. What do I mean? In a few passages it’s as though he did not consider himself entirely human. Some of this has to do with notions that the Buddha and his dhamma…
Read MoreTwo Sides to the Lion's Roar
In his books on the ‘scientific Buddha’, Buddhist Studies professor Donald Lopez picks apart the notion that the Buddha was particularly friendly to modern notions of science. One central portion of his argument involves a citation from the Majjhima Nikāya version of the Mahāsīhanāda Sutta (MN 12). This is the famous “Greater Discourse on the Lion’s Roar”.…
Read MoreAn Anecdote of Mettā and Pain
I’ve been doing mettā (lovingkindness) practice this last month. Day to day it involves spending meditation periods slowly repeating well-meaning hopes and wishes towards myself and others. It started off interesting, since I had to come up with some new formulae for my wishes, but it quickly became rote, much akin to breathing or repeating…
Read MorePresent Moment: Mindfulness Practice and Science
What Is Present Moment? If you spend time on the FaceBook page for The Secular Buddhist, you may have noticed links to podcast episodes that look a great deal like TSB, but are a little different. These are posts about a new podcast we’ve started, similar topically to Secular Buddhism, but taking the next evolutionary…
Read MoreFrom Both Sides: Secular Buddhism and the “McMindfulness” Question
The debate over the relationship between Buddhism and the mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) has heated up recently to a red hot glow. On July 1, Ron Purser and David Loy published an attack on the mindfulness movement in the Huffington Post under the title, “Beyond McMindfulness.” As I write this, a Google search on “McMindfulness” generates…
Read MoreCan a Layperson Attain Nibbāna?
A recent discussion on the SBA Forum started by Arijit Mitra dealt with the question of how far a householder or layperson could proceed along the Buddhist path. This is a question that deserves extended treatment. While we could begin with discussions of modern-day theory and practice, my preference is to begin with the original…
Read MoreOn Buddhist Violence
Buddhist violence against Muslims in Myanmar has been in the press in the last few weeks, with recent front-page treatment in the New York Times and international editions of Time Magazine. While this has nothing to do with Secular Buddhism per se, it’s nonetheless worth consideration. In the New York Times article we read of the…
Read MoreAbout that Label …
As many of you know, there’s a “Religious Views” label on the Facebook “About” page. When I signed up for Facebook several years ago, I was pretty deeply into the New Atheist movement, spending much of my time griping about traditional religion and writing skeptical material on various pseudoscientific agricultural practices with some friends of mine.…
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