Posts Tagged ‘Secular Practice’
Can 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 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…
Read MoreMeditating on the Mud Machine
Ordinarily we begin meditation by focusing on the body, in particular, the breath. This is known as “mindfulness of breathing” and we learn about it at the beginning of the Buddha’s sutta on the Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 10. I use the Ñaṇamoli/Bodhi translation). The Buddha suggests a few other body-oriented meditations,…
Read MoreScenes from a Mindfulness Retreat: Experience
This is the final installment of four. Here are links to the first, second, and third part. It was 6 a.m. on the first morning of the retreat, and after a restless night’s sleep I was sitting on a wooden bench before a still farm pond, examining again my intention for being there. For several…
Read MoreEpisode 134 :: Andy Puddicombe :: Get Some Headspace
Andy Puddicombe Andy Puddicombe speaks with us about his site and new book, Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day. In what ways is Buddhist practice finding new forms in our contemporary society? What would a secular program of meditation look like, not just mindfulness, but also loving…
Read MoreA 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…
Read MoreA 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…
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