Secular Buddhism

Secular Buddhism has its roots in Buddhist modernism and secular humanism,[3] and is part of the broad trend of secularization that has been ongoing in the West since the recovery of classical Greek culture in the Renaissance. Many aspects of secular Buddhism are associated with the abandonment of hierarchical features of Buddhist monastic culture among some lay Buddhist practice communities in the West during the last decades of the 20th century in favor of democratic principles of civic association and the inclusion of women, disrupting traditional structures of patriarchal authority and gender exclusivity.[3]

The Insight Meditation movement in the United States was founded on modernist secular values. Jack Kornfield, an American teacher and former Theravadin monk, stated that the Insight Meditation Society wanted to present Buddhist meditation "without the complications of rituals, robes, chanting and the whole religious tradition."[4] S. N. Goenka, a popular teacher of Buddhist Vipassana meditation, taught that his practice was not a sectarian doctrine, but “something from which people of every background can benefit: an art of living.”[5] This essentially treats Buddhism as an applied philosophy, rather than a religion,[3] or relies on Buddhist philosophy without dogmatism. While recent scholarship has shown that such framings of Buddhist tradition were in large part rhetorical, and that teachers such as Goenka retained their traditional religious commitments in enacting their teachings and disseminating their meditation practices, such rhetorical reframing had a powerful impact on how Buddhism was appropriated and repackaged in the context of the emergent globalities of the latter part of the twentieth century.[6]

Stephen Batchelor is a self-proclaimed secular Buddhist who promotes a strictly secular form of Buddhism. Batchelor was a Buddhist monk ordained in the more traditional forms of Buddhism. From his experience as a monk practicing Tibetan Buddhism and later Zen,[7] he felt the need for a more secular and agnostic approach. In his books Buddhism Without Beliefs and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist he articulates his approach to the Buddha's teaching, describes Siddhārtha Gautama as a historic person rather than an idealized religious icon, and scrutinizes typical Buddhist doctrines dealing with the concept of an afterlife.[7][8] In his book After Buddhism he promotes a skeptical philosophical interpretation of Buddhism akin to the Hellenistic philosophical tradition of Pyrrhonism. Batchelor suspects that Pyrrho learned some Buddhism while Pyrrho was in India as part of Alexander the Great's conquest and that Pyrrhonism may reflect the skepticism of Early Buddhism before Buddhism fell into dogmatism.[9]

Unlike the various kinds of Buddhist modernism, which tend to be modifications of traditional schools of Buddhist thought and practice in the light of the discourses of modernity, secular Buddhism is founded on a reconfiguration of core elements of the dharma itself.[10] To this end it seeks to recover the original teachings of Siddhattha Gautama, the historical Buddha, yet without claiming to disclose "what the Buddha really meant". Rather, it interprets the early canonical teachings in a way that draws out their meaning in the Buddha's own historical context (the culture of the Gangetic plains in the fifth century BCE) while demonstrating their value and relevance to people living in our own time. Both aspects of this interpretation are literally "secular" in that they evoke the Latin root word saeculum – a particular age or generation. The ethos of the movement is captured in Stephen Batchelor's Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.[11]

Secular Buddhism proposes metaphysical beliefs and soteriology of Indian religious culture be left behind. This culture saw human life as an irredeemable realm of suffering, from which one should seek transcendence in an enduring beyond-human condition – a stance that virtually all Buddhist schools, as well as Hinduism and Jainism, perpetuate. Secular Buddhism, on the other hand, seeks to impart the Buddha's teaching as a guide to full human flourishing in this life and this world. In adopting a post-metaphysical philosophy, it parts company with existing religious forms of Buddhist orthodoxy, which have evolved since the Buddha's death. Instead, it aligns itself with today's post-metaphysical philosophy, not least phenomenology, so finding itself on a convergent path with similar movements in radical Christian theology, found in the work of thinkers such as Don Cupitt[12] and Gianni Vattimo.[13]

Secular Buddhism rejects power structures legitimated by the metaphysics of orthodox Buddhist belief.[14] It questions notions of spiritual progress based on standardized prescriptions for meditation practice, as well as the idea that Buddhist practice is essentially concerned with gaining proficiency in a set of meditative techniques endorsed by the authority of a traditional school or teacher.[15][16] Instead, secular Buddhism emphasizes a praxis, encouraging autonomy and equally encompassing every aspect of one's humanity, as modeled by the noble eight-fold path (right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration). Such an approach is open to generating a wide range of responses to specific individual and communal needs, rather than insisting on there being "one true way" to "enlightenment" valid for all times and places.

• Batchelor, Stephen (1998), Buddhism without Beliefs, Riverhead Books, ISBN 1-57322-656-4
• Batchelor, Stephen (2015), After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300205183
• Harris, Sam (2014), Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1451636017
• Payne, Richard (2021), Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808896
• Stuart, Daniel M. (2020), S.N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808186
• Ward, Tim (1995), What the Buddha Never Taught, Celestial Arts, ISBN 0-89087-687-8
• Wright, Robert (2017), Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781439195468

• Secular Buddhism in Tricycle's Buddhism for Beginners series