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Secular Buddhism is concerned with the practice of Siddhattha Gotama’s four noble truths in this world.  It encourages a naturalistic and pragmatic approach to the teaching, seeking to provide a framework for personal and social development within the cultural context of our time.

 Welcome to the Secular Buddhism in the UK website. The purpose of the site is to raise awareness of Secular Buddhist practice and how its development can have a real purpose in our secular society. It is hoped that a Secular Buddhist Community will grow in the UK as a result. Please have a browse around the site.  If you have any comments let us know via the “Contact ” page. For futher information click “About“. Do visit our “Blog” which we hope you will find informative and “Forum” pages where ongoing discussions take place.

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Secular Buddhist practice

Martine Batchelor

 What would a secular Buddhist meditation practice be like?  It would be non-dogmatic in the sense that it would be open to different techniques.  What is important is not the technique of meditation but the two essential components that one cultivates when meditating: samatha and vipassana, concentration and inquiry.  It is vital to notice that samatha and vipassana can refer to the cultivation of something and the effect of something.

 Samatha can mean concentration and the result of cultivating it, calm.  Vipassana means looking deeply but it is also translated as insight, the result of enquiring experientially.  One can cultivate these two in so many ways in the different Buddhist traditions: through questioning in Zen, watching the breath in the Theravada tradition and reflecting on the stages of the path in Tibetan Buddhism.

 I would hope that secular Buddhist teachers and practitioners would see that human beings are multi-perspectival, similar and different from each other at the same time and that no technique can fit everyone nor all the times.  So hopefully a secular meditation practice would be multi-choice and adapt itself to different conditions that they be physical, mental, emotional, or relational.

 At the same time it is essential to cultivate the three trainings of ethics, meditation and wisdom together.  There is inner practice and outer practice.  A secular Buddhist practice would put emphasis on both equally.  Ethics is about how we relate to ourselves, others and the world.  Compassion and empathy do not belong to one tradition more than another but it could be the basis of a secular Buddhist practice in the world with the world.  Compassionate ethics is a challenge of every moment as it is not sacred nor based on rules and regulations coming from ancient times but a situational ethics, which respond to conditions as they arise and pass away.