Secular Buddhism
In 1992, a quiet revolution began in Western meditation centers. It did not start with a grand ceremony or a new temple. Instead, it started when practitioners stopped believing in rebirth and supernatural powers. They asked if the core of Buddhism could survive without gods, ghosts, or cosmic cycles. This movement calls itself secular Buddhism, agnostic Buddhism, or naturalistic Buddhism. It leans toward exclusive humanism that rejects superhuman agencies and supernatural processes. The goal is full human flourishing within this life alone.
Winton Higgins describes how this approach departs from two aspects of ancestral Buddhism. These are enchanted truth claims involving super-human transcendence and monasticism as a metahistorical authority. Secular Buddhism questions implicit pre-ontological assumptions about culture and development stages. Charles Taylor noted that before the Reformation, Christians lived in an Ancient Regime of self-evident truths. The Reformation changed this fabric by questioning superstitions and developing interiority. Secularity is not just science triumphing but a change within religious frameworks regarding God and humanity.
The period between 1800 and 1960 saw mobilization of religious institutions. A growing number of denominations emerged alongside individuation of conscience. The 1960s drastically altered the cultural landscape by sacralizing individual authenticity at the expense of communal integration. Spiritual seekers now choose from many options rather than accepting one true faith. Buddhism established in the West fits both premodern forms and modernized lay communities. These avoid issues like the status of the monastic norm and incompatibility with Western eudaimonic values.
Buddhist modernism arose in Sri Lanka during the 19th century. Leaders there began modernizing Buddhism along Protestant lines to resist western colonial missionary activism. They made meditation practice and canonical texts available for lay audiences while keeping traditional institutions intact. This form of resistance spread quickly to Japan, Burma, Thailand, and other Asian countries. It challenged Christianity on perceived incompatibility with scientific rationalism. The movement presented itself as a scientific religion compatible with Western Romantic reactions against pure rationalism.
This modernized version gained traction in the West since the 1960s. It maintains a mosaic of disparate canons, doctrines, local social practices, and folkways. Buddhist modernism inherits discourses of modernity including Protestantism, scientific rationalism, and Romanticism. These establish two thematic emphases: a world-affirming stance valuing earthly existence over otherworldly bliss, and a shift toward interiority and individual introspection. Yet it also inherits ancestral Buddhism's enchanted canons and belief in rebirth.
Two persistent naiveties exist within this modernism regarding tradition and power structures. Respect for tradition often treats it as an unchanging source of truth rather than historical context. Monastic institutions maintain unquestioned power structures allied with prevailing political orders. Theravada Buddhism exemplifies this by giving exclusive monastic status to male monks. Higgins identifies transcendence versus immanence as another critical issue in rethinking traditional and modernized forms.
Higgins points to Martha Nussbaum's Homer's Spirit from 1990 as a key reference point. She argues against aspirations to leave behind constitutive conditions of humanity entirely. This contrasts with internal transcendence described as bewildered human grace coming from fine-tuned attention to life. Writing in 2012, Higgins noted missing elaborations on the ultimate aim of dharma practice but found similar stances in Stephen Batchelor's writings. To fully accept the human condition means confronting finitude. Classical Greek mythology locates dignity in exercising agency despite unpredictable impacts on life.
Heidegger pleaded for being-toward-death as part of his theory of embodied human agency under Dasein. Secular Buddhism shares strong affinity with phenomenology through figures like Nanavira Thera and Stephen Batchelor. Both were informed by Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. They created a conceptually rich post-metaphysical meeting point for ancient and modern thought. Phenomenology returns us to embodiment previously lost to religious systems that excarnated humans according to Taylor. Earliest Buddhist teachings emphasize immediacy of embodied conscious experience during awakening processes.
This approach avoids gladiatorial truth-claims battling endlessly in noisy arenas. It focuses instead on how we exist within our bodies and environments. The movement seeks to recover original teachings while acknowledging cultural contexts. It interprets texts in present-day settings rather than treating them as timeless truths. This contextual historical view sees discourses as responses to specific eras.
Ñānavīra Thera, born Harold Edward Musson between 1920 and 1965, was an English Theravāda monk ordained in Sri Lanka in 1950. His work Notes on Dhamma later appeared alongside letters in Clearing the Path published by Path Press. These writings influenced Stephen Batchelor who recognized a like-minded spirit in him. Nanavira interpreted dependent origination as applying only to sufferings associated with one's present existence. He challenged orthodox Theravāda applications involving repeated births across lifetimes.
S. N. Goenka lived from 1924 until 2013 and taught Vipassana meditation as something benefiting people regardless of background. Born in Burma, he studied under Sayagyi U Ba Khin. Goenka framed his practice not as sectarian doctrine but as an art of living applicable to all. Recent scholarship shows such framings were largely rhetorical since teachers retained traditional religious commitments. Nevertheless, this repackaging had powerful impact during emergent globalities of the late twentieth century.
Jack Kornfield founded the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts along with Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg starting in 1976. The center aimed to present Buddhist meditation without rituals, robes, chanting, or entire religious traditions. Gil Fronsdal prefers calling his teachings Naturalistic Buddhism instead of secular. He questions cosmology including pure lands and hells while excluding supernatural elements from Pali Canon insights. John Kabat-Zinn developed Mindfulness-based stress reduction programs beginning in 1979 that drew wider attention through his 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living.
Higgins criticizes insight meditation practice as technical and formulaic. He argues it deflects inward probes because actual meditative experience falls outside templates designed for rejection. Much arising thought gets dismissed as not meditation itself. Inclusion in cognitive behavioral therapy leaves intricacies of patients' lives unexamined according to Higgins. It becomes conditioning aiming at mental hygiene suppressing symptoms rather than examining subjectivity fully.
Magid and Siff question notions of spiritual progress based on standardized prescriptions for meditation practice. They challenge ideas that Buddhist practice essentially concerns gaining proficiency in techniques endorsed by authority of traditional schools or teachers. These critiques suggest formulaic approaches fail as vehicles for modern interiority development. Critics argue such methods ignore individual complexity and subjective depth inherent in human experience.
The movement faces scrutiny regarding its ability to address deeper psychological needs through rigid frameworks. Detractors claim standardization reduces rich traditions into mere symptom management tools. This limits potential for genuine transformation beyond surface-level stress reduction. The tension remains between structured instruction and organic exploration of consciousness.
Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition edited by Richard K. Payne contains articles critically assessing secularization impacts. Payne places Secular Buddhism in socio-historical categories opposing traditional forms directly. Modern progressive movements contrast sharply with bygone eras represented by orthodox branches. While Payne's compilation serves as published resource evaluating Buddhist secularization, detractors assert it misrepresents advocates for Secular Buddhism accurately.
Payne's review appeared three years before Tate's Lotus-based version publication lacking assessment of Bhim Rao Ambedkar's socially-engaged variant. Stephen Batchelor contrasts Secular Buddhism with groups retaining ambivalent relationships with inherited dogmas like Soka Gakkai or Shambhala centers. He argues these must confront underlying worldviews still embedded cosmology and metaphysics from ancient India despite reduced public religiosity displays.
Batchelor promotes skeptical philosophical interpretation akin to Hellenistic Pyrrhonism tradition. He suspects Pyrrho learned some Buddhism during Alexander the Great's conquest reflecting Early Buddhism skepticism before falling into dogmatism. Critics maintain that true engagement requires confronting karma, rebirth, heavens, hells, supernormal powers fundamentally rather than merely reducing outward expressions of faith.
Common questions
What is Secular Buddhism and when did it begin in the West?
Secular Buddhism began as a quiet revolution in Western meditation centers in 1992. This movement rejects rebirth, supernatural powers, gods, ghosts, and cosmic cycles to focus on full human flourishing within this life alone.
Who founded Secular Buddhism and what are its key figures?
No single person founded Secular Buddhism but Stephen Batchelor and Winton Higgins describe its core principles while Jack Kornfield established the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts in 1976. Other key figures include Harold Edward Musson who became the monk Nanavira Thera in 1950 and Bhim Rao Ambedkar who lived between 1891 and 1956.
How does Secular Buddhism differ from traditional Theravada Buddhism regarding monasticism?
Secular Buddhism questions implicit pre-ontological assumptions about culture and development stages by rejecting monasticism as a metahistorical authority. Traditional Theravada Buddhism gives exclusive monastic status to male monks whereas secular approaches avoid issues like the status of the monastic norm and incompatibility with Western eudaimonic values.
What historical period saw the mobilization of religious institutions that influenced modern Buddhism?
The period between 1800 and 1960 saw the mobilization of religious institutions alongside the individuation of conscience. The 1960s drastically altered the cultural landscape by sacralizing individual authenticity at the expense of communal integration which allowed spiritual seekers to choose from many options rather than accepting one true faith.
Why do critics argue that standard meditation practices fail to address deeper psychological needs?
Critics argue that standard meditation practices become technical and formulaic tools for mental hygiene that suppress symptoms rather than examining subjectivity fully. Magid and Siff question notions of spiritual progress based on standardized prescriptions while Higgins claims actual meditative experience falls outside templates designed for rejection.