r/secularbuddhism

I’ve contemplated this question a year or so ago. Here’s what I got:

() Sakkaya Ditthi - The understanding that existence is not in your control. The understanding that there’s a lack of ownership and permanence of phenomena.

() Asmimāna - The understanding that there’s no being “doing” something. It’s the understanding that there’s just phenomena taking place. There’s just biofeedback. There’s no being making intentions and doing actions. In other words, there’s no ego.

What do you say?

I have a very strong tendency for craving for sensual pleasures. Fast food in particular. To the point when I can't resist them, they just feel too good in the moment to not indulge them.

I tried gradually tapering off and not doing everything at once. I have tried being mindful of the cravings that arise, but it's just so difficult to not give into them. I can't detach myself from them.

Every step of progress that I take is followed by two steps in the opposite direction. It's frustrating and I feel like I should just let myself go even though it's bad for me in the long run.

I was depressed, went to therapy, and my condition improved to the point when I no longer need antidepressants to function. I found a job and became functional. Every time things return to normal, I go back to the old tendencies, which lead me back to feeling depressed.

I am exhausted and not sure what I can do. It feels impossible to change.

Whilst I am not strictly a secular Buddhist anymore, I do think key aspects of Buddhist understanding; particularly the constructed nature of self and world, and the way suffering arises in relation to those constructions - can be illuminated through a scientific lens.

I also think such understandings open the door to dharma to a wider audience.

Predictive processing, as a neuroscientific model of perception, seems to provide such a lens. It suggests that we do not passively receive reality, but actively construct models of self and world through prediction. Incoming sensory data then either confirms those expectations or pressures us to update them.

When this is placed alongside the Buddhist account of craving and aversion, dukkha can be understood as arising partly through resistance to that updating: clinging to our beliefs, identities, and preferences about reality when reality refuses to conform.

I recently wrote an essay exploring this synthesis in much greater depth, including how it might help us think about more abstract Buddhist ideas such as karma through a scientific lens i.e. priors transmitted across time.

Curious if anyone has come across this and whether it resonates?

Need help finding zoom meetings

I recently tried attending the zoom meeting that my local temple puts on. It wasn't a good experience but i dont want to get into it. Can anyone recommend a zoom meeting, like specific one that you enjoy or get stuff out of?

Any help would be appreciated

I wanted to share a quick insight with you all today. From the perspective of conventional teachings (the Dharma of signs/forms), the Buddha teaches us that the way to change our fate is to "flow with causes and conditions, do good deeds, and build positive connections with others."

The logic is simple: you plant good "seeds" (causes) to accumulate good "fruit" (results). However, this process can be slow. It really depends on the weight of the karma you’ve already built up. If you're lucky, you might see the benefits in this life, but it could also take several lifetimes to fully ripen.

But I feel like that’s still secondary. What truly benefits us long-term is when our roots of virtue and merit are "full" enough that we finally get the chance to hear the Ultimate Truth of the Dharma. If we can truly accept it, practice it, and escape the cycle of Samsara—that is the ultimate way to change your fate.

（Because English is not my native language, I used translation software to translate my words into English. Please correct me if there are any inappropriate words or phrases. :)）

What do you guys think?

Detatching is hard when when a loved one cries to you daily that they are in pain. Even at the hospital, they struggle to deal with their own situation and they fight it so bad...

How does one stay in the moment, adjacent to such cries? Adjacent to such profound outpour of pain?

Hi everyone! I'd like to get a general consensus on what secular Buddhism looks like for individual practitioners. I understand the textbook definition, but I want to know what it looks like in real, daily life.

A person at my sangha is both a dedicated Buddhist and a devotee of Isha Yoga and Sadhguru. Do you have opinions on him?

I know he's neither secular nor Buddhist, but this subreddit has been so damn good at answering my questions. I figured I could get good responses on someone Buddhist-adjacent. Mods, delete if this is too far off-topic.

I've only read the Wikipedia article on him and a few videos on his YouTube channel. I'm still note sure if he's:

• A total charlatan who's not worth researching.
• A useful source of education, but not someone to follow closely.
• A font of spiritual wisdom who we can learn from.

My sangha buddy leans toward the third choice. I'm inclined toward the first. I'd love to get opinions from people who've read about him or tried Isha Yoga.

Looking for someone with:

• a reasonably old reddit account (2y+)

• experience modding subreddits

• available every or most days to check the queue.

The sub is small, so not a big time commitment. 1-2 actions a day.

Caring about the topic and a significant history commenting or posting may accord preference.

I know that this topic tends to make people angry, so please read till the end before making a conclusion. Having read Foundations of Buddhism by Rupert Gethin and What the Buddha Thought by Richard Gombrich, both of which claim to examine Buddhist doctrine through an academic (non-biased) lens, they all say one thing: Buddhism takes a middle way between claiming that you have free will and determinism. Even the Buddha says that the doctrine of determinism, which some ascetics during his lifetime followed, is incorrect because it cannot be verified through experience and therefore leads to learned helplessness.

It’s one thing to claim that determinism is incorrect because it is false, and another to say that determinism is incorrect because it makes you feel bad. A common objection to Buddhism from Western audiences is that it’s pessimistic. Buddhists usually respond by saying that, in order to cure an illness, you first need to admit its presence. Fair enough, but this principle should apply not only to dukkha, but to free will as well. Or, to be more precise, the lack of it.

Just to clarify, I do not believe in free will even outside of Buddhist doctrine. However, I think Buddhist doctrines themselves can only be used to argue against the existence of free will.

Here is my definition of free will. I think free will is an incoherent concept, and attempts to redefine it (as compatibilists do) in order to preserve the notion of personal agency are ridiculous. If you do not agree with my attributes of free will, then you probably will not agree with the rest of my argument:

• Free will cannot exist if all of your actions are already determined before you make a decision.
• If free will exists, then you could have acted otherwise in the past under the exact same conditions.
• If free will exists, then you can be the conscious author of your decisions and thoughts.

If at least one of these attributes is false, then I am ready to reconsider my opinion. Now, let's turn to the Buddhist doctrine.

The doctrine of no-self claims that there is no soul that is the owner or controller of your experience. Instead, if you examine your experience during meditation, you will find that experience is composed of five aggregates:

• Form (your body, everything physical)
• Perceptions (being able to recognize apple as apple)
• Feelings (raw sensation of pleasure or pain)
• Mental formations (Volitions, thoughts, intentions, etc.). Remember that intentions are mental formations, we will need it later.
• Consciousness (subjective awareness. The fact that you are having an experience at all)

That’s all. There is nothing else in your experience that exists outside of these categories. The Buddha then explains why none of these aggregates can be considered a self. He gives two main arguments.

• First, all of these aggregates are impermanent. When people think about the self, they usually imagine something permanent. We tend to imagine that there is some observer sitting somewhere inside the body, a stable "I" that remains the same throughout life. Even though the body changes, thoughts change, emotions change, and memories fade, we still intuitively feel that there must be some unchanging core behind all of it: the self.
• Secondly, you do not actually own any of these aggregates. In other words, you do not truly control them. The Buddha gives the following argument: if your body were truly yours, or if you were identical to your body, then you should be able to say, “Let my body be thus and not thus,” and have it obey your will. But clearly, you cannot stop your body from aging, getting sick, changing, or dying simply because you want it not to. The same applies to the other aggregates. If feelings were truly yours, you should be able to decide to feel pleasure all the time and never feel pain, anxiety, or sadness. If perceptions were truly yours, you should be able to choose how you interpret everything at all times. If mental formations were truly yours, you should be able to decide which thoughts, desires, intentions, and emotions arise in your mind before they appear. But thoughts and urges simply arise on their own. You cannot know what thought will appear next until it appears. And if consciousness were truly yours, you should be able to remain conscious forever, never fall asleep, never lose awareness, and never die. But consciousness, too, changes according to causes and conditions rather than personal control.

Buddhists deny that this doctrine leads to nihilism or to the idea that you are allowed to do whatever you want. Nāgasena in the Milinda Pañha gives the following example: you cannot steal pears from a market just because the pears are not the exact same pears they were in the past. Even though they are constantly changing, they are still connected through cause and effect:

>“If a man should steal another man’s mangoes, would he deserve a thrashing for that?”

>Yes, of course!

>But he would not have stolen the very same mangoes as the other one had planted. Why then should he deserve a thrashing?

>For the reason that the stolen mangoes had grown because of those that were planted.

>Just so, your majesty, it is because of the deeds one does… that one is once again linked with another psycho-physical organism, and is not freed from one’s evil deeds.

This leads us to the doctrine of karma. You reap good fruits of your karma if you perform good actions, and bad fruits if you perform bad actions - we all know that. However, karma is not some magical cosmic justice system. Karma is simply cause and effect applied to intentional actions. The Buddha explicitly says: “It is intention that I call karma.”

But intentions are part of the aggregate of mental formations, and we have already seen that one of the reasons the Buddha denies that mental formations are a self is because you do not control them. Thoughts, desires, urges, intentions, emotions. All of them simply arise due to causes and conditions. You cannot choose your next mental formation before it appears. The intention to act arises first, and only afterwards do you become aware of it. In fact, what you're supposed to do during vipassana meditation, is to observe how these mental formations arise on their own.

You simply cannot combine the doctrines of no-self and karma while still claiming that people possess free will in any meaningful sense. The doctrine of no-self denies the existence of a permanent controller or owner behind experience. There is no independent self standing outside the causal chain and directing it. There are only five aggregates. Mental events arise dependently. In fact, everything arises dependently. This is precisely how Buddhists deny that no-self leads to nihilism: things still exist conventionally because they are connected through cause and effect. Karma itself is explained through causation. Intentions arise because prior causes produced them.

This is why responses such as “karma just means bad things happen to you, but you can choose how to react to them” do not solve the problem. You cannot freely choose how to react either. Your reaction is itself an arising mental formation. And according to the Buddha’s own argument for no-self, mental formations are not self precisely because they are not under your control.

Also, the response like "But actions can still be guided by awareness, reflection, training, mindfulness, and conditioning." also does not solve anything. Remember, there is nothing besides five aggregates. Everything in that list belongs to the aggregate of mental formations, they arise due to causes and conditions. So your awareness and reflection also arise due to causes and conditions.

Im so sick of the consistent non-answer avoidant defensive dismissive shifting goalposts accusatory behaviors of religious people. I made this post in r/theravada and only got like 2 kinda answers and a bunch of non-answers where they then disrespect me for asking a simple question without any intentions of disrespect.

Please tell me, am i delusional, am i being disrespectful, or is this seriously to be expected of the vast majority of any religious practitioners?

Is there a realistic practice or method which doesn't require extreme dedication for revealing devas or rebirth or kamma or hungry ghosts or anything else supernatural? : r/theravada

Disclaimer: I originally posted this on r/buddhism. Since the topic is related to "Secular Buddhism," I am reposting it here specifically for those who might not be interested in r/buddhism due to the more or less dogmatic attitude expressed there. Because I have also been accused of using AI to generate this, the answer is a clear no; it took me several hours to conduct the research, find the right sources, and finally conceptualize it. If you are already familiar with the topic, feel free to skip it; if not, enjoy the thread.

Hello from Wiesbaden, Germany

“Pragmatic Dharma”

This is something I came across several times, and I have to admit, I was blissfully ignorant of what it is about. To make my motivation clear from the start: this thread is not meant to dismiss or diminish this or any other attempt. Rather, it is to clearly show why it is at best problematic and in the worst case, dangerous.

If I ever had to describe my own approach to Buddhism, it would also be as "pragmatic"; however, it is as rigorous as possible:

Serious study of the different Canons, especially the Abhidhamma.
Meditation grounded in the Visuddhimagga (Vimuttimagga).
Application in real life—not "McMindfulness," but asking: do my deeds represent Dhamma?

Because it is not grounded in any single tradition/lineage, my approach could be called syncretic and eclectic. Furthermore, it requires a solid understanding of Physiology and Neurophenomenology (Varela / Thompson / Metzinger).

In contradiction to this, “Pragmatic Dharma” is more or less based on:

Ingram, D. M. (2018). Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha: An unusually hardcore dharma book (Revised and expanded ed.). Aeon Books.
→ https://www.integrateddaniel.info/book/
(If curious, this book and several other materials are free for download. I honestly appreciate the generosity.)

Education: He received his MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994.
Specialty: He was a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician.
Status: He practiced for many years but is currently retired from clinical medicine to focus on his research and the EPRC (Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium).

His main publications, from the perspective of academia, are the following papers:

Lomas, T., & Ingram, D. M. (2023). "Exploring the Varieties of Meditation-Related Experiences." This is his attempt to enter the "Varieties of Contemplative Experience" (VCE) world pioneered by Willoughby Britton.

Ingram, D. M., et al. (2022). "The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium: A new model for interdisciplinary research on spiritual emergence and emergency."

The "Strength"

His MD gives him a veneer of "scientific authority" and "clinical sobriety." He frames himself not as a mystical guru, but as a hard-nosed scientist/doctor who happened to "accidentally" get enlightened.

Ingram as “Steelman”:

→ The Physician's Perspective: He isn't claiming magic; he claims a predictable neurobiological result of specific sensory training. He argues that he is a "sensory technician."

→ The Transparency: Unlike many gurus, he is brutally honest about his own life (divorces, frustrations, health issues). He claims Arhatship doesn't make you a perfect human; it just changes the "perceptual baseline." This is his defense against the "Arhats must be saints" argument.

→ The Data Advocacy: He is one of the few voices in the meditation world advocating for better tracking of meditation-related injuries, which aligns with concerns regarding physiological reality.

Critique:

Anālayo, B. (2020). "Meditation Maps, Attainment Claims, and the Adversities of Mindfulness." Mindfulness, 11, 2102–2112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01389-4

→ Fabrication of Experience: Anālayo argues that Ingram’s specific method (high-speed "noting") doesn't reveal reality; it constructs a specific type of experience. He suggests Ingram has essentially "trained his brain" to produce the very "vibrations" and "cessations" he then claims as proof of enlightenment.

→ The "Dark Night" as a Methodological Error: Anālayo suggests that the terrifying "Dark Night" symptoms are not universal stages of human insight (as Ingram claims), but rather a side effect of Ingram's aggressive, penetrative technique. In other words, the "Dark Night" isn't a stage of growth; it's a sign you're doing it wrong.

→ The "Old Switcheroo": Anālayo points out that Ingram redefined "Arhat" to fit his own experience, then claimed he attained it. He argues that Ingram’s description of his internal state contradicts the early Buddhist texts (EBTs) so fundamentally that the term "Arhat" no longer means anything in Ingram's mouth.

→ Clinical Irresponsibility: He explicitly warns that promoting these "maps" can lead to "adversities"—meditation-induced crises that are then misdiagnosed by the "Pragmatic" community as "progress."

The rebuttal to this can be found in the podcast:

Guru Viking – Ep73: Dangerous and Delusional? - Daniel Ingram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJiy6EJLsI

My criticism is from Neurophenomenology and is built on Metzinger:

Metzinger, T. (2003). Being no one: The self-model theory of subjectivity. MIT Press.

Metzinger, T. (2024). The elephant and the blind: The experience of pure consciousness and the concept of the self. MIT Press. https://thomasmetzinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Metzinger_MIT_Press_2024-1.pdf

Category Error:

→ Being a doctor does not make one a Neuro-Philosopher.
→ Describing a "Cessation" (a gap in consciousness) is not the same as explaining the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC).
→ Ingram’s "data" is entirely hetero-phenomenological (based on reports), but he treats it as auto-phenomenological truth. So-called “anecdotal evidence” is like “cool story bro”; it should not be misunderstood as anything but anecdotal, which, under scrutiny, is hardly ever evidence.

Before I am criticized for misrepresenting the Ingram approach and his circle, I am very aware of the differences, and I am by no means trying to straw man him. However, in circles like the “Dharma Overground Forum” and its successors, Ingram’s ideas are being taken literally as shortcuts and bypassing "hacks" toward enlightenment.

“Folk Psychology” & “Lifehacks” have their eligibility as long as they are not handled like dogma. The main issue here is that if problematic mental or physiological states are seen only through the lenses of a checkbox list or the "next hack," it can lead to severe states, which are well documented:

The "Varieties of Contemplative Experience" (VCE) Study:

Lindahl, J. R., et al. (2017). "The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists." PLoS ONE.

→ The Gist: This is the foundational paper for modern "meditation harm" research. Britton and Lindahl mapped 59 categories of "challenging" experiences.

→ The Punchline: It proves that things like depersonalization, loss of agency, and executive dysfunction are not rare "glitches" but documented features of intensive practice. The crowd is playing with fire.

The "Meditation-Induced Psychosis" Review:

Lambert, D., et al. (2021). "Adverse effects of meditation: A review of observational, experimental and case studies." Mindfulness.

→ The Gist: This review focuses on the "non-clinical" crowd and catalogs hallucinations, delusions, and derealization triggered by meditation.

→ The Punchline: It highlights that the "valence" of an experience (whether you think it's "Stream Entry" or "Psychosis") often depends entirely on the social script you are following. The map itself may be inducing the pathology.

So, as for me, I find the Ingram material palatable only with a solid spoonful of skeptical scrutiny. Since “Pragmatic Dharma” seems to be larger than I imagined, what are your thoughts on it, regardless of whether you are pro or con?