A living tradition, Buddhism began as a way of working with the difficulties we all face as mortal, vulnerable, conscious beings. Its founder imbued this practice with an ethic of care, and teachings we can use today to interpret our experience and as a guide to full human flourishing.

Since the Buddha's death, the dharma has been expressed in many ways in different cultural settings, and often these border crossings enriched it. But when the dharma appeared in religious guise, it became burdened with cosmic beliefs, its practice regimented, and was used as an instrument of social control, stifling the freedom at its heart.

Secularity encourages a search for the good life in today's circumstances, not as prescribed by timeless myths. As part of the process of the dharma putting down roots in the west, secular Buddhism offers the vitality of the early dharma, free of religious distortions.

Winton Higgins tracks the emergence of secular Buddhism with a focus on today's climate emergency and intensifying social injustice that cry out for radical socioeconomic and political change. The ethic of care that underpins a creative dharma practice, he suggests, calls on us to bring our training to bear on these urgent tasks.

Introduction

Part I Emergence

1. The coming of secular Buddhism: a synoptic view

2. The flexible appropriation of tradition

3. Secular Buddhism: scientistic versus interpretive

Part II Western affinities

4. Martin Heidegger

5. Martin Hägglund

6. Sigmund Freud

7. Peter Watson

Part III The inner life

8. Renewing the practice from first principles

9. Secular insight practice and everyday awakening

10. From goal orientation to honouring process

11. Forms of resistance to the inner life

12. Ask not whether it's true - ask rather whether it works

Part IV Practising with others

13. Sangha - the western dharma practitioner's dilemma

14. Dharmic existentialist ethics in a time of pandemic

Part V Dharmic citizenship

15. Defending our common home

16. Transition 177

Conclusion

References

Thanks

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