What is Secular Buddhism?
Secular Buddhism is a modern, western movement within Buddhism that leans toward an “exclusive humanism” that rejects “superhuman agencies and supernatural processes” and religious transcendence. It is a ‘this-worldly’ practical and ethical philosophy, focused on the value of the dharma for and in this life, with secular Buddhists skeptical of or rejecting supernatural entities or processes (e.g,. rebirth) in traditional versions of Buddhism. The Buddha is seen as an historical person, not a God-like figure.
Secular Buddhism seeks to return to the roots of the Buddhist tradition and rethink Buddhism from the ground up, excavating two fields opened up in the past century by modern translators and scholars. Rather than simply reforming existing Asian Buddhist traditions, it represents an attempt to extract core teachings that address suffering and ethical living while dispensing with cosmological and metaphysical elements inherited from ancient Indian culture.
A secular approach to the dharma emphasizes the pragmatic and ethical dimensions of Buddhism rather than a set of metaphysical beliefs. The Four Noble Truths are reframed not as metaphysical assertions but as tasks for human flourishing. Practice is concerned with responding as sincerely and urgently as possible to the suffering of life in this world, aiming not for the attainment of a final nirvana but rather the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the Eightfold Path here on earth.
Origins & Lineage
Secular Buddhism mainly grew from modernizing trends in Theravāda Buddhism, now common in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma, where in response to Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century, some Theravāda leaders shared monastic meditation and teaching with lay people in modernized forms, laying the foundation for what David McMahan calls Buddhist modernism.
After studying with Theravāda teachers in India, Thailand, and Myanmar in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jack Kornfeld, Christina Feldman, Sharon Salzberg, Christopher Titmuss, Joseph Goldstein, and others brought these teachings to the English-speaking world, seeking to make the dharma more relevant and downplaying monastic hierarchy, patriarchy, and ritual in favor of a lay-oriented, psychologically informed approach, which became known as insight meditation.
Stephen Batchelor has been vitally important in the development of a secular Buddhist trend, beginning with his groundbreaking work, Buddhism Without Beliefs, published in 1997, seeking to retrieve the teachings of Gotama, the historical Buddha, while bypassing their later religious appropriation and scraping away the cultural accretions of traditional forms of Buddhism. Batchelor published After Buddhism in 2015 and Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World in 2017, both by Yale University Press.
When Stephen Batchelor first self-identified as a secular Buddhist in 2012 he said that ‘I see the aim of Buddhist practice to be the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the eightfold path.’ The term has been around for maybe 20 years.
How It’s Practiced
Secular Buddhists can and do practice meditation in a variety of ways, but there is no secular Buddhist meditation practice per se; instead, secular Buddhists bring a secular outlook and orientation to existing forms of meditation practice. These include vipassana (insight meditation), Zen practices like zazen, metta (loving-kindness meditation), and reflective meditation.
In meditation, practitioners cultivate the capacity to be fully attentive to embodied human experience, recognizing its contingent, complex and unsatisfactory aspects, as a means of becoming less reactive, and as they develop their meditative practice, experience more and more the wonder and mystery of life, gaining existential awareness of the “everyday sublime”, the sense in which life is so precious and mysterious.
The practice framework typically emphasizes the ethical precepts of the Eightfold Path—right speech, right action, right livelihood, alongside meditation and wisdom. Secular Buddhists believe that we need not only to transform ourselves but to create a society which promotes the flourishing of all.
Based on analysis of the relevant Pali texts and the line of interpretation developed by the English-born Buddhist monk Ñāṇavīra Thera in the 1960s, Stephen Batchelor has retrieved The Four Noble Truths as a fourfold task, with Gotama’s teachings about dukkha not as truths to be believed, but injunctions to transform our lives and promote human flourishing in this world.
Secular Buddhism Today
Secular Buddhism is not a formal sect or even necessarily a movement; therefore, the phenomenon includes a continuum from highly and vocally secular to largely secular but still having prominent Buddhist elements. Practitioners encounter it through various channels:
Books and Teachers: Stephen Batchelor (1953-present) is the most prominent of the advocates for secularized Buddhism, outlined in his books Buddhism without Beliefs and Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. The retreats led by the late SN Goenka (1924-2013), which continue under the name Vipassana Meditation, offer meditation practice stripped down to its most basic elements without any doctrine or ritual, and the atheist and rationalist thinker and podcaster Sam Harris also promotes secular practice, as conveyed in his book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion.
Mindfulness Programs: In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn created Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, which was originally a hospital-based program to treat pain, and MBSR gave birth to a number of similar eight-week meditation programs that used mindfulness and other practices but did not make reference to Buddhism.
Retreats and Courses: Stephen Batchelor leads secular Buddhist retreats worldwide and is a founding member of Bodhi College. Bodhi College offers extended study programs, online courses, and residential retreats examining the Buddha’s earliest teachings from a modern-day perspective. The Secular Buddhist Network provides free online courses and facilitates local and online meditation groups.
Common Misconceptions
It’s Not Simply “Buddhism Lite”: Secular Buddhism is not just another modernist reconfiguration of a traditional form of Asian Buddhism, neither a reformed Theravada Buddhism, a reformed Tibetan tradition, a reformed Nichiren school, a reformed Zen lineage nor a reformed hybrid of some or all of the above; it is more radical than any of these: it seeks to return to the roots of the Buddhist tradition and rethink Buddhism from the ground up.
It’s Not Anti-Religious Per Se: Secularity is often seen as anti-religious, but this is only one meaning; here, secularity means focusing on life in this saeculum—the time we live in, with its challenges and opportunities, involving doubting “enchanted” truth claims, especially about supernatural phenomena or beings.
It’s Not Without Ethical Grounding: Critics sometimes claim secularization removes Buddhism’s ethical basis. However, secular Buddhism emphasizes ethical conduct grounded in the Eightfold Path, though based on present-life consequences rather than karma across lifetimes.
It’s Not Uniform: While all secular Buddhists share a skeptical view of the supernatural deities and processes of traditional Buddhism (e.g. rebirth), there is a wide range of views among secular Buddhists concerning various beliefs, perspectives and practices; even though there is no secular Buddhist orthodoxy, all secular Buddhists share a framework for a more mindful and compassionate life.
It Faces Legitimate Criticism: Batchelor contrasts Secular Buddhism with groups that retain an ambivalent relationship with inherited dogmas and hierarchies, noting that for movements to be considered participants in secular Buddhism, they must confront and rearticulate the traditional doctrines of karma, rebirth, heavens, hells, and supernormal powers. Traditional Buddhists question whether teaching that sets aside repeatedly stated core doctrines can legitimately represent the Buddha’s teaching. The “McMindfulness” critique argues that extracting mindfulness from its context can strip it of ethical and wisdom foundations.
How to Begin
Read Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997) by Stephen Batchelor—the foundational text that introduced secular Buddhism to a wide audience. It’s concise (127 pages) and directly addresses what Buddhism can offer without requiring metaphysical commitments.
Try a Mindfulness Course: Many people enter through Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or similar programs offered in hospitals, community centers, and online.
Explore Online Resources: The Secular Buddhist Network (secularbuddhistnetwork.org) offers free courses, podcasts, articles, and online meditation groups for beginners.
Attend a Secular Dharma Retreat: Bodhi College and teachers like Stephen and Martine Batchelor offer residential and online retreats focused on early Buddhist teachings in contemporary context.
Join a Local Sangha: Insight Meditation centers often welcome secular practitioners, emphasizing meditation and practical application over religious ritual. Check for local sitting groups that describe themselves as non-denominational or secular.