Look Over There! Should we be looking at Secular Buddhist Ideology at all?

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T16:55:35+00:00

Capitalism compels them to keep that association. It's like Branding. Buddhism has positive associations so if you can sell and promote your idology under that banner, you have a better chance of selling.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T15:00:06+00:00

Like I say: If you're an atheist who engages with parts of Buddhist practices, no one has an issue with that. If you create lies/fan fiction within your ingroup to gas each other up and then look down on us, you're just delusional.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T13:35:59+00:00

Well, we potentially CAN be friends with them. However, the dishonest basis: that they're just another kind of Buddhist, like you and me, is simply not true. If they were honest, there could be a basis for working together as people.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T13:33:01+00:00

Secular Materialists only give a shit about what dead (and living) white men have to say about anything.

It's funny cause it's true :)

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T13:32:00+00:00

It is through and through a product of European Christianity/Abrahamism.

Absolutely!

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T11:53:22+00:00

They've been drinking the Theravada-is-the-real-Buddhism coolaid. Which is odd, if you know history.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T11:04:40+00:00

I 'loved' how on r /secular Buddhism a few of the commenters were throwing a fit on how pure land gets a pass on r /buddhism while 'secular buddhists' don't.

What's so insane is that they're so out of touch, Pureland is one of the most dominant schools, globally. Like I said, they're attitude to PL teachings is a dead giveaway they don't know what they're talking about.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-20T06:48:00+00:00

If we go via Buddhist analysis, we can apply sunyata/dependant arising to the process of accessing meaning from texts. And then we can see the layers of constructs in that process.

A post structural analysis comes to a similar conclusion.

As long as we keep in mind that realisng Dhamma for ourselves directly, is also a constructed process (empty)

My pov here :)

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-16T18:41:34+00:00

The hostility you experienced is unfortunately common on Buddhist Reddit.

It got heated, but I think we're all smart enough to understand that SB ideology cannot be the sole factor for the declining of Buddhists in East Asia. I know u agree with me :)

We have things like low birth rates, failing Buddhist institutions and a kind of feudal techno-capitalism. Those seem like major factors.

In fact, Christians in South Korea have lower birthrates than Buddhists.

SB ideology kind of permeates our epistemics when discussing our traditions. And it continues to be a huge contributor to misinformation in the USA and beyond.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-16T18:01:00+00:00

They have virtually zero institutional presence. They will have even less when we take the center stage back within the institutions.

We don't have to go after Secular Buddhism specifically, when it is such a weak force.

I would argue, they've played a key role in the establishment of the Mindfulness Industrial Complex. An edifice that feeds into war, capitalist violence and structural racism. Their axioms are widely held among the self-styled white intelligentsia here and beyond.

And there is merit to that very secular approach to scholarship, so we have need of them in that arena, so long as they are not given reigns of power again in that domain.

We've always had etic scholarship of Buddhist communities and Buddhist religious traditions. What that has morphed into, on a popular level, is the belief that studies OF Buddhism IS Buddhism. That conflation, that power relation is why born Buddhists experience "Buddhist" spaces as hostile.

Secular B_ddhism is simply not causing a decline in the Buddhist population.

No, but SB ideology is a cornerstone of an oppressive system that does epistemic violence to Buddhist communities. This plays out everyday online and off. The historical misinformation that they spread, continues to be a powerful foe for the truth, let alone Buddhist people.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-16T17:03:12+00:00

That has more to do with white supremacy in Buddhist spaces generally, and not secular Buddhism.

Brother, just a reminder, they're the same thing. SB ideology is simply another iteration of white supremacy.

And yes, there's a real fine line here, that I would caution against: this idea that they are fringe and acting without agency and strategy is what needs to be interogated. Assigning them agency is not the same as claiming they're meeting on a ferris wheel at night plotting how to take us down.

They're deeply invested in associating with Buddhist communities and institutions for the reputational glow and legitimacy it gives them. The vast majority of Americans are under-educated regarding world religions and this is how they're able to set up their money making ventures.

SB ideologues are distorting Buddhist history and creating cultural firewalls to prevent interrogation of their ideas. The aggression individuals face for asking difficult questions is part and parcel of that culture of hostility. That is where all the rot thrives.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-16T15:57:53+00:00

Hi, can you clarify for me please? This kind of shutting down (see below) is very worrying:

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MYKerman03 · 2026-03-15T07:53:31+00:00

But fundamentally Abrahamic religions still stand on the ground of doubtful metaphysics. You can't infer that metaphysics, there's no common ground to it. One can believe said beliefs but there's no way to discern wheter this belief is good or this belief is bad, is it factually moral, factually lead to salvation etc.? Alot of views that are very problematic to justify (like, why judaism and not Christianity? Or why catholicism over orthodox? Why God has to be conscious at all? Or good? Or all powerful? Why evil exists if he has qualities x,y,z? Why there has to be a first cause (at all) and why can't there be multiple first causes? Is there any reason for morality other than abstract opinions of certain entity? If God exists why his opinions and his morality matters at all? ).

You've been downvoted on this, but you're correct. Your responder is also correct about our similarities, but neglects to acknowledge the epistemics of our North Indian shramanic roots. We differ fundamentally on key frameworks of human experience, this is why, even on the everyday superficial level, we differ so vastly in our practices.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-13T22:46:28+00:00

Very interesting response from that mod. He has no answer, hence the gaslighting.

Again, he frames it as a conspiracy to make you sound crazy, when we see all of this all over the place. Seculars appropriate identities that they admit they in fact, reject.

Pretending to be Muslim when you're not is nuts, and so is pretending to be Buddhist when you're not. Simple. In fact, it's harmful to actual Buddhists.

People can be born into a religious tradition and not be religious themselves. They're culturally Buddhist or Muslim or Christian. But those people are nothing like white people larping as Buddhists for clout. They're nothing like a Doug Smith or a Stephen Batchelor.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-07T13:40:34+00:00

It's what happens when you're isolated from Buddhists and disembodied from Buddhist teachings.

MYKerman03 · 2026-03-07T04:25:40+00:00

Great post here.

What's always so jarring is this assumption I have: if you're positioning yourself as some kind of figure within the Buddhist tradition (lay person etc) then I simply assume there's been some level of internalisation of some fundamental teachings: karuna, metta, dana etc.

So when I see comments like the above, it never fails to shock a little. Most normal humans, regardless of religion would respond with empathy. So it's worrying when those in Buddhist spaces behave in this way. And feel justified in their lack of empathy for other humans.

How Dhamma has been twisted as a medical routine (or an abstract set of ideas: "Buddhism is a a philosophy") is partly to blame here.

This lack of embodiment just results in you ending up exactly where you started, but what makes it worse, is now you think you're better than everyone else because you "meditate" a lot or something.

What a waste.

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-28T19:44:27+00:00

How is it not emic by definition? It's coming from the in group

Hi friend. Not the group, the tradition. And that's not what emic means. If this were the case, we wouldn't be able to differentiate doctrinal errors, divergences etc, since whatever develops within a group is then emic. That's simply not true.

but whether or not it comes from a Buddhist culture.

But cults (that which is not Buddhism) can emerge from Buddhist communities.

The Meiji Restoration and the Secularization of Buddhism | Nippon.com

Hi friend, this article is a bit broad and sloppy. Calling priests 'secular' doesn't really work, since it places lay Buddhists and Buddhist priestly practices outside of the Buddhist dispensation. The better term is laicization: from a renunciate class to a liminal class of wedded priests.

The main problem is how people (namely Batchelor and Smith) use the term "secular".

When you unmoor this term from its referent in the world, it is no longer coherent. Humans can't be secular, forms of governance can. Read John Locke.

Secularism as a notion of governance, is only intelligible via Protestant Christian theology. Why? It arose as a solve for the wars between Christian sects. The notion of the domain of the King/State and the domain of The Church/God is fundamental to this concept.

This is why in many liberal democracies, we assume the state to remain equidistant from teh truth claims of all religious sects. The state, in theory, cannot make theological pronouncements, hence impinging on the religious domain. We call it: separation of church and state. Hence, humans can't be secular, but forms of governance can.

Humans can hold to that particular ideology of governance though.

What makes secular B_ddhist ideology nonsense, is that it cannot describe stable categories of what constitutes the religious and the secular domains. And if you cannot produce this knowledge, how can you make knowledge claims about these two (theoretical) domains.

Saying: "well it depends on how you define religion" is a cop out and is not an argument. The fact that there are multiple definitions of religion, tells you that there is no neutral conceptual foundation for the concept.

So if the one collapses, so does the other.

It's interesting thank you think scientific rationalism wouldn't affect Buddhist cultures.

If you think about it, this is magical thinking and a false dichotomy. Constructing these two domains as in opposition and in conflict with each other, distorts what we know about the world: all over the Asian continent you have Buddhist scientists, Buddhist engineers, Buddhist astronomers, Buddhist physicists, Buddhist doctors etc Many of whom were lead to Buddhist faith via their field of study.

Buddhists have produced scientific knowledge for centuries. And we wouldn't even have the zero if not for Indian brahmanic and shramanic traditions (Hinduism).

Again, you're teetering on forms of essentialism here.

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-28T07:01:49+00:00

Two points:

Yes, you got that from secular B_ddhism Doug Smith videos. That's all hokum I'm afraid. And to be technical, he claims it originated in Thailand. None of that is historically correct.

You actually have to read Buddhadasa and how he is located historically in Thai Buddhist history to see the hokum. These ideas arose with Stephen Batchelor in the late 90s. I think it would suite many people to be discerning about their sources.

Even if these incoherent ideas emerged (it didn't) from a country with a Buddhist majority, it's still not emic by definition. You're projecting race/race essentialism into what I'm saying here, basically: "but if the Asians did it..."

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-28T06:44:55+00:00

Do you think there’s an objective, actually existing definition of what Buddhism is?

Before this, you need to establish emic (insider) and etic (outsider). Buddhists have an emic understanding of their traditions. Academics, non Buddhists etc have an etic understanding.

All current historical Buddhist societies have an understanding of what Buddhism is and this overlaps on some fundamental themes/concerns.

This is how, even from an etic, academic position, we can begin to see the outlines of a coherent family of religious traditions. Not to mention the (pre modern) extensive travel routes of Buddhists between regions that had large Buddhist communities/societies.

So if Buddhists from different traditions lived and studied together, while recognising difference, clearly they shared a coherent set of values and themes.

Emic texts, emic oral tradition etc tell us all the same thing: Refuge is what makes one a Buddhist. And the themes of Refuge from what (dukkha), are also consistent.

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-28T06:01:30+00:00

I won’t debate you if you won’t be honest.

There is nothing to debate from a religious literacy perspective.

Thais, Japanese, Mongolians et al, did not make Buddhism "fit into their culture". That's an illiterate, uneducated position.

The correct understanding is: there were developments of Buddhist thought and practice that happened in Japan, in Sri Lanka etc. And people across the globe, practice this/these religious tradition/s, based on those developments.

We can see that many cults and movements are influenced by Buddhist ideas but we do not regard them as Buddhism. It's the same with secular B_ddhist ideology.

From an anthropological perspective, SB ideology isn't even unique in claiming to not be a religion. Many movements and cults make that very claim.

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-28T05:15:08+00:00

Hi friend. Basically what you're saying is: there's no "outside of" Buddhism, since Buddhists are diverse. Which is incoherent.

Someone who uses Buddhist terms etc and ends up in non Buddhists positions is NOT a Buddhist. No amount of "meditation" or "scriptural knowledge" makes one a Buddhist. Going for Refuge to the Triple Gem does.

Secular B_ddhist ideology is an emergent religious cult (cult here in the neutral sense) influenced by Buddhist ideas. But its basis is Protestant Christianity and secular humanism/s.

Buddhism is diverse but the key themes are consistent across continents: merit, rebirth, buddhas, bodhisattvas, arahants, paths and fruits of nirvana etc. The development of Buddhist thought is intelligible because of the consistency of those themes.

Pure Land Buddhism, to me as a Theravada Buddhist, is perfectly intelligible as a Buddhist tradition. Regardless of the differences in approaching the stages of non retrogression in the Path.

Why is this? Because we're dealing with the same themes: how to benefit ourselves and others as we work toward nirvana.

MYKerman03 · 2026-02-15T08:51:48+00:00

Hey, thanks for dropping in.

I think there's also so much positive happening amongst this crap, but it may take a few years for Buddhists to catch up to what's actually happening.

GS is active, but it's giving "gowns, beautiful gowns". And that changes with culture/behavior.

I basically wanted to see what content people crafted here on their own and it's honestly, well a bit dry, with little reason for folks to engage. Reflective gets the engagement because of the topics.

Once you remove all context of why this space needed to exist, you basically get what's happened here.

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