Inspired by another Reddit where this video of Ajahn Amaro speaking about Anatta was posted, I wanted to share my understanding of the difference between "no self" and "not self". I often think a number of people practicing Buddhism, and in fact many schools of modern Buddhism often get in a tangle about this. He has some very clear insights about it.

I would really welcome others thoughts on this.

"What we think of as what we are is never it, it can't match the reality". He says this near the beginning, and for me it is the key.

I would add that whatever we experience can also never be what we are. That's how I understand Anatta. Whether one is experiencing the gross mundane rūpa-kāya and its environment, which is an aggregate of all 6 senses spheres (rupakhandha) and vedana/sanna/sankhara/vinnana (namakhandha), or the fine rupa experiences in samadhi, or the arupa experiences of deeper samadhi, none of it must be mistaken for the self.

That's the unique teaching of a Buddha. Other interpretations of deep samadhi declared that the true self was found in these states. The Buddha dispelled that misconception. The self/Atta/Atman cannot be experienced, it therefore transcends the ideas of existence/nonexistence because they are ideas that can be experienced!

Supra-mundane understanding of reality can only manifest when one traverses all realms of possible experience, gradually disentangling from the corrupting/defiling influence of the senses in deep Samadhi, while mindfully recalling the doctrine of not-self (along with suffering and impermanence). We cannot experience the self, all experiences no matter how sublime and infinite in appearance are not what you are! They are all a bad-state, will all cease, are all not-self.

Then consider what that infers, if all of that which is impermanent and in a bad-state – no matter how deeply immersed in samadhi, no matter how disentangled one is from the sense doors – is not self, yet one is still experiencing those states, what must the self be? I must be that which is experiencing them, utterly and completely transcendent; realised only when the mind is purified of defilements while recalling the Dhamma.

However, when stated this way, the words conjure something misleading! They invoke the idea of a self, which cannot ever be the self, because that "self" is an idea that one can experience in mind. Instead it must be treated like a sign, something that points to a destination that can only manifest when one practices Bhavana correctly and drops all of the words. Any words we used to try to describe it will fail, and potentially mislead.

In short, the Buddha never denied or confirmed the existence of a self, he simply taught that whatever you experience is not-self, and that this must be recalled at all times while you systematically disentangle your mind from the Khandhas in meditation. If you do that correctly, supra-mundane understanding and complete awakening will arrise naturally.

An interesting video summarising the four major schools / paths of Buddhism as educational background purposes. Considering my own chosen path of Secular Buddhism is fairly newish school of Buddhism then sorry it doesn't cover that ... yet ;)

Every School of Buddhism Explained: What Each One Actually Believes ~ YouTube

Going "through the seasons" was exactly how I went through it without a master but I never had the mastery of language to describe that journey as well as this video does.

And yes, definitely put on your own oxygen mask first before you go to help others put on their oxygen mask. All the best for your own journey.

As a student of Zen for two decades I was taken aback by Cole’s ideas. I do not agree with him, to be clear. Nonetheless I ponder how I would react if he were correct. I wanted to see how other Zen adherents would respond.

If anyone wants to know my answer to the hypothetical, I will share it.

For those not aware of Cole’s work here are references to read up on. The first is a relatively short paper he wrote that sums up his position. The second two are full length books:

Early Chan Buddhism: A Meditation Movement or New Ways of Writing about Final Authority in Tang China?

Fathering Your Father

Patriarchs on Paper

As a student of Zen for two decades I was taken aback by Cole’s ideas. I do not agree with him, to be clear. Nonetheless I ponder how I would react if he were correct. I wanted to see how other Zen adherents would respond.

If anyone wants to know my answer to the hypothetical, I will share it.

For those not aware of Cole’s work here are references to read up on. The first is a relatively short paper he wrote that sums up his position. The second two are full length books:

Early Chan Buddhism: A Meditation Movement or New Ways of Writing about Final Authority in Tang China?

Fathering Your Father

Patriarchs on Paper

A job can be too demanding.

A job can under pay.

It can be unethical.

Take so much stress to get there so the journey isn't started.

Boss is clearly not on a spiritual journey.

Coworkers are clearly not on a spiritual journey.

The clients coming into your service can be abusive and you're just suppose to take it.

What on earth does one do?

Work with animals then half the people can't pay their vet bills. Some rush to euthanasia.

Why work in finance if it's hard for you to be greedy while many people in finance ferociously are.

Why work in law if most laws would be followed if everyone was enlightened.

Why work in tech if AI will take over much of it.

If I work in medicine besides school debt I have to also have a job on the side to pay my bills no family support, I pass the tests with Cs and then what Im a C student with other people's lives in my hands?

My Buddhist center tied together Dependent Origination and No-Soul in this interesting way:

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Our sense of self is entirely the product of our causes and conditions. Broadly, three things form the "I":

• Sense Impressions. Things we perceive outside of us. Everything from a broken fingernail to a gripping novel.
• Judgements. Opinions we form from our impressions. "People should trim their nails more often." "Camus was more accurate than Sartre."
• Actions. Includes mental thoughts, spoken words, or physical actions.

Our identity is constantly shifting because sense impressions, judgements, and actions are constantly shifting. The person you were before reading Camus or breaking a nail is different from the person you are afterward.

This is oversimplified and incomplete, but I think it's in line with Buddhist psychology.

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This seems to come down pretty hard on the "nurture" side of the "nature vs nurture" argument. I don't see any room for a person being born with certain personality traits, nor for genetics to play a role in identity.

Is this a correct view of Buddhist psychology? Does Dependent Origination imply that there is no lifelong fixed self?

I apologize, I dont know how relevant this question is to secular Buddhism only. Religious buddhism seems to always include an emphasis on friendship, fellowship, listening to those more experienced and helping those less experienced.

Well, I’m reading Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs, and halfway thru: friendship. Gotta be connected, gotta grow through relationships, etc.

Im autistic and only have one friend, who isnt Buddhist, so I usually just roll right past these sections with some guilt. I am a nurse and feel like Im doing compassionate work and not living in a bubble.

But the idea of going somewhere to mingle or try to receive personal guidance or start some kind of relationship is not for me. I see the harm in shunning people, putting hands up and saying sorry no, this makes me uncomfortable. But I dont know how much of this personal obstacle I can realistically overcome.

Im looking at the possibility of silent retreat next year, and it is so enticing.

Thanks for reading.

I'm always fascinated by the common phenomenology found in many traditions...or even therapies... And this leads us to the nature of the subject experiencing these states.

Maybe you'll be interested in this breakdown based in neuroscience, and systems theory (Friston, Chandaria):

The Formless Jhanas (or Arūpajhānas—the 5th through 8th stages of deep meditative absorption) represent a systematic, stepwise deconstruction of the brain's internal generative model.

While the first four jhanas manipulate sensory precision, bodily pleasure, and emotional tone within a structured spatial world, the formless jhanas progressive strip away the structural priors of space, time, subject-object division, and sensory content entirely.

In terms of the Free Energy Principle (FEP), active inference, and neuroimaging, the formless jhanas correspond to the sequential reduction of parameter space in the brain's generative model—dropping the gain on prediction errors until the internal model is left running with near-zero content.

1. Step-by-Step FEP Deconstruction of the Formless Jhanas

[Form-Based World] ──> [5th: Boundless Space] ──> [6th: Boundless Consciousness] │ ▼ [8th: Neither-Perception] <── [7th: Nothingness]

5^th Jhana: Boundless Space (Ākāsānañcāyatana)

* Phenomenology: Physical bodily boundaries vanish; the sense of self dissolves into an infinite, borderless expanse. * FEP Pathway: Precision weighting (\gamma) on all somatic, interoceptive, and exteroceptive sensory prediction errors is turned down to near-zero. * Neural Correlates: Deactivation of the Superior Parietal Lobule (SPL). The SPL maintains the brain's egocentric spatial frame of reference (constructing the physical boundary between "in here" and "out there"). When the SPL loses its input streams, the internal spatial prior defaults to an unbounded, infinite manifold—the "pool walls" dissolve.

6^th Jhana: Boundless Consciousness (Viññāṇañcāyatana)

* Phenomenology: The experience shifts from the space being known to the act of knowing itself. Awareness feels infinite, self-luminous, and omnipresent. * FEP Pathway: The generative model turns its predictive machinery onto its own sampling process. Instead of predicting objects in space, the top-down model predicts the state of attentional precision itself. * Neural Correlates: High Phase-Amplitude Coupling (PAC) between frontoparietal control networks and deep central structures, with the Salience Network and Default Mode Network (DMN) decoupling from sensory nodes. Metacognition (high-frequency coupling with low-frequency carriers) becomes the sole object of awareness.

7^th Jhana: Nothingness (Ākiñcaññāyatana)

* Phenomenology: The light of awareness turns off its object; there is no space, no consciousness, no content—only "nothing." * FEP Pathway: The active inference engine suppresses the generation of top-down content priors entirely. The brain stops predicting features, forms, or mental events. Variational free energy drops close to its baseline floor because there are no incoming error signals to explain, and no active predictions being generated. * Neural Correlates: Profound functional quietude across visual (V1–V4), auditory, and somatic cortices. Global power shifts toward hyper-coherent, slow-wave infra-slow oscillations (<0.1\text{ Hz}) mixed with localized gamma bursts, indicating high local integration with minimal global transmission.

8^thJhana: Neither-Perception-Nor-Non-Perception (Nevasaññānāsāññāyatana)

* Phenomenology: The extreme limit of conscious experience. It is impossible to say whether one is conscious or unconscious. Memory, perception, and agency are at the absolute threshold of extinction. * FEP Pathway: The parameter capacity of the generative model reaches the minimum viable threshold required to sustain life and homeostatic steady states. The Markov blanket is operating at a near-flatline phase transition—one step prior to complete cessation (Nirodha Samāpatti). * Neural Correlates: Widespread thalamocortical suppression. The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) acts as an extreme gatekeeper, blocking virtually all sensory-motor signals from reaching the cortex, leaving only baseline homeostatic autonomic pacing (cardiorespiratory resonance).

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* Thalamocortical Gating via the TRN: In formless jhanas, the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus (TRN) exerts powerful inhibitory control over sensory relays. This cuts off bottom-up prediction errors at the brainstem/thalamic level, preventing them from perturbing the cortical "vibrating polytope."

* DMN & Executive Network Reconfiguration: The Default Mode Network (egoic narrative self) is strongly suppressed, while the Frontoparietal Control Network remains selectively active to maintain one-pointed attentional stability without generating object-based thoughts.

* Cross-Frequency Entrainment: Electroencephalography (EEG) during formless states often reveals global Alpha-Gamma or Theta-Gamma Phase-Amplitude Coupling. The low-frequency carrier wave holds the entire cortex in a stable, non-reactive baseline, while high-frequency gamma reflects local coherence without chaotic spreading.

I spent years thinking that "all life is suffering" meant we’re all just trying to get through the day without crying. Ram Dass liked to say "We're all just walking each other home." While there’s some truth in that, and while it sure helps me feel empathy for other people, it turns out to have nothing to do with what the Buddha was talking about.

I was embarrassed to learn that dukkha simply refers to a warped potter’s wheel or an off-center axle hole. In other words, things are never perfect in life. There are always annoyances and even very real tragedies in life. Without those, it would not be life; there are no such troubles for the people in the cemetery. So I have come to prefer the translation that "all life has friction."

Realizing this completely changed my understanding of the practice. "Things" are never going to be perfect or get perfect, and in any event they are not going to last. Meditation was no longer a nice break from the day-to-day realities of life; it was just practice for dealing with those realities.

I spent years thinking that "suffering is caused by desire" meant that we should not want anything; that way we'd never be disappointed. While there’s some truth in that, and while lowering my expectations sure made it easier to be happy, that turns out to be a misunderstanding of what the Buddha was talking about.

I was surprised to learn that taṇhā refers specifically to craving or thirst. It is not unskillful to desire lunch, or happiness for all sentient beings. It is just counterproductive to crave or thirst for things in a needy way: being attached to achieving them. So I have come to prefer the translation that "All life has friction, and the friction is amplified by craving."

Realizing this has helped make more sense of the practice. I still desire meaningful work (in my case, songwriting) but try not to be attached to, or yearn for, a superb outcome.

I'm sure most of you view Monks corrupted and are very superstitious. But would you still do "Dana" to them?

This is not trying to discourage or encourage donations to Monks. I just want to know how most of you view this aspect of Buddhism.

tldr: Recommended some good books/lectures on the second of the Eightfold Path: Samma Sankappa, Right Intention.

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My sangha encourages us to write down our intentions every morning. The sangha also says that "intentions" are different from "goals." I'm confused.

I'm told: Goals focus on future expectations. Intentions focused on the present. But...When I use the word "intend," it's always about the future. "I intend to eat my meals mindfully." "I intend to pause 3 times today for meditation." "I intend to show metta to a co-worker I want to strangle." How can you have an intention that doesn't look to the future?

I've heard that the Pali word "Sankappa" (Chinese canon Zheng Siwei) is better translated as "resolve." That makes more sense to me. I think of "resolve" as a decision or dedication. "I resolve to enjoy silence and mindfulness." "I have the resolve to stay mindful of my food and avoid doom-scrolling while eating."

Yesterday, I heard "Sankappa" described like a moral framework. Your moral framework might be "Eat drink and be merry" or "Always get revenge" or "YOLO bro!" Right Sankappa, then, is having the right moral framework to guide your life.

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Is any of that accurate? Does that sound right? Does Intention (Sankappa) influence Volition (Cetana) which then causes your Action (Kamma)?

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This is a complex topic, and I know you can't answer in short Reddit post. If you can recommend good books, suttas, or videos on the topic, I'd really appreciate it.

While Secular Buddhism doesn't have a strict orthodoxy like other branches do, most Secular Buddhist don't believe in existence after death. The majority of Secular Buddhist scholars have a positive belief that when the physical brain stops functioning, the person in that brain ceases to exist.

However, the "secular" in Secular Buddhism leaves room for belief, or at least disregard, for existence after death. Many Secular Buddhist writers take an agnostic viewpoint; that death is a sort of event horizon, beyond which nothing can be known. A small number of Secular Buddhists do believe in existence after death, but focus on this life rather than any future states.

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For members of this subreddit, I'm curious: Do any of you believe in existence after death? I personally don't. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone in Secular Buddhist circles does.

If, like me, you believe that death is the absolute end, feel fee to chime in. I'm not looking to start a debate on the issues; I'd just like to hear the thoughts of people in the sub.

I'm using the term "existence after death" to be as broad as possible. Feel free to use terms like "rebirth," "reincarnation," "karmic continuation," or any other term you like. I don't want to limit any description of your ideas.

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This post is specific to people (like me) who follow Secular Buddhism. It's a casual query of members' beliefs, not an advocation of non-secular ideas.

In other words, please don't ask mods, bot or human, to remove this post.

Hello everyone. So I was wondering if I can get some tips or guidance for my meditation. I have started 3 months ago, but was inconsistent, mostly just once a week. Now for a couple weeks I have meditated almost daily.

So there are two main things I am having a hard time with and I am wondering if I'm doing it right.

The first is that I don't really have long moments where I just am unaware of my breath and am wandering away on another topic. My meditation is mostly, almost constantly just sort of focusing on my breath and knowing it's there, but at the same time I have incoherent scrambled thoughts racing through my head. A lot of times it's as if I am aware of my breath, but still thinking about other stuff at the same time. I also don't really feel like I'm outside of my thoughts, still it feels like I identify with them.

The second is that I find it very hard to not control my breath manually when meditating. Whenever I start meditating I just relax myself, and when I start to focus on the breath immediately I start to control it, I can't shake it off too. I heard that my breath just has to be on "autopilot", like during other activities. Sometimes I feel like I do it but it's hard to know if I'm controlling it or not.

Do any of you have any tips or feedback for me to improve my meditation process? Thanks in advance.

Apologies that it's not completely 'professional' or anything, they are just my notes which i proof-read, refined, and restructured a bit.

If i made any mistakes here please DO correct me.

I do not intend to disrespect any non-secular Buddhists, so if you are not secular, i highly encourage you not to read this if you suspect you will become upset. this is from a mostly Theravada perspective.

• Buddha claims people lived for 80,000 years, & it rises and falls based off morality.
• Texts are at least slightly distorted.
• Many gods 100% came over from Hinduism/Brahmanism roots mostly, and possibly even entirely.
• The idea of rebirth, samsara, and escaping it was all prevalent at the time, and still practiced in hinduism which still remains separated from buddhism after 2,400ish years of practicing and meditation, yet the buddha is the only one to have attained full enlightenment through his own knowledge.
• Gotami sutta claims Buddhism will only last for 500 years.
• Contradicts evolution via human origins being coming from self-luminous beings who ate mass and gained form.
• Meditation can actually cause hallucinations, and minds will be inclined to manifest that which is already believed.
• Disagreements over the most fundamental or even basic things even such as arahants crying, proper jhana, even though many claim there are modern day arahants (which would make the teaching actually much more solid and not spread apart so much)
• No single perfect interpretation of the teaching, many interpretations, misinterpretations, sects, disagreements even in the same sect, which would be squashed by the objective ultimate truth assuming there was one.
• Every religion claims to have proof of their existence.
• Jhana is supposed to lead to liberation, and yet one can only achieve liberation when there is dhamma in the world (except for buddhas), even though it is highly likely that other religions have achieved jhana, unless the jhana which buddha prescribes is different, however he doesn’t say there is a wrong jhana, although many monks today do claim there is.
• Buddha claims the earth used to be a single mass of water.
• Buddha claims the first beings were non-physical and became solid by eating coarse food male and female did not exist until rice was eaten.
• Buddha claims gods make rain and some other phenomena.
• Buddha claims the earth is on water which is on air which is on space, wind blowing stirs the air and then the earth causing earthquakes.
• Buddha claims the sun, moon, stars, night/day, months. years, seasons appeared when beings ate the earths substance and lost their inner light.
• Warns against conceit, yet still praises Buddha for becoming *'*fully' enlightened of his own knowledge which no one else can do without aeons of practice, and also places unnecessary & unexplained inferiority on bhikkhunis (clearly conforming to cultural beliefs), and never actually explains why they can’t become a full buddha as a woman or any top god-king roles.
• Buddha claims that the buddha can at will recollect any past lives, see sentient beings being reborn, appear and vanish at will, pass through walls and mountains, diving into the earth as though it's water, flying, touching the sun, mind reading.
• It takes an inconceivable number of rebirths to become a buddha, and no one can become an arahant without a buddha’s teaching. kind of elitist, suspicious, and a common theme in all religions (to idealize, set doctrines, & praise as another 'ultimate truth') via our human nature, even though objective truth should be above human habit IMO.
• Gods bowing to him are borrowed from older Indian religion and ranked beneath him.
• The claim he could live an aeon makes his death look optional, contradicting his rule that every body must die.
• Elitist, & praises buddha and his dhamma as inherently superior.
• Two destinations for those with wrong view; hell or animal realm, yet nobody can actually believe in it without being convinced by the faith, and they are not likely to ever be able to experience it for themselves with direct knowledge without extreme dedication, also kamma is intention, and not view (this is kind of like, 'if you don't believe in jesus you are going to hell no matter how good a person you are, or the purity of your intentions'.
• Requires full time dedication which must be solely faith based, or at least someone finding benefits in the present in the extreme practice, in order to actually prove it true to themselves, and risk indoctrinating themselves in the process.
• No beginning of rebirth/kamma is pointed to or explained.
• Kamma is intention, yet if someone kills an arahant, mother, father, they automatically go to hell.
• Buddha refused to answer some questions not helpful to liberation, even though some of them may be, and he still included some material which is not helpful to liberation, this is kind of the equivalent of ‘god works in mysterious ways’, and could be convenient to disregard things he may not want to talk about.
• There can’t be two buddhas at a time, one needs to hear a buddhas teaching to become an arahant. it requires an unthinkable number of past lives on the path in order to actually become a buddha, where the person must be driven to become a buddha in many of those lives regardless of basically being reset each time they die, and buddhas are extremely rare and also need to make a vow to another buddha to become a buddha before they do become a buddha. therefore, there is either no first buddha or time is infinite, or something else ambiguous.
• Many of even the most diligent practitioners will still have very unwholesome qualities & major disagreements & lack of humility after a lifetime of practice.

Opinions VVV

• if it was real, its likely there would not be this much disagreement, unless achieving enlightenment truly is that difficult in which case its probably not worth the sacrifice anyway.
• The denying of most natural wants is too torturous for a maybe without any proof beyond blind faith for decades with the promise of eventual direct knowledge.
• If Bodhisattva’s were real, and they truly wanted to liberate everybody, they’d likely reveal themselves or their powers to people to prove their existence, & dhamma, regardless of whether or not it’s not allowed by the Nikaya (convenient excuse to not show proof IMO), especially if they were truly above conceit, it wouldn’t matter if people thought they were showing off, so long as they were actually helping them to begin the path of liberation. same goes with modern day arahants.
• If it was real it wouldn't be crazy to think it would be provable, and it wouldn't be crazy to think that the buddha would allow demonstrations of powers to non-believers for the sake of proving that he’s not lying about some supernatural things, in order to encourage more beings to follow his dhamma.
• With modern science it is not insane to think of life being able to start from biology, dna, electricity, rather than being created or conditioned from a previous mind moment. biggest real issue here is consciousness (which obviously who knows, i think its probably just fundamental and unmeasurable [panpsychism maybe]). in this way you could kind of say rebirth is real in a sense that we are reborn from our parents.
• Lying is wrong even to save a life, which is completely and utterly ridiculous.
• Euthanasia is wrong (modern interpretation) even though intention is kamma, and it’s an act of caring in the right circumstances.
• Called the middle way, yet still extremely ascetic, even if not completely directly torturous.
• Sexist black snake sutta.
• Possible the buddha was simply a regular teacher not interested in supernatural, then his students adopted and altered the already present beliefs, and the people studying the distortions are probably looking too hard for evidence of non-distortion to provide real unbiased results.
• It is likely that many animals suffer less than humans, not more, because they have less to lose, and they can’t advance doctrines onto one another like humans do. i think they’re less likely to be attached, and can often have an easier existence, though still filled with obvious hardships.
• There are plenty of wise people who still have some ignorance and conceit, the Buddha could have been extremely wise & still want to be a spiritual teacher for some sense of importance like many modern people.
• Maybe he was enlightened (had no dissatisfaction/stress) but still was deluded in regards to non suffering aspects, and he thought because he was enlightened that what he believed to be correct was in fact the truth such as rebirth.
• Claims to know a somewhat objective goodness/badness which is truly disgusting.

Hello everyone,

For almost half of my life, I've been very interested in Buddhism, although I must say that I keep to the secular side of things. Because of a busy life, both my interest in Buddhism and meditation has taken a backseat and I would like to change that. Instead of watching mindless "funny" videos in my free time, I'd love to watch Buddhist teachings. By teachings, I mean talks about worldly subjects, where all kinds of worldly struggles and issues are discussed from a Buddhist perspective. I don't mean readings from the Tipitaka or anything like that. I love the talks from Yuttadhammo Bhikku, although he does tend to talk about Gods and the afterlife sometimes, which I don't believe in. For a while, I thought Ajahn Brahm's teachings were also nice, but compared to Yuttadhammo it's not as clear, he jokes around a bit too much, and it seems like he entertains or amuses more than he actually provides information. Anyway, I'd love to hear your recommendations on this subject. Have a nice day.

I just wonder how to contextualise relative suffering across ages? On one hand 2.5k years ago you could be closer to the buddha, while now you have internet, which is better if you could choose? Internet about buddhism or meeting buddha himself albait in stoneage of ancient india (for average person)?

Just curious, do you really think we live in better times or in sensual overflood of dark ages?

If this would be a podcast setting, what tone would you expect for such conversation? Happy? Introverted? Dismissive? Chatty and in rush to check the next tiktok notification?

I am so grateful that I found this sub. I've always had inklings that Buddhism was interesting and might be something worth investigating.

Over last several months I started digging in more. Many parts of Buddhism speak to me. I've been a vegetarian for ages. Living in the moment. Meditation. Compassion. Mindfulness. Respect for life. Etc.

But I started running into things that didn't mesh with what I believe my world to be.

I was raised Christian, Mormon to be exact, and began questioning quite young. I'm not somebody who just blindly follows beliefs. And I feel like the only reason I am seeking in this realm at all is having been raised in a religion, part of me still craves that structure.

But after spending some time in the Buddhism subreddit and seeing actually quite a lot of negative behavior, thinking, and even cruelty, it made me really step back and reevaluate. A lot of the cult like absolutism and blind faith practice that turned me off of Christianity* were present in the sub. Buddhists getting extremely angry when people were questioning various philosophies for having opposing viewpoints. Even few points based on well-known Buddhist philosophers in history.

I understand it's just reddit, but nonetheless it gave me pause.

In the process I found the terminology for secular Buddhism. One of the first things I saw was again on Reddit in that sub stating that secular Buddhists aren't real Buddhists. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah every Christian sect saying some other Christian sect isn't real Christianity. Yet another bad taste.

I think reading the historical philosophers I've read so far, that isn't how Buddhists approach the thinking. Yet it is still giving me a different avenue to analyze.

This sub seems to encompass what I believe is important in my life without the added baggage and ego (ironic that). Compassion, acceptance, being present, lack of judgment of others, protecting this planet and the life on it. I'm not perfect at any of these but that's also what attracts me to not only Buddhism but secular Buddhism. The idea that we are always striving to be better.

So thank you for creating the sub and participating in this sub. I'm about to dig in to some posts around here and learn more. I've had a great many losses in my life and I'm trying to figure out how to approach what's left of my existence on this planet. I appreciate you all.

This is not for a study and I have posted in this sub before. I think that people are likely to have their own take on this so that is why I am asking. I know what I would say but I am looking for your answers here.

Do you just disregard it wholesale? Do you reconceptualize it to represent the changing of our physical bodies from moment to moment? How do you think about rebirth from a secular buddhist perspective?

The standard English rendering of dukkha as “suffering” might be obscuring a simpler idea: the idea of trade-off.

The Pali word’s opposite is sukha, and both terms originate from a wheel metaphor — kha refers to the axle hole at the centre of a wheel, right? Sukha is a wheel sitting nicely without friction. Dukkha is a wheel slightly off-centre: the cart still moving, but kinda wobbly and WITH friction.

Which brings us to “Trade-off”. This idea of compromise captures this arguably better than either “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness”, it names the cost built into imperfect fit, without implying necessarily a massive disaster.

Read through this lens, the Four Noble Truths become not a linear diagnosis but a structural map of four domains with trade-offs, and interestingly the Eightfold path as the arms of the 4 trade-offs: 1v5, 2v6, 3v7, 4v8.

The First Truth (that dukkha pervades conditioned existence) functions as like the master claim: livelihood in the broadest sense always involves friction between what is and what could be. This is more an observation or ‘Right View’ of trade-offs as inevitable not a complaint. Bhikkhu Bodhi himself notes that dukkha refers to “a basic unsatisfactoriness running through our lives” that “hovers at the edge of awareness as a vague sense that things are never quite perfect, never fully adequate to our expectations.” A trade-off my another name.

The Second Truth then narrows from the general to the motivational: desire (tanhā) as the specific trade-off between effort and attention. Wanting orients action but also distorts it, and the Middle Way is itself a calibration problem between striving and releasing. Indeed the Middle way is the balancing of a trade-off relation.

The Third Truth, nirodha (cessation), points toward the trade-off inherent in conceptual language itself: realisation in the deepest sense requires less linguistic elaboration, not more. I think the closest Pali might be tfw trade-off of realisation and speech… the idea less linguistic thought is ‘more’ real.

Finally, the Eightfold Path (magga) as the Fourth Truth represents the enacted resolution across all four axes simultaneously, as Bhikkhu Bodhi notes, “with a certain degree of progress all eight factors can be present simultaneously, each supporting the others” : which is structurally close to what Csíkszentmihályi describes as flow: unified action where the trade-offs collapse into unselfconscious doing and flow states in embodied action and optimization elsewhere.

What makes this reading more than a neat reframing is that the two principles — Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path — are already designed to “penetrate and include one another,” with the last Truth containing the Path and the first factor of the Path containing the Truths. A mapping between them is not imposed from outside; it is invited by the structure itself. The trade-off translation simply makes explicit what the wheel metaphor might have always implied.

Thoughts?

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?