Lecture: Does Secular Buddhism exist? Ajahn Brahmali

There’s plenty of people out there who are super influenced by the scientific model. It’s not like the normal school system teaches rebirth as a fact. But most if not all schools would teach science. And part of the issue is there’s 2 things in science education which gets mixed up and doesn’t get clarified often.

  1. The scientific method, relying on evidences, not just logic or revelation, as akin to kalama sutta. Thus having being taught to look for experiments, evidences, it is very helpful to have independent evidences for rebirth and not have to rely on just faith in the suttas, or teachers (revelation), or just logical thinking about the dhamma.

  2. The conflation of physicalism philosophy into scientific worldview, wherein due to the physicalism philosophy, they cannot imagine a mechanism for the mind or anything to survive the brain dying. The mind is just a software of the hardware of the brain. Thus rebirth as described in the suttas are impossible to believe for one who holds onto physicalism philosophy. The rebirth evidences challenges people to look at data first to inform their philosophy instead of filtering data via their own philosophical stance. Of course, we are guilty of viewing things via the Buddhist lens, but still, at the very least the data do not contradict the Buddhist philosophy, but do contradict the physicalism philosophy. Thus, it is actually not a philosophy anymore, but a testable scientific hypothesis. Physicalism hypothesis has been falsified.

Why do you think that there’s so many secular Buddhists out there? They do not get the exposure to these views, education on how to properly think with regards to rebirth evidences. They end up rejecting the rebirth evidences or do not wish to look at it seriously at all.

Who else is going to promote these facts of nature? We cannot expect those who do not believe in rebirth to propagate it.

PS. Actually, given what’s in the syllabus of schools, it’s all the more important and imperative for all Buddhist teachers to actually include some rebirth cases in our dhamma talks, sharings etc, whenever appropriate, just to give a vaccination to guard the listeners against converting to secular Buddhism, or falling into that wrong view trap. It’s a natural starting point for them to start to see that rebirth is a fact of life, not just some leftover thing in Buddhist philosophy which is unimportant in the project of ending suffering.

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