Why I Am a Secular Buddhist

I. Buddhist philosophy encourages free thinking and the primacy of experience as a validity criterion for accept proclaimed truths and rejects appeal to the authority of holy scriptures (even Buddhists scriptures, vide Kalama Sutta), which can produce fanaticism, dogmatism and intolerance.

II. We don't have substantial scientific evidence to support traditional Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation or any other supernatural claim. According to Kalama Sutta, we don't need to accept them.

III. Cognitive scientists have found that 95% of our decisions, emotions, actions and behaviours are governed by the subconscious. Repetitive statements or mantras is an effective Buddhist psychological technique for the transformation of bad habits rooted in the subconscious, positively stimulating our personal development.

IV. Traditional Buddhist meditation already has a compelling scientific endorsement. Meditation shuts down stress, controls anxiety, strengthens the immune system, increases the density of grey matter in the hippocampus, positively alters DNA, promotes emotional health, improves self-awareness, increases the ability to concentrate, reduces age-related memory loss, improves chronic pain, controls blood pressure, decreases heart rate and improves sleep. Also, mindfulness meditation can be combined with physical activities such as walking or running to further strengthen physical and mental health.

V. Scientific studies suggest that optimism is associated with longevity and that excessive pessimism or negative thoughts can cause illness (which can kill) through the so-called "nocebo effect". The skill acquired by the practice of mindfulness can be used as an antidote against adherence to conditioning negative patterns of thinking, beliefs, emotional reactions and behaviours.

VI. The Buddhist emphasis on do worthy ethical actions, i. e., actions appropriate to the common good, is one of the pillars of Buddhist philosophy and it can be very well done without appealing to the metaphysical implications, like the traditional metaphysical intersection between karma and rebirth, which extrapolate our current scientific knowledge.

VII. Modern science is based on the Cartesian epistemological subject-object dichotomy. Such dichotomy causes a negative psycho-social sensation of individual isolation, and "spiritual desert", which in Philosophy and Sociology is known as "disenchantment of the world". This problem can be overcome by the Buddhist epistemological theory of non-duality and your subject-object interconnection.