Expanding Mind

A talk with secular Buddhist author and teacher Stephen Batchelor about the problem with religion, the aesthetics of the dharma, and why worries about McMindfulness are overstated.

Stephen’s latest book, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (Yale, 2015), is perhaps my favorite of his many excellent books. Based on a close reading of Pali sources, it is at once a vivid reframing of the Buddha’s life and original message and a canny, heartfelt re-awakening of that vision for today’s post-religious world.