arhant – Dharmata

For my mother, Carole Watkin (1934-2009)

Introduction

Historical Background and Doctrinal Roots

The vision of Universal Buddhism does not arise in a vacuum. It emerges from a long and intricate history — a confluence of traditions, events, and revelations that spans millennia. Understanding this background helps us appreciate not only what Universal Buddhism affirms, but also why it affirms these things, and how it positions itself within the unfolding of the Teaching across the ages.

The Ancient Roots

The earliest strata of Buddhist teaching, as preserved in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon, offers us the austere, uncompromising voice of a spiritual revolution. In the dusty towns and forest groves of the Gangetic plain, the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, taught the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the law of Interconnectedness. His teaching cut against the grain of the ritualism and metaphysical speculation of his time, offering a practical path to the cessation of suffering.

But the Buddha did not arise out of nothing. His teaching was born in dialogue — and sometimes in tension — with the spiritual culture of ancient India. The śramaṇa movement, of which he was a part, was itself a protest against the dominant Brahmanical orthodoxy. Yet the Buddha was not alien to that culture. Concepts like karma, rebirth, meditation, and liberation were already in the air; what the Buddha did was to strip them of metaphysical excess and reorient them toward ethical and experiential realization.

Expansion into the Mahayana

Centuries later, in the bustling cities and monastic universities of India, a new voice arose within the order: the voice of the Mahayana. The Mahayana discourses did not reject the earlier teachings, but they reframed them within a vaster vision — one in which the highest aspiration was not individual liberation alone, but the Buddhahood of all beings. Here, the figure of the bodhisattva took centre stage: a being who vows to postpone final emancipation until all sentient beings are liberated – universal Buddhahood.

The Mahayana sutras — the Lotus Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Prajñāpāramitā corpus, and many others — introduced a profound emphasis on emptiness (śūnyatā), the perfection of wisdom, and the boundless compassion that springs from realizing the non-separation of self and other. These discourses also opened the door to vast cosmological visions, populated by innumerable Buddhas and bodhisattvas active in countless worlds.

The Vajrayana and the Tantric Vision

In the highlands of Tibet and the monasteries of northern India, another flowering occurred: the Vajrayana, or Diamond Vehicle. This path drew on Mahayana philosophy but added the esoteric methods of Tantra — symbolic rituals, deity yoga, mantra, mandala, and the transformation of passion and ignorance into wisdom.

Here, the principle of skilful means reached a new intensity: every experience, every emotion, every aspect of body, speech, and mind could become a vehicle to enlightenment when embraced with right view. The Vajrayana also preserved teachings like Dzogchen and Mahamudra, which point directly to the nature of mind beyond all elaboration.

Terma and the Timeless Transmission

Within Tibetan Buddhism, we encounter the concept of terma — teachings deliberately concealed, whether in physical places or within the minds of disciples, to be revealed at a future time when they would be most needed. The tertöns, the discoverers of these treasures, function as bridges between centuries, retrieving wisdom from the deep storehouse of the Teaching and presenting it anew.

This principle — that the Teaching can adapt, conceal, and reappear according to the needs of beings — is central to Universal Buddhism. It reminds us that truth is not frozen; it is living, dynamic, and ever responsive.

The Western Transmission

In the modern era, the Teaching has journeyed far from its Indian birthplace. It has crossed oceans, mingled with scientific rationalism, encountered Christianity, and entered into dialogue with psychology, philosophy, and social activism. In the West, Buddhists have come from two directions: immigrants carrying their ancestral traditions, and seekers adopting Buddhist practice as a conscious choice.

Universal Buddhism embraces this meeting of worlds. It recognizes that the Teaching can and must take new forms without losing its essence. Just as the Buddha taught in the idiom of ancient India, so too must we speak the Teaching in the language of our own time and place — not only in words, but in the frameworks through which we understand reality, ethics, and liberation.

Universal Buddhism is not a modern invention or a watered-down version of the tradition. It is a living, authentic lineage that draws directly from the original sources — the deep well of sacred texts, mystical experience, disciplined practice, and enlightened transmission. It honours the full depth of the Buddha’s teaching, including its ethical, meditative, philosophical, mystical, and cosmological dimensions. It does not cherry-pick, flatten, or sanitize the teaching to make it more palatable for consumer culture.

Universal Buddhism keeps the flame alive — not as nostalgia, but as a conscious commitment to depth, truth, and liberation for all beings. It holds that the teaching is not just relevant but urgent — not just true for the past, but necessary for the future.

In short, Universal Buddhism is a wide-open, thoughtful, and compassionate approach to spiritual life. It bridges ancient and modern worlds, Eastern and Western cultures, mystical insight and everyday living. It’s about waking up — not just for ourselves, but for everyone — and finding a wiser, more loving way to be human.

We root ourselves in the intelligent study of the great sources:

The suttas of the Pali Canon, austere and practical, bearing the fragrance of early Buddhist simplicity.
The sutras of the Mahayana, expansive and visionary, revealing vast cosmologies and the infinite compassion of the bodhisattva path.
The Tantras of Vajrayana, shimmering with symbolic power, ritual precision, and the alchemical fusion of wisdom and method.
The termas — the hidden treasures — revealed at the appointed time by tertöns, those fortunate finders of spiritual treasures who stand in the stream of transmission.
The commentaries of the great scholars and realized beings, who have wrestled with the Teaching, tested it in their lives, and handed down keys to its understanding.

We also acknowledge — with reverence — the inspired teachings of divine beings, arhants, bodhisattvas, mahasiddhas, tertöns, and buddhas across all times and cultures including the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 480-400 BCE). The Teaching is not the property of any one people or period; it is the primordial truth that shines through all worlds and beings.

The Core Doctrines

Universal Buddhism affirms a cluster of interwoven doctrines — like the strands of an unbreakable cord — that define its scope:

Existential suffering (dukkha): the unsatisfactory, unstable, and incomplete nature of all conditioned existence.
Impermanence (anicca): the universal truth that all compounded things pass away.
Selflessness (anatta, śūnyatā): the absence of a permanent, independent self in persons and phenomena.
Wisdom (prajñā): the direct, penetrating insight into the way things are.
Emptiness (shunyata): the ultimate nature of phenomena as lacking inherent existence.
Interconnectedness/interdependent origination (pratityasamutpada): the dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda) of all things; nothing exists independently; all things and beings are interwoven in a vast web of causes and conditions.
The Path: the graduated journey from ignorance to liberation.
Skillful Means (upāya): the compassionate application of the Teaching in ways suited to the capacity of each being.
Bodhicitta: the resolve to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings.
Moral causality (karma): the law that every intentional act brings about corresponding results; the understanding that our actions have consequences, and that what we do shapes both our experience and the world around us. This is often called karma.
Merit and its transfer: the generation of wholesome energy and its dedication to the welfare of others; the spiritual energy or positive force created through good actions, generosity, meditation, or insight. A unique feature of Buddhism is that this merit can be transferred — that is, we can dedicate the good we’ve done to others. This might mean offering our spiritual blessings to help someone who is sick, struggling, or even deceased. It’s an expression of compassion: we practice not just for our own benefit, but for the welfare of all beings.
The power of truth (satyavacana): the capacity of a perfectly truthful statement to alter reality; honest speech and living in alignment with truth is a real force that can cut through ignorance and bring healing.
The Three Jewels: the Buddha, Teaching, and Order as refuges and guiding lights.
Rebirth (samsara): the continuity of consciousness within cyclic existence; the understanding that life doesn’t end with death; our consciousness continues, shaped by our past actions and intentions.
Superknowledge/gnosis: the direct realization of ultimate reality; direct, personal, spiritual knowledge that comes from inner experience, not just from books or beliefs.
Meditative attainments (jhana): the absorptions and insights cultivated through disciplined practice; powerful states of mind achieved through deep concentration and insight, which bring clarity, peace, and liberation.
Cosmology: the vast Buddhist vision of multiple realms and planes of existence; a wide view of the universe that includes many layers of existence, from ordinary life to heavenly realms and deep states of meditation.
The primordial tradition: the timeless wisdom underlying all authentic spiritual paths; the idea that ultimate spiritual truth has always been present, and that true teachings can be found across time, cultures, and religions.
Spiritual Brahmanism/the True Brahman: the recognition of ancient Indian spiritual culture as a matrix in which the Teaching arose; not a social caste system, but a recognition of ancient Indian roots of spiritual practice, especially the quest for liberation and union with the ultimate.
The Western transmission: the unfolding of the Teaching’s journey into new cultural forms in the modern world.

The Worldview of Buddhism

The Primordial Tradition

Far from declaring himself to be an innovator or the originator of a new truth or a new religious movement, the Buddha claimed to be revealing an ancient way that has long been forgotten, which he identifies with the progenitors of the Brahmans, the ancient Vedic rishis, illuminated seers consisting of both men and women whose ecstatic poems are recorded in the Vedas, but which is also pre-Vedic. Thus, he is revealing to the Brahmans, who he castigates as degenerate, the original spiritual truth of Brahmanism itself. He compares this to an ancient and long-forgotten city in the midst of an archaic forest, the path to which is overgrown and barely discernible.

Spiritual Brahmanism

The Buddha declares that the true Brahman is one who was wisdom and virtue, not someone born into a caste. Someone born into the Brahman caste who does not have these essential qualities is not a Brahman, and someone who is not born into the Brahman caste who has these essential qualities is a Brahman, in accordance with the law of karma. The same distinction applies to monastics. One may be a monastic and a puthujjana, or common person, or one may be a householder and be an Aryan, a noble or spiritual person. Monastic ordination does not by itself an Aryan make. The reverse is also true. Thus, both Hinayana and Mahayana traditions allow for self-ordination. The Buddha himself was, of course, self-ordained. Of these two, wisdom, and not virtue, is the preeminent salvific principle, with virtue seen as its necessary basis, subject to the qualification concerning ethics that we have already discussed. However, a tree is known by its fruits. The teaching always yields good fruits.

Samsara: The Buddhist View of Time

Samsara, often translated “rebirth,” refers literally to time, which in the Buddhist worldview is cyclical. Thus, universes and indeed all phenomena appear, expand, contract, and disappear, in endlessly recurring cycles over vast eons of time. The world must be beginningless, because to posit a beginning to existence posits the problem of a creator, which leads to an infinite regression. Moreover, how can there be a time before time? Therefore, time itself is, paradoxically, timeless, an eternal present or “now.”

Four cycles of time, called kalpas are referred to in the Pali Canon. Kalpa is generally translated as ‘age,’ ‘’eon,’ or ‘epoch.’ The four kalpas are referred to as the ayu-kappa (‘life-age’), the antarakappa (‘small age’), asankeyyakappa (‘medium age’), and the mahakappa (‘great age’). The small kappa is the time that it takes for the life-kalpa to increase to the maximum and then decrease back to the minimum again. Twenty small ages make a medium age. Four medium ages make a great age. According to the PED, if a kalpa is referred to with no other qualifier, a great age is implied. Each small age ends in a mass extinction event, by famine, pestilence, or war. The great ages end in destruction by fire, water, or air.

I remember when the idea of evolution punctuated by violent cataclysms used to be considered occult nonsense associated with people like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Velikovsky. Both extraterrestrial and terrestrial cataclysms are now accepted as fact. That the moon was broken off from the primordial earth by a violent impact between the earth and a large asteroid or planetoid is now accepted as fact. Mars experienced similar events that ravaged its atmosphere. Six major extinction events are also known on earth:

450-440 million years ago: global cooling and sea level drop.
375-360 million years ago: multiple causes.
252 million years ago: multiple causes.
3 million years ago: climate change, asteroid impact, or volcanism.
66 million years ago, the most recent: the Chicxulub asteroid. This was an asteroid about ten kms (six miles) in diameter that impacted in the region of Chicxulub, Mexico. This caused the extinction of the planet’s non-avian dinosaurs and other species.
The present day: human caused.

In addition, Wikipedia lists 26 extinction events, the oldest about 2,400 million years ago (the Great Oxygenation Event), the most recent of which (other than the present day) occurred about 13,000 years ago. In some passages, the Buddha implies that the small, medium, and great ages, while definite, are so vast that they are incalculable. The Buddhist concept of the history of the world is broadly consistent with the scientific evaluation, in striking contrast to the Semitic religions, which believe that God created the universe, including all species of life, out of nothing just about six thousand years ago, over the course of a single week. Right… and yet people still believe this.

The Law of Karma

The Law of Karma is ubiquitous, and one of its applications is the science of physiognomy, by which the karmic inheritance of an individual can be assessed based on their physical characteristics, defined by the thirty-two and eighty marks (112 is a significant number in Buddhism). Today we would associate this with an individual’s “genetic inheritance.” Interestingly, the number of marks of a great person (32) is half the number of codons – combinations from the bases A, U, G, C in RNA – in human genetics, which are classified in pairs: thus, 32. An individual who has all of the marks is destined to become a world ruler or a world teacher. Such ideas may also find expression in the notion of caste. However, it is clear that the Buddha rejected the Indian notion of caste because he believed that intention could override inheritance. Thus, an individual of good birth – a concept that the Buddha clearly did not entirely reject – is not necessarily destined to lead a superior life, nor is a person of inferior birth destined to lead an inferior life. Because karma is also generated by intention, intention creates new karma that can in turn result in a superior outcome than what might otherwise be expected, while old karma is always being eliminated by a process of maturation and can also be negated by acts of renunciation and self-purification. For this reason, the Buddha rejected the rigid notions of caste and class and admitted members of all castes and classes into the order, with only a few specific exceptions. The Buddha appears to have taken a similar attitude to race.

The Buddha also implies that karmic patterns, including human associations, repeat themselves from life to life, leading to people who were associated in past lives being associated in future lives. Thus, many of the people you are closest to are probably people you have known before.

Interdependent Origination

The Buddha applied the general principle of the Law of Karma in several ways, the most famous being his principle of interdependent origination (pratityasamutpada). The literal meaning of this word is pratitya, ‘following from anything as a necessary result, + sam, ‘together’ + utpada, ‘coming into existence.’ Essentially, it means that every cause is an effect, every effect is a cause, and that the two always occur together: i.e., no cause without an effect, no effect without a cause. From this, it follows that everything is connected with everything else, that there are no coincidences and no accidents, but the interconnections are infinitely complex. The principle that the world is without beginning also follows logically from the Law of Karma, for that would posit an uncaused cause. In fact, this principle of causality is similar to science, with one important distinction: mind. Buddhism recognizes the reality of six senses, the sixth sense being mind. Since the existence of a sense necessarily posits the existence of objects corresponding to that sense, Buddhism refers to “mind-objects” as real entitles, essentially no different from the objects of sight, hearing, tactile, etc. The reality of mind objects means that the mind can interact with reality in ways that are indeterminate, because intention is essentially free, not merely a reflex of material causes. This must be true because reality itself must be unconditioned. Thus, the Buddhist universe is an open, creative, evolving, expanding universe where anomalies such as psychic powers and even magic become possible against a backdrop of overall high-level order, the integrity of which is maintained by karma. Yes, the Buddhist worldview allows for the possibility of magic! The utility of mantras, which focus and concentrate mind and intention in specific ways, based on vast reservoirs of psychic power or energy, built up over thousands or even millions of years, also falls into this category. Buddhism is not materialism. As a non-materialist spiritual (metaphysical) philosophy, Buddhism preserves the essential humanity of the person in a way that scientific materialist ideologies like communism, fascism, capitalism, and technocracy do not. We see this increasingly today as the advance of industrialism strips us ever more and more wantonly of our essential human rights and freedoms, even while pretending to do the opposite. For this reason, the Dharma Transmission to the West is essential for the future survival of humanity as we understand it.

The Buddha also discovered that pratityasamutpada is bidirectional, what we would call “the arrow of time.” In the full formulation, proliferation and ignorance, which give rise to the Five Aggregates and the Six Senses, including the karmic propensities (sanskaras), which together constitute the “self,” are followed by contact, craving, feeling, clinging, and becoming, and culminate in birth, ageing, death, and angst. This is the “arrow of time” that leads from past to future states, what we call “entropy.” However, the essential impermanence of the world and its constituent processes means that because they are ultimately transitory and ephemeral, they are subject to change, and therefore they can be reversed, especially craving and ignorance, which are both directly subject to intention. Although intention is conditioned by the karmic propensities, it is essentially free (i.e., identical with reality itself). Intention is the ultimate causal principle. Thus, by realizing the truth about the world one overcomes ignorance and by cultivating dispassion one overcomes clinging, thus freeing oneself from the chain of cause and effect and returning to the source, the mindsteam, the continuity of consciousness, reality itself. This is the theoretical basis of the path. The Buddha compares this doctrine to a tangled ball of string, and emphasizes its impenetrability. He who fully realizes the truth of pratityasamutpada, he says, has realized emptiness or the essential voidness of phenomena, which is ultimately equivalent to awakening or enlightenment itself.

Devas

Devas or divine beings are celestial or spiritual beings — not quite like gods, but higher, luminous beings who live in refined realms.

An oft-repeated refrain of the stock description of a Buddha is that he is a teacher of humans and divine beings. The Pali Canon frequently alludes to deva followers of the Buddha, including even anti-gods [sic], but their numbers are not numerous. Divine beings of the sensual world in particular seem to be addicted to sensual pleasures, much as many humans are, especially in the latter days of the degenerate age in which we now live. Some divine beings are even earth-bound, living invisibly in human cities and influencing human beings and governments telepathically. There are even deva cities, both in divine worlds and on the earth, Uttarakuru being an example that is mentioned in the Pali Canon. Interestingly, the word “deva” means “shining one,” and the Pali descriptions of devas often correspond strikingly with the UFO phenomenon, which we know, thanks to the research of people like Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek, Stanton Friedman and others have a physical reality, as the US government is now finally acknowledging. The Buddha himself is represented as communicating with divine beings, teaching them and receiving teachings from them.

The Pali Canon also describes a “war in heaven” between the antigods, archaic deities representing abstract spiritual principles and the powers of nature, and the divine beings. This appears to correspond to the arising of a new religious movement within the Vedic tradition during the late Vedic period (1000-500 BCE), characterized by the forgetting of the recipe for soma, and its replacement by a surrogate ritual called the “fire sacrifice,” ritualism, caste discrimination, authoritarianism, and misogyny – for many of which the Buddha criticized the Brahmans of his time. The asuras, which originally meant “lords” but was now associated with an erroneous etymology of “a-suras,” anti-gods, were “cast down” to the foot of Mount Sumeru, where they dwell in the one world ocean. The anti-gods are still necessary to churn soma, apparently, which they churn out of the one world ocean together with the divine beings. This antagonism or conflict appears to be necessary to the production of soma, which makes one wonder how soma was manufactured before the war between the devas and the asuras. I suspect there is a lot more to know here. The anti-gods also attended an assembly of divine beings held to honour the Buddha, and some even converted to the Buddhadharma, which is surprising given their evil reputation. In the West, the conflict between the divine beings and the antigods resulted in the devas being cast down, and an asura, Ahura Mazda, became the chief deity of the Zoroastrian religion, also based on the principle of dualistic conflict.

Summarizing,

The divine beings visit the Buddha and he learns from them;
Deva travel is instantaneous;
Divine beings manifest as luminous aerial phenomena;
Divine beings are only visible to those of refined mindfulness;
Some divine beings live invisibly among people on earth; and
The anti-gods are magicians!

The Buddhist View of God

Although Buddhism is widely regarded as atheistic, this is not quite true. God is referred to several times in the Pali Canon, in the form of the chief of the Brahma realm, a sort of “Wizard of Oz” figure. The texts explain how the notion of God originates. According to the Buddhist worldview, universes appear, expand, contract, and then disappear and reappear in an endless series of cycles. Historical time is also like this, and passes through evolutionary and devolutionary phases. The beings that previously were reborn in a universe that passes into a state of potentiality are reborn in other worlds corresponding to their karma. When the universe reappears, it exists in a high-energy state and higher devas are reborn in it as their merit in higher worlds is exhausted. The first such deva to appear finds himself alone in the universe, and erroneously concludes that he is the creator of the universe. Similarly, the divine beings that come after see that he came before, and erroneously conclude that he is the creator of the universe. Thus, he asserts himself to be God, and they accept this and worship them as God, resulting in the creation of religion. Thus, the delusion of theism arises in beings. Moreover, for this reason and others, Buddhism has historically not been legally acknowledged as a religion for exactly this reason. Buddhism is a metaphysical and practical spiritual philosophy, not a religion strictly speaking.

The Path of the Buddha

Bodhisattvas are beings of great compassion who vow to keep returning to help all others reach enlightenment.

Buddhas are fully awakened beings who understand reality directly and show the way to freedom.

Although the Buddha taught the path of the arhant as the fast path to nirvana, based primarily on dispassion, and the Buddha himself is declared to be an arhant, it is clear from the Pali texts that an arhant is not identical with a Buddha. The path that leads to Buddhahood is the path of a bodhisattva (lit. ‘enlightenment being’). The essential distinction appears to be between dispassion, in which desirous attachment is negated, thus breaking the chain of Interdependent Origination, and wisdom, in which ignorance is resolved by a kind of “omniscience.” The Pali Canon makes a clear distinction between the powers or attainments of arhants, and the powers or attainments of Buddhas. This idea was taken up by the Mahayana, which originally consisted of followers of the Hinayana who formulated the intention, known as bodhicitta, to attain Buddhahood out of compassion for all worldly beings, rather than arhantship, in which one escapes the world. The question arises of course why the Buddha chose to teach the path of the arhant rather than the path of the bodhisattva, and the answer seems to be that he did this because of the severe limitations of beings born into this degenerate age, with lifespans limited to about a hundred years.

When a bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, he creates a negentropic information wave that radiates out in all directions from its point of origin, the so-called Bodhi seat, creating a ‘world age’, which expands and dissipates over a long time. Thus, we find that human civilization focused on northeast India decreases in all directions as a function of distance. Because each such age has its unique origin in the appearance of one unique Buddha, it is said that no other Buddha can appear in that world age until its dharma manifestation dissipates (the dharma itself is timeless of course and is always implicit). The motive power of this expansion is the Power of Truth. The current dharma age originated in the parinirvana of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama in about 400 BCE, and is only now beginning to penetrate Western civilization at the midpoint of the 5,000-year cycle that, the Buddha said, would be the duration of his dharma manifestation, at the very time that Western civilization is on the verge of destroying human civilization and indeed all life on this planet through climate change, nuclear war, toxic pollution, resource depletion, and the spread of disease. This corresponds to the year 2100 approximately. Thus, we see that the 21^st century seems to represent a turning point in human civilization, both the nadir of the degenerate age of the last thousand years, culminating in 2012, the end of the Mayan epoch that also corresponds with the advent of the Kali Yuga about 3000 BCE, and with the possibility of a transformative Buddha Emanation that may propel human beings into a new evolutionary period or, alternatively, the extinction of the human species on this earth, depending on how we choose to respond to it (three guesses where our current direction is headed).

The Path of the Arhant

Arhants are those who have achieved full personal liberation and no longer suffer from the cycle of rebirth.

The Buddha teaches the path of the arhant, the Noble Eightfold Path, consisting of four levels of attainment of degrees of progressive realization or accomplishment: stream entrant, whereby one achieves emancipation within seven rebirths without ever experiencing a lower non-human rebirth; a once-returner, whereby one is reborn as a human being once more only; a non-returner, whereby one is never again reborn as a human being, but will be born as a divine being in the Five Pure Abodes; or an arhant, in which on death one achieves parinirvana (lit. ‘complete snuffing out,’ as of a fire) and subsequent ‘timelessness’ (amata). This Pali word, amata, pervades the Pali Canon, and is generally translated as ‘deathlessness,’ but the PED makes it clear that the primary meaning is amrita, translated by Rhys Davids as ‘ambrosia’ or ‘water of timelessness,’ from the Sanskrit root MR, ‘death.’ Amrita, which is also described in the PED as a “medicine,” is the Buddhist word for soma, the Vedic mind-altering beverage that is identical with the plant-based entheogen that was worshipped by the early Aryans and inspired the seers, including the Seven Sages, to write the ecstatic hymns of the Rig Veda. Mata means both ‘thought’ and ‘dead,’ so the state of amata is a state beyond both death and thinking. Paradoxically, a state of apparent ‘impercipience’ is identical with the realization of essential sentience itself. Hence, ‘deathlessness.’

Merit and Its Transfer

The Law of Karma leads logically to the concept of merit. Every life at any given moment is a veritable stew of positive and negative karmas, working themselves out in complex interactive patterns of experience based on conditions in the environment, which are themselves the result of karma and its interaction with intention, which is the ultimate cause of karma. Reality is a self-reflexive feedback loop. Thus, every person has a store of positive and negative merit, which they can draw on at any time. We may think of this as a sort of “energy-potential.” This “energy” can also be directed by intention to various ends, thus allowing us to affect our experience and the experiences of others, based on the principle of Interdependent Origination.

The Power of Truth

The concept of merit leads in turn to the Power of Truth, an ancient Indian doctrine that also pervades the Pali Canon, based on the idea that truth, when unmitigated and absolute, has an inherent power that can be drawn upon and directed. This power arises out of the essential identity of truth and reality. The greatest psychic power of all, related to the Power of Truth, is the Miracle of Instruction, by which beings are saved from the world and become able to transcend phenomenal existence altogether, which is ultimately identical with Wisdom, the antithesis of Ignorance or Not-knowing. The Power of Truth is especially efficacious at the moment of death, leading to a doctrine and a praxis of Conscious Dying, which one finds worked out in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and elsewhere. Every Buddhist should prepare for the moment of death with the utmost care to ensure that their subsequent rebirth is as beneficial and free from suffering as possible.

The path of the householder is largely based on the Law of Karma, Merit and the Transfer of Merit, and the Power of Truth. However, the rigid distinction between lay people and monastics found in later Buddhism is largely absent in the Pali Canon. Householders not only converted to the Buddhadharma but also were able to attain emancipation as well, at which time they either died or became monastics. On the other hand, many monastics made little spiritual progress at all, thus resulting in the distinction between puthujjana and arya monastics. Being a monastic is not ipso facto a guarantee of holiness, although we respect all monastics out of respect for the teaching.

Vinaya

The Buddha’s attitude toward rules is ambivalent. On the one hand, he advocates a life of moderate austerity and simplicity based on self-restraint, the literal meaning of vinaya. On the other hand, he disparages extreme asceticism and self-torture and dismisses the intrinsic efficacy of rites and rituals. Even ethics are relatively minor. Thus, he refers to the Three Higher Trainings in Morality, Heart (or Meditation), and Wisdom, which (he says) is harder but more efficacious than the merely mechanical rules of the Code of Conduct (the Vinaya), which at that time numbered about 150 rules, and at the end of his life he conceded that the rules should not be expanded and that the minor and lesser rules could be disregarded (a prescription that was ignored by his immediate successors). This view is, of course, in striking contrast to the organizationalism, hierarchicalism, authoritarianism, and dogmatism of many Buddhist groups today both in Asia and in the West.

Meditative Attainments

The Buddha enumerates the benefits of monastic life, including the four jhanas or ‘ecstasies,’ consisting of detachment, concentration, tranquility, and mental purity and clarification, culminating in the perfection of insight. A group of magical or psychic powers, which were clearly considered seriously as Moggallana, one of the two foremost disciples of the Buddha, was reputed to be foremost in psychic powers, follows these. These include the creation of a mental body, visionary experiences, clairaudience (the perception of spiritual sounds), telepathy, recalling past lives, and the Divine Eye, whereby one perceives patterns of karmic causality imperceptible to others, culminating in perfect mindfulness and full awakening. The Buddha also emphasizes the importance of mindfulness of the body, referring to meditation on the body in terms that are frankly sensual. The great Theravadin scholar, Buddhaghosa, says that this focus on the body is a unique distinguishing characteristic of the Buddhadharma.

In all of the wisdom traditions of antiquity, no fundamental division is made between ontology and psychology. Rather, mind is regarded as a sixth sense, and therefore mind-objects are ontologically real and mind participates actively in the creation of existence. Therefore, mind is reality and reality is mind. This is in striking contrast to Western philosophical theories, rooted in Descartes, who decisively separate mind and matter. The West has finally abandoned the reality of mind altogether in “scientific” materialism (“scientism”) which asserts that mind is essentially an epiphenomenon of matter and therefore essentially “unreal.” Western secularism is even beginning to enforce this doctrine, suppressing or even drugging those who do not comply into conformity with an official standard of “rationality.” Thus, in Buddhism, realization corresponds to the progressive realization of more and more subtle states of reality. The former refers to the four jhanas or ‘ecstasies,’ whereas the latter are the four deva realms referred to as the Brahma Worlds (first jhana), the Radiant Devas (second jhana), Glorious Devas (third jhana), Five Pure Abodes (fourth jhana), Sphere of Infinite Space (fifth jhana), Sphere of Infinite Consciousness (sixth jhana), Sphere of No-thing (seventh jhana), and the Sphere of Neither Perception Nor Non-perception (eighth jhana). However, the realization of the fourth jhana is sufficient to attain emancipation, suggesting another difference between an arhant and the Buddha, who attained the realization of the eighth sphere. The first four jhanas/spheres (as they are called) correspond to the World of Form, and the second four jhanas/spheres correspond to the World of Formlessness. The planes of ordinary consciousness correspond to the Sensual World. Altogether, these constitute the realms or worlds of samsara, which are further elaborated into thirty-one planes of existence, including sub-human, human, and super-human worlds. Thus, we say that the human world is the middle world, and the world in which realization is most possible. Human rebirth is both rare and is considered to be the result of merit, so if merit is not cultivated in the present life, it could be lost in future lives. This matters because anti-gods, ghosts, and hell-beings do seem to remember their past lives, whereas animals do not and human beings, only in rare circumstances. The worlds below the human – the worlds of anti-gods, ghosts, animals, and hell-beings – are so pervaded by suffering and instinctuality/automaticity that it takes very long time to break out of them, whereas the divine worlds above the human world are so long-lived and pleasurable that the divine beings have little motivation to practise dharma. These planes/levels of consciousness become ever more rarefied, blissful, and powerful as one progresses up the ladder, corresponding to the “gradual path,” culminating in cessation. Cessation, however, is, strictly speaking, not part of this series at all, rather like the sphere of da’at in the Cabalistic Tree of Life. Rather, cessation represents the qualitative transcendence of the entire system of samsara altogether, and the realization of an immanent state (the “clear light” or “Buddha nature”), which has always been present in the form of an essential potentiality. Thus, cessation is not produced or caused. This suggests the possibility of an alternative to the causal path, viz., an acausal transcendence of the entire system that may occur, in principle, at any time and is therefore immediate and spontaneous.

The character of this ultimate realization (i.e., the ‘action of making real’) is beyond the world. As such, it is beyond all rational categories of thought, based as they are on the law of contradiction, i.e., duality. Thus, reality is trans-dual, trans-rational, trans-linguistic, and uncharacterizable – signless, boundless, and all luminous. This, the essence of sentience itself, is essentially empty and full, differentiated and undifferentiated, proliferating and non-proliferating, simultaneously. This appears to be the basis of the Buddha’s dislike of speculation, not because he does not have an ontology, but rather because his ontology is transcendental and therefore not truly accessible to the unenlightened mind. This is also the basis of the two-truth doctrine – ultimate truth is trans-dual, trans-rational, trans-linguistic, and uncharacterizable, whereas relative truth is non-absolute and therefore misleading if it is misunderstood to be absolute. On the other hand, it is possible through the intensive cultivation of wisdom to obtain an intuition of realization that may precipitate the actual experience in one suitably prepared.

The Buddha was a very clever dialectician, and he often dialogued with others by appearing to accept their premises, identifying common ground, and then subtly shifting the conversation through a progressive process of inference and deduction, causing them to see beyond their premises. This establishes Buddhism as an esoteric tradition, in that the Buddha is reinterpreting outer in terms of inner and relating this to a forgotten primordial tradition that can only be appreciated by the few.

The Buddha declares this his teaching is ancient and long forgotten, and is identical with the way of the ancient Vedic seers. Merely mouthing sacred texts does not, however, constitute realization, and for this reason, the Buddha rejected the notion of innate Brahman caste superiority. A Brahman must live a life of utmost simplicity and renunciation.

The Buddha also tailored his recommendations to the spiritual needs of the individuals with whom he communicated, so he said different, even apparently contradictory, things at various times and in different circumstances. This can lead to error if it is not understood comprehensively, which is why the method of logical syncretism or transcendental synthesis is the best way to study the dharma. We can’t just pick out the threads we like and ignore those that we do not. All this leads to is the creation of a false dharma, which is merely a projection of our own egotism/narcissism. Thus, we reject sectarianism from the outset.

Recollection of Past Lives

The Buddha frequently uses the motif of past lives to dramatize teachings in the present. Whether this was based on actual memories or is a dramatic device of the Buddha is unknown, but it developed into the idea that the Buddha was actually able to recall past lives, and that this psychic power is a characteristic of a Buddha. Interestingly, it is also a characteristic of people with no prior belief in reincarnation who ingest psychedelics or who experience various sorts of physical or psychological trauma. This ability is strongly emphasized throughout the Pali Canon, unlike the other psychic powers, which the Buddha considered to be of limited spiritual value, but in the Buddhist tradition past life memory is virtually required to attest to any sort of spiritual realization, and the number of lives one remembers, like the number of marks of a great person on one’s body, is a virtual indicator of one’s spiritual status.

Ethics and Morality

Unlike most, perhaps all, religions, the Buddhist discourses begin with what the teaching is not. Surprisingly, much of this includes much of what is considered to be Buddhism today. Moreover, the Buddha decries emotional faith and insists that his followers should inquire into the teaching dispassionately, using the faculty of reason but without being limited by or dependent on it. Reason is a tool. Finally, the Buddha dismisses ethics and morality as elementary, inferior, trivial, insignificant, and minor matters that may impress common, uneducated people, but the Tathagata – he who has attained the TAT, “suchness,” reality, or the Absolute – is far beyond all such considerations, having attained a state beyond reason. The Tathagata is literally described, therefore, as “transhuman.” The Buddha emphasizes this point by summarizing the rules of morality, including the famous Five Precepts – not killing, not stealing, not lying, not engaging in sexual wrongdoing, and, after about 437 BCE, not drinking alcohol, and a host of other ethical and monastic rules. This liberal attitude to rules, which we also find indicated by the Buddha’s behaviour throughout his life, led to the accusation of laxness, an accusation that also dogged him throughout his career, paradoxically, since the Buddha made the same accusations against the Brahmans and he also complained about the laxness of the monastics toward the end of his life.

The Buddha also rejects sixty-two kinds of wrong views, including speculative theories about the past and the future. However, he also rejects agnosticism and nihilism, and clearly states that although he discourages speculation, he himself knows the truth concerning these matters, thus contradicting the widespread notion that the Buddha did not have an ontology. The form in which the Buddha rejected these theories is the tetralemma, a logical structure that rejects all possible formulations of a proposition such as A is A, A is not A, A is both A and not-A, A is neither A nor not-A. The tetralemma is not simply a rejection of the premise (otherwise, A is not-A would be true). Rather, it appears to reject the law of contradiction itself, because absolute truth transcends all forms of logical expression. That is, it transcends dualistic logic and reason altogether. Thus, the tetralemma appears to refer to the trans-logical, trans-dual, trans-linguistic, and trans-rational character of the Buddha’s realization of truth rather than simply rejecting a specific doctrinal formulation in favour of its antithesis. The most famous example of this is the Buddha’s rejection of the ATTA, loosely but inaccurately translated as ‘self.’ The Buddha also rejects the reliability of direct realization or intuition as a source of information. Indeed, all views whatsoever simply lead one to rebirth in whatever world corresponds to that view. The Pure Land Buddhists have turned this negative into a positive. It also underlies the doctrine of the intermediate state (bardo), which one also finds in the Pali Canon. None is ultimate. Implicitly, therefore, all such views are false and do not lead to ultimate realization, which is inherently empty, uncharacterizable, and dispassionate.

Politics

The Buddha clearly advocated what today we would call a liberal progressive polity, including animal rights, human rights, and state support of the social infrastructure, including agriculture, capital, a well-paid bureaucracy and working class, and direct democracy as well as low taxes and liberal laws. The Pali Canon even presents the Buddha with something resembling the modern right-wing libertarian movement, what is sometimes called neo-con/neo-liberalism, which he rejects as pernicious. Western and indeed global society under increasing Western colonial domination appears to be escalating toward a general civil war and perhaps even a world war at this time of social and environmental crisis, with a window to irremeable calamity of perhaps 5 to 10 years based on wantonly spewing carbon into the atmosphere because of burning fossil fuels (“climate change”). Nothing less than a global spiritual revolution will do.

The Buddha is critical of money and business, associating it with cheating and lying, and the monastics were forbidden from trading, owning property, or handling money, although the order owned property collectively, which was given to it in the form of donations. The Buddha also criticized property and territoriality and the most advanced human beings on the northern continent of Uttarakuru were said to be communistic and practised free love based on the ancient rishi tradition interestingly.

The Scope of Universal Buddhism

This vision of Buddhism embraces not only metaphysics and ontology — questions about the nature of reality and being — but also epistemology (how we know what we know), ethics, politics, aesthetics, logic, psychology, and soteriology (the doctrine of salvation or liberation). The Teaching speaks to the whole of life. It addresses our deepest questions, guides our conduct, shapes our communities, informs our arts, and clarifies our thinking.

Universal Buddhism is not content to confine the Teaching to monasteries, temples, or the printed page. It insists that the Teaching has something to say about governance, economic justice, technology, ecological survival, and the shared destiny of humanity.

When we speak these principles aloud, we are not merely describing an abstract ideal. We are affirming a commitment to a way of seeing the world and a way of living within it — a philosophy that is also a practice, and a practice that is also an ongoing act of creation.

And thus:-

Statement of Principles

We hold that universal Buddhism is a comprehensive spiritual philosophy grounded in the intelligent study of sutta, sutra, Tantra, and terma, and the inspired teachings of devas, arhants, bodhisattvas, mahasiddhas, tertons, and buddhas across all times and cultures. Its core doctrines include existential suffering, impermanence, and selflessness (comprising the three characteristics of existence), buddha nature, wisdom, emptiness, interconnectedness, the path, skillful means, bodhicitta, compassion, moral causality, merit and its transfer, the Buddha, the teaching, and the order (comprising the three jewels), rebirth, gnosis, the meditative attainments, the power of truth, the two truths, the primordial tradition, the intermediate state, spiritual Brahmanism, and the Western transmission of the dharma. This encompasses metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, psychology, epistemology, logic, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and soteriology.

Dharma as a System of Awakening Anomalies

The Teaching is not a creed to be believed, nor a cultural artifact to be preserved. It is a living system of anomalies, designed to disrupt the ordinary maps of human perception and open a wider field of reality.

Against Orthodoxy: When reduced to rigid metaphysics or sectarian dogma, the Teaching ossifies into a museum piece. Its vitality is lost. The Buddha’s words were never meant as unquestionable commandments but as tools—deliberate paradoxes, riddles, and practices to destabilize habitual ways of seeing.
Against Reductionism: When watered down into therapy or lifestyle coaching, the Teaching is neutered. The strangeness that awakens—the emptiness that is form, the self that cannot be found, the cosmologies that shimmer between symbol and fact—is stripped away. What remains is comfort, not liberation.
A Control System for Consciousness: The Teaching works by feedback. Its sutras, koans, rituals, and meditations are not mere “teachings” but interactive signals. They engage the practitioner, change the practitioner, and reveal new meanings at each stage. It is a self-modifying system that uses anomalies—things that don’t fit our categories—to reshape awareness. Interestingly in view of the literal meaning of deva as “light being,” UFOlogist Jacques Vallee has suggested that the UFO phenomenon is also a “control system.”
Transmission Across Time and Space: Like all living systems, the Dharma mutates. From India to China, from Tibet to the West, it adapts and readapts. Each cultural layer is a reframing, but the core function remains: to awaken. To refuse this evolution is to misunderstand its very nature.
The Aim: Not to build another belief system, but to engineer a transformation in consciousness. The Teaching does not ask for belief—it asks for participation. To step into its strange machinery is to enter an experiment in human liberation that has been running for millennia.
Multiplicity of Perspectives: The Teaching embraces diverse interpretations rather than enforcing a singular view. This pluralism enhances understanding and invites inquiry, allowing the practitioner to explore a multitude of lenses through which to engage with the Teaching.
Emphasis on Direct Experience: The essence of the Teaching is rooted in personal experience. It encourages practitioners to investigate their own lives, emphasizing the importance of direct engagement over intellectual abstraction.
Sustainable Learning Process: Instead of a linear journey, the path is cyclical and ongoing. The Teaching promotes continuous learning and adaptation, highlighting that understanding deepens and evolves over time.
Integration into Daily Life: The principles of the Teaching are not confined to formal practice but should permeate everyday life. This cross-pollination enriches both the practitioner’s daily experiences and the practice itself.
Community and Sangha: The role of community is vital in the Teaching. Shared experiences and mutual support among practitioners enhance understanding and foster a sense of belonging, which is essential for growth.

Is Secular Buddhism Real or Authentic Buddhism?

Secular Buddhism is not traditional Buddhism. Secular Buddhism is a modern Western interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings that:

Rejects metaphysical claims (rebirth, karma-as-cosmic-law, divine beings, hell realms).
Emphasizes mindfulness, ethics, and insight into suffering and impermanence.
Treats the Buddha as a philosopher or human teacher, not a spiritual being.
Often strips away rituals, cosmology, and devotional elements.

Its leading figures include:

Stephen Batchelor;
Winton Higgins;
Martine Batchelor.

Traditional Buddhism, across Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna, holds that:

Rebirth and karma are real and essential.
Enlightenment involves transcending the world across lifetimes.
The Teaching includes ritual, cosmology, monasticism, and devotional practices.
The Buddha had supramundane knowledge and taught the path to liberation beyond death.

In this view, secular Buddhism looks like a selective cultural appropriation of the Dharma, and is not really Buddhism at all, and is really anti-Buddhist.

So—Is It Authentic?

Historically? No. It departs from the core assumptions of all classical schools.
Philosophically? Questionable. It misses the deeper metaphysics and transformational arc of the original path.

Final Word

Secular Buddhism is a modern innovation, not traditional or canonical. It can serve as a gateway or entry point, but to call it “Buddhism” in the traditional sense is, frankly, a stretch. It may be more accurate to say it is Buddhist-inspired mindfulness philosophy., frankly, a stretch. It may be more accurate to say it is Buddhist-inspired mindfulness philosophy.