Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts?

Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha's teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha's inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters.

This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today's globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha's vision of human flourishing.
After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, Stephen Batchelor, Yale University Press, Paperback, 2015, 381 Pages, $18.00

Stephen Batchelor is known worldwide for his work as author, teacher, and scholar of Buddhism. He has been a teacher at the Gaia House meditation center in Devon, England, for twenty-five years and is a contributing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. His previous books include Buddhism without Beliefs and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. He lives in southwest France.

After Buddhism, rethinking the dharma for a secular age
Preface	ix
1. AFTER BUDDHISM	1
2. MAHANAMA: THE CONVERT	29
3. A FOURFOLD TASK	54
4. PASENADI: THE KING	90
5. LETTING GO OF THE TRUTH	115
6. SUNAKKHATTA: THE TRAITOR	151
7. EXPERIENCE	178
8. JIVAKA: THE DOCTOR	206
9. THE EVERYDAY SUBLIME	231
10. ANANDA: THE ATTENDANT	260
11. A CULTURE OF AWAKENING	293
AFTERWORD	323
Selected Discourses from the Pali Canon	333
Notes	343
Bibliography	365
Index	373