I attended the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship biannual conference a couple of weeks ago at the Garrison Institute in upstate New York. The Garrison Institute is located on a bluff above the Hudson River directly across the river from West Point.
The UUBF is a sort of special interest groups for people with a Buddhist meditation practice within the UU Church. For those who don’t know, Unitarian Universalism evolved out of the congregational churches of New England, many of them originally set up by the original Puritan settlers. But UU has evolved a considerable distance, and now is entirely non-credal. You can be a Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, atheist, etc. What is the glue that keeps UUs together is a longer story that I’m not well versed enough to explain.
Some of the attendees were UUs, but many were simply there to learn from the featured guest, Stephen Batchelor. Stephen is the author of a number of books, including Buddhist Without Beliefs, and a pioneer in what has been termed “secular Buddhism.” At the conference, I also met, among others, The Naked Monk, Stephen Schettini, who wrote a blog post about the event.
Both Stephens are quite secular. Both find value in the teaching of “not-self” which I’m still trying to understand. The idea seems to be to think of the self not as a object but as a “process,” not as a noun so much as a verb.
Above are ice floes in the Hudson near the Garrison Institute.