Online: Buddhist Practice for Modern Westerners
with Seth Zuiho Segall
Thursday, February 17th, 2022 | 7:00pm – 9:00pm ET
Buddhism is a living tradition that has, throughout its history, adapted to the needs of the cultures that have adopted it. While we are still in the initial stage of the transmission of the Dharma to the West, Western Dharma has already been shaped by the Western philosophical tradition and by the psychological and existential needs of Western practitioners.
During this evening together, we will discuss the evolution of religions in general as they cross-temporal and cultural borders, and how this relates to the development of Buddhism over a millennium in India, and as it crossed cultural borders into China, Japan, and then the West. We’ll explore specific aspects of Western culture that are incompatible with traditional Buddhisms and are helping to drive the evolution of Western Buddhism, including beliefs about life after death, naturalism, and ideas about how to develop happiness derived from the Greek tradition.
We will look at how traditional Buddhist and Western views about well-being could be integrated to create a form of Buddhist practice that is more compatible with Westerners’ opinions about what they wish to gain from practice and what they think the well-lived life ought to look like.
In particular, we will focus on Buddhist ideas about desire, attachment, and suffering, how the goals of Western Buddhist practice are evolving, and how meditation can be understood within this evolving context.
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Teacher(s)
Seth Zuihō Segall
Seth Zuihō Segall, Ph.D. was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest in the White Plum Asanga and Zen Peacemaker Order lineages by Daiken Nelson Roshi and is affiliated with Pamsula Zen of Westchester. Before studying Zen, he was an Insight Meditation practitioner. He is a retired clinical psychologist who was formally Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, Director of Psychology at Waterbury Hospital, and president of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
Seth’s publications include Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (SUNY Press, 2003), Buddhism and Human Flourishing: A Modern Western Perspective (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), Living Zen: A Practical Guide to a Peaceful, Positive, and Balanced Life (Rockridge Press, 2020), and The House We Live in: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism (Equinox, 2023), as well as chapters in The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (2022) and the Springer Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality (2022). He is a contributing editor for Tricycle Magazine and the science writer for the Mindfulness Research Monthly. His work focuses on integrating Asian and Western approaches to human flourishing within a naturalistic, pragmatic framework.