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"A Brief History of Secular Buddhism

For 2,500 years: Buddhist meditation was practiced by monks—these practices are older than Christianity and Islam. Meditation was not generally taught to lay people.

19th century: Buddhism came to the attention of Western intellectuals

1890’s-1950’s: Buddhist meditation was first taught to laypeople en-mass: Burmese monks: Ledi Sayadaw, Webu Sayadaw and Saya Thetgyi taught meditation to lay meditation teachers such as Sayaguyi U Ba Khin.

1960’s: Sayagyi U Ba Khin teaches S.N. Goenka and after 1976 Goenka creates hundreds of secular meditation centers that teach Vipassana a form of mindfulness meditation and proto-Secular Buddhism.

1979: Jon Kabat-Zin founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts to treat the chronically ill.

2011: Stephen Batchelor published the book “Buddhist Atheist.” Small local and online Secular Buddhist groups form around the world

2015: Mark W. Gura co-founded the Association of Mindfulness Meditation and Secular Buddhism (AMMSB.org), the first national nonprofit dedicated to Secular Buddhism in the U.S. and he published “Atheist Meditation.”

2016: The Atheist Alliance of America started to inform the atheist community about Secular Buddhism.

2016: With the help of Peter Boghossian and Anthony Magnabosco, the AMMSB adopted the use of Street Epistemology to introduce Secular Buddhism to traditional Buddhists.

2017: With the help of Rebecca Hale and Roy Speckhardt the American Humanist Association and the AMMSB collaborated to further inform the secular humanist and atheist community about Secular Buddhism."

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