Okay, so I am live with Stephen Bachelor, author of many books, two of his most recent ones,

after Buddhism and secular Buddhism.

We'll be discussing this one a little bit in this interview.

But I want to give a quick introduction to Stephen.

It's always interesting to have, well, I guess this has never happened to me before, but

to have the opportunity to speak with someone who's been so influential in my own journey

seems to be quite an honor.

So I'm very grateful to you, Stephen, for joining me today for taking time out of your

day to have a discussion on secular Buddhism.

By way of introduction, I want to make sure I get this right, but in a nutshell, so Stephen

was at one time a Tibetan Buddhist monk, correct me if I'm wrong, but after you studied

for some time as a Zen Buddhist monk, is that right?

And then ultimately transition into leaving the monastic life and just teaching Buddhism

from a much more secular standpoint.

I'm sure there's a lot more to that, by way of introduction, is there anything you would

want to add to that, Stephen?

No, that's pretty good.

I guess the other thing I might add is that I'm also very interested since I left the

monastic communities.

My interest has really gone to what I call early Buddhism.

To try to sort of get back to what the Buddha was doing before it became Buddhism.

And for me, that's closely tied into what I understand as secular Buddhism.

...