I use the word “secular” to describe modern mindfulness meditation in its original and primary meaning of relating to the worldly or temporal as distinguished from the spiritual or eternal : not sacred : mundane (source: unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary). I call it this because modern secular meditation is singularly focused on various side-effects, such as stress reduction, rather than the traditional Buddhist meditation techniques which are focused on gaining enlightenment.

The quote that you provided seems to me to be more related to a teaching of the necessary distinction between conceptual knowledge that is accumulated via the various sources the Buddha referred to, and one’s own actual direct unmediated experiences gained via a meditation practice. Batchelor seems to be using “secular” in the sense that the version of Buddhism he writes about is not formally related to or controlled by a religious body. There is a question as to whether Buddhism is a religion, or a way of life, but my reaction to his use of secular is that it might be misleading to some. The practice that you mention in your third paragraph is not a secular practice at all to my mind, but rather is a traditional meditation practice — and certainly not just the kind of conceptual knowledge the Buddha speaks of in the quote you gave.

I’m with you about the value of scientific studies to help people get over the woo-woo characterization of traditional meditation as ‘navel-gazing’, but some scientific studies are just stupid in their over-emphasis on only allowing explanations that fit into the extant cognitive frame of mechanical materialism.

My focus, like yours, is on meditation and its benefits. However, there has been a resurgence of scientific studies of psychedelics and their use in treating certain issues, and the treatments seem to stick. Addiction is one area that psychedelics show great promise, and also, I have heard of treatments of traumatic brain injuries using intense doses of psychedelics that seem to overcome the injury.

Thank you, Colin for your substantive reply.