Starting to read the book version of this track, it occurs to me that Hägglund's project is less describing "secular faith" than something like Engaged Secularism on the model of Engaged Buddhism, or to be more specific, Humanistic Secularism (renjian shisuzhuyi 人间世俗主义) https://twitter.com/AOHSUsometimesY/status/1331629489877610499

"Secularism of the Human Realm"

“Thus, Buddhism teaches that a fully enlightened person is beyond the pain of mourning and loss, having extinguished the desire to hold on to any life that is passing away.” True, but most forms of Buddhism also teach that very few people are fully enlightened...

...and most forms reckon deeply with the reality of loss of life, and sentients' experience of desire. Role of "Buddhism" in this work -- which I mostly agree with -- is fascinating.

fr/last page of ch. 1 -- isn't this just what it might mean to be "Engaged" full stop? That what one does -- here, now, with and among others -- matters?

"Secular Buddhists," Engaged Buddhists, and Hägglund all take "conventional" Buddhism to be the same kind of thing -- dead, detached, antisocial https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/mortality-and-spiritual-freedom/

Batchelor cites the same Dalai Lama quote from 1989 as Hägglund to index "traditional" Buddhism's disregard for environmental justice https://tricycle.org/magazine/stephen-batchelor-climate/

Hägglund writes about Buddhism with such presumptive authority one wonders if he is a former member of a Swedish sangha