Buddhism is a beautiful doctrine, but here is the thing: it, and all religions, are losing. Buddhism is not the human future.
We must construct something that is both scientifically, empirically, grounded, and which speaks emotionally to people in the 21st century. That is the task. That is the task I have set myself, and one which I would encourage you to set for yourself.
Morality: it occurs to me that morality should, in the modern era, best be seen as the intersection of structured thought–philosophy–and psychology.
Specifically, every moral “principle” I have ever articulated arises not from some religion, not from some appeal to the “nature of the universe”, not some arcane ontology amenable to linguistic deconstruction. What I have done, and continue to try and do, is show how what we call moral behavior is in the best interest of all sentient beings. And how evil is simply the loss of the capacity for the self understanding necessary to grasp this, and in particular the loss of the capacity to imagine being emotionally comforted, or freed from self hatred.
Logic dictates that if you want to be happy, you have to do the things that make you happy, and these, in turn, are the domains both of psychology and introspection. And logically, if you want to be happier, then we have to admit grades of happiness, and admit qualitative grades of, and differences in, the type of work that needs to be done.
What I have termed qualitative pleasure is best pursued through the pursuit of meaning, of pain with a purpose, of qualitative growth.
Oh, we can do so much better. I will leave it at that for now.