Secular Buddhism
One of the attractions that Buddhism has offered to Westerners is the opportunity to pursue a nontheistic spiritual life outside the contours of traditional Judaism or Christianity. Thus, the title of Stephen Batchelor's recent book, "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" (2010) is provocative and surprising on the surface in that Batchelor is "confessing" his "atheism" as if it were inconsistent with "Buddhism". But Batchelor understands the teachings of various traditional Buddhist schools well. In addition to rejecting Western theism, Batchelor also seriously questions Buddhist teachings such as rebirth and Karma in favor of an outlook which is secular and scientific. Thus, his book deserves the title of the "confession" of a Western Buddhist seeker.
Batchelor's (b. 1954) best-known earlier work on Buddhism was his controversial 1997 study "Buddhism without Beliefs"in which he articulated his secular understanding of Buddhism. His recent "Confessions" is an intriguing collage of autobiography, philosophy, and history. Raised in England without a formal religion by a single mother, Batchelor did not attend college. Instead, he left home as a hippy and traveled through Asia where he became an early Western student of the Dalai Lama in his Indian exile. In the first part of his book, Batchelor recounts how he learned Tibetan and became a monk in the Tibetan tradition even while entertaining serious doubts about the specifics of Tibetan teaching. During this time, Batchelor also read Western existential philosophy and was greatly influenced by Heidegger's "Being in Time" with its emphasis on "being-in-the world" and experientialism rather than rationality as the basis for understanding the human condition. As a young Tibetan monk, Batchelor also had his first exposure to earlier non-Tibetan Buddhist tradition when he attended a meditation retreat under the Burmese lay teacher S.N. Goenka.
Batchelor left his Tibetan teacher and became a Zen monk in Korea together with a group of other Westerners. His doubts about Zen teachings paralleled his doubts about Tibetan Buddhism. After ten years as a monk, Batchelor disrobed and returned to lay life. He married a former colleague, a nun named Songil (Martine); and he and Martine moved to England as Buddhist laypeople to participate in a newly founded Buddhist meditation center known as the Gaia House, founded by the Sharpham Trust. Steven and Martin Batchelor eventually left the Gaia House. They live in rural France, and both continue to teach and write.
The second part of the book continues Batchelor's autobiography combined with his more detailed reflections on Buddhism and on early Buddhist history. Both Tibetan and Zen Buddhism are part of what is generally referred to as Mahayana Buddhism which emphasizes the figure of the Bodhisattva -- an individual who delays his or her own full enlightenment to work towards the enlightenment of everyone -- and a philosophical, ahistorical understanding of the Buddha. Batchelor became interested in the earlier Theravada Buddhism, which is found in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and elsewhere and in its texts which are known as the Pali canon. The Pali Canon is lengthy and diffuse, but is texts and Suttas show Gotama Buddha as a person and as a wanderer rather than as an abstraction. I have been fortunate to be part of a long-standing study group under the guidance of a capable teacher where I have had the opportunity to read and think about the Pali Suttas for the past 15 years.
Batchelor argues that Buddhism needs to be understood in its historical context as teased out of the Pali Suttas. In his book, he tries to show how Buddha was part of his times, how he may have studied, and how his teachings were the product of long reflection and engagement, rather than only of introspective meditation, that involved the rejection of much of the Hindu/Brahmanic teachings in which the Buddha was raised. While seeking the historical Buddha, Batchelor freely admits to "cherry-picking" the tradition by focusing on the teachings he can understand and accept. Batchelor's Buddha thus is a rationalist and something of a skeptic whose teachings focus on four distinctive elements: 1. the conditionality and changeable character of everything, 2. the process of the Four noble truths. 3, mindful awareness and 4. the power of self-reliance. (p. 237) The teachings are pragmatic, for Batchelor, and based upon ever-present change and groundlessness as opposed to dualism, transcendence, Nirvana, or fixity. These teachings, for Batchelor, rather than traditional Asian Buddhist teachings are those that speak to the "peculiar maladies of a late-twentieth century post-Christian secular existentialist like myself." (p.66)
Whether Batchelor offers a convincing portrayal of Buddhism or a highly sophisticated form of modern secularism is a subject for debate and disagreement which cannot be resolved in a short review. In addition to the many unusually detailed reviews of this book here on Amazon, there is an excellent review of Batchelor's book in the Fall 2010 issue of the Buddhist review, "Tricycle" called "Secular Buddhism?" by David Loy. But on all accounts, Batchelor's book is engagingly and thoughtfully written and challenging. It is full of digressions and discussions of people worth knowing in their own right, including Batchelor's own Buddhist teachers, Geshe Dhargyey, Geshe Babten, and Kusan Sunim, and Goenka. Other figures discussed in the book include the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the English theologian Don Cuppit, the Italian writer on Buddhism Julius Evola, and two early English Buddhist monks, Nanamoli and especially Nanavira who particularly influenced Batchelor. There is also a fascinating aside on one Leonard Cranke, a distant relation of Batchelor who designed a famous sculpture of a fisherman in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that I have visited and admired.
Batchelor has written a thoughtful, challenging book on his own spiritual journey, on Buddhism in the West, and on Buddhism and its possible relationship to Western secularism.
Robin Friedman
