Can anyone recommend any of Stephen Batchelor's books? I haven't read any of them...

Should "Buddhism without Beliefs" be read side by side with "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist"? Are they thematically linked? These books also seem to address similar territory as "Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution" by David Loy. Do they?

"The Awakening of the West" look very interesting to me. Does it do a nice job of exploring the history of Buddhism as it moved from culture to culture? It looks like perhaps it should be read with such books as "The Making of Buddhist Modernism" by David L. McMahan or "How the Swans came to the Lake"?

Has anyone read "Living with the Devil"? Thoughts?

Does "Alone With Others" actually spend time discussing various Existential thinkers and their connections/differences to Buddhist thought/practice?

Does he at any point discuss Theravada Buddhism? Or perhaps the kinds of meditative pratices folks who frequent this site partake of? Does he toss enlightenment on the wastebin alongside reincarnation (I haven't gotten the sense he does)?

Batchelor probably deserves an essay-length treatment, so forgive me if I come across as giving him short shrift. These are my thoughts after reading 4-5 of his books, including Buddhism without Beliefs and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (the others aren't germane).  Because of my "sciency" atheist, philosophical and materialist background, Batchelor appealed to me and was my introduction to Buddhism. Before I had read much of the Pali suttas, I took Batchelor at his word in Confession about rebirth and karma - that these were pre-existing notions in Indian thought at the time and so part of Buddha's[0] inherited world view.  However, this isn't accurate.  Shortly thereafter, I read a few books on the history and development of Buddhism, such as:

Rahula: What the Buddha Taught,
Gombrich: What the Buddha Thought and How Buddhism Began,
Bronkhorst: Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India,
Wynne: The Origin of Buddhist Meditation,
Sue Hamilton: The I of the Beholder

Without going into much detail, Buddha articulated his own very different ideas about karma and rebirth.  The most radical aspect of this is his ethicization of karma which makes for a kind of cosmic theodicy.  Radical because karma literally means "action", and in the Vedic milieu of the time, ritual action (e.g., properly executed brahmin sacrifices), yet Buddha contradicted this with, "by karma I mean intent".  Likewise Buddha's teachings on rebirth (which is different from reincarnation), and his rejection of Vedic atman with anatman, the negation of atman, which we translate as no-self. Gombrich and Sue Hamilton are particularly good on the brahmin Vedic thought that Buddha was often reacting against.

Batchelor's approach is to take the difference between what he regards as pre-existing Indian ideas and claiming only this delta as Buddha's unique contribution. Batchelor meanwhile flattens Buddha's contributions on rebirth, karma - things he doesn't like - into pre-existing Indian thought so he can ignore them.  It's shabby scholarship. If he doesn't like what the Buddha taught, sack up and say so and don't pretend Buddha is some sort of closeted New Atheist.

I also read a large chunk of the Pali sutta discourses (Majjhima, Digha, and Samyutta Nikayas).  I can't recommend them enough.  In fact, don't waste your time with much else. I was quite amazed while reading these discourses - they are very little like Batchelor claims. Batchelor's Buddha is much like Batchelor, an "ironic atheist", as he puts it, a kind of scientist of the mind.  But Buddha was a pre-scientific Iron Age wanderer, not a scientist. The only way Batchelor can get at what he thinks are Buddha's "original" teachings is with very carefully selected readings and interpretations from the Pali canon. I found reading the suttas a reliable antidote.

I haven't read any of the other books you mention. While I'm hard on Batchelor here, I have Living with the Devil and Alone with Others to read, and think that I will get something out of those works.

Buddhism is changing in its contact with the West and that is OK. There are things in Buddhism that I don't like and or seek to understand. However, I don't think we need to create new myths of an "authentic" but heretofore obscured secular Buddhism wrenched from the Pali suttas in order to make these changes more palatable.

~m

[0] By "Buddha" this, Buddha that, Buddha said, Buddha taught, &c, I mean something along the lines of Early Buddhist suttas present Buddha saying this, that, and so on. Clearly not everything in the Pali canon is genuine

EDIT: spelling, grammar, clarity

I appreciate your having listed some books you've found interesting and informative. That is always the best way to respond in a thread, in my eyes, by giving someone something concrete and interesting to read. Thanks!

I guess the problem comes down to this...which Buddhism do we study? There are so many out there, so many regional forms, so many variations, some so incredibly diffferent than the others.

One could simply glob onto whatever form is most readily available and simply go for it, of course, but, in the West, we have a unique situation in that we have a multitude of forms to shift through and access.

The question for me then is: "Which form of Buddhism has the least religious baggage, cultural baggage, supplemental baggage, etc., and gets most at the heart of what the Buddha was really trying to convey -- the end of suffering."

Of course, one should point out that not all supplementation is bad. The issue would therefore be what supplementation derails the original intent of the Buddha, and what supplementation develops or helps one realize the original intent of the Buddha.

And what exactly WAS the original intentions of the Buddha? Every culture and sect seems to have a different variation on this form.

It seems to me that Stephen Batchelor is going one step further by trying to cut through thousands of years of Buddhist baggage so as to get at the Buddha's original teachings, but then to take it one step further by asking the questions as to what cultural or religious baggage the Buddha himself was dealing with (Vedas, Brahmins, etc.) which may have become a part of Buddhism but doesn't really progress or assist in the project of ending suffering.

It is a worthy question and project. That being said, I haven't read a single book by him as yet. I have listened to a few of his lectures in a series called Deconstructing Buddhism. I like what he does there, which includes some really close readings of the original Pali suttas (he states at one point that he doesn't think they are 'exact transcriptions' of what the Buddha really, truly said, but does think that enough of them are close to the original intention and teachings of the Buddha -- such as the Discourse which Sets The Wheel of Truth Turning [which he said feels really 'polished'] -- that we can feel pretty confident that we can know what the Buddha was getting at).

I will get back after reading a few of his books. Thanks for the thoughtful response!

Note: Some of the books you listed look pretty interesting and scholarly. I really like Routledge! However, some are pretty expensive (they run from $35-45). At this time, ff you were to recommend one of the following, which you would say is the most interesting and/or informative: 1) Gombrich: How Buddhism Began or What the Buddha Thought [which of these do you prefer?], 2) Wynne: The Origin of Buddhist Meditation, or 3) Sue Hamilton: The I of the Beholder.

You may want to consider a few things things:

The Buddha was an illiterate bronze age wanderer.
One can only guess what his full message was. An educated guess may even be too friendly of a term.
Science wasn't invented until nearly 3000 years after his death.
Wisdom is built on the shoulder of previous wise men. Einstein is greater than Newton who is greater than Aristotle,etc.
Bronze age northern india was still in the nascent stages of literacy, had no education system, had no scientific institutions, was rift with feudal warfare, was still transitioning from sustenance farming to a market economy. We are almost nothing like bronze age northern india.

Perhaps it is worth asking if Batchelor has made an end of suffering, if as you suggest, that is his project. There's not much practice that I recall in Confession.

If I haven't been clear, I think Batchelor misrepresents the Pali suttas (does he do this knowingly, I don't know - see below). Read the suttas, then read Batchelor and see if you don't agree. Batchelor cherry picks a few suttas combined with his idiosyncratic interpretations to make his case (eisegesis instead of exegesis). Yet, Batchelor admits this[0], but sees nothing wrong with that. Why not simply say: Sure, Buddha taught rebirth and karma, but he was WRONG!, and here's why....

Why go through the game of imagining Buddha as an existentialist New Atheist scientist followed by a bunch of people that just couldn't understand him until Batchelor came along? Why the sutta quoting, when better than 9/10 of them go against him? Perhaps because Batchelor is very much a continuation of Buddhist Modernism, which imagines Buddhism as scientific and rationalistic, not religious. Secular and Western Buddhists think the Kalama sutta is the only one they need to misunderstand[1]. I went from huge Batchelor fan to critic after reading much of the Sutta pitaka and McMahan's The Making of Buddhist Modernism.

I'm all for clearing the path (homage to Nyanavira), but I don't think we need Modernist myth-making to do that at all. In many ways, I think pragmatic dharma is clearing the path. It's about what works, no matter the tradition, school, or received wisdom. Pragmatic yogis combine modern materialistic and atheistic actualism with their Buddhist practice, maybe with a bit of Western Magick thrown in.



Grab a copy of the Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikaya) or read them online at accesstoinsight.org in conjunction with: 1) Gombrich, What the Buddha Taught, 2) Sue Hamilton, Beholder, 3) Wynne, Origin

Hamilton's Beholder is probably the most helpful, but one should prepare the ground for it, and Gombrich does a very good job of it. Wynne's book is good but almost a prolonged reply to Bronkhorst.


[0] I am fully aware that the passages to which I am drawn in the Canon are those that best fit my own views and biases as a secular Westerner. Critics have accused me of ‘cherry picking’ Buddhist sources, of extracting only those citations that support my position while either ignoring or explaining away everything else. To this objection, I can only point out that it has ever been thus. -Batchelor, Confession
[1] The idea that the Kalama Sutta is a "charter for free enquiry" has however taken hold and been endlessly repeated in Western Buddhist circles. The idea plays to Western bias against authority and monolithic religious organisations - the roots of which are complex and deep, but include strands of Protestantism and Romanticism. On the other hand the idea of "free inquiry" fits neatly with Post-Enlightenment values. So the idea has been accepted relatively uncritically. -Jayarava Attwood
http://www.jayarava.org/texts/talking-to-the-kalamas.pdf
No surprise then that the Buddhist Modernist interpretation of the Kalama Sutta is Batchelor's axis mundi.

EDIT: added Batchelor quote admitting to cherry picking, clarity

I've had a tumultuous relationship with Stephen's work. At times in the past, I've been irritated by him and really doubted the quality of his practice. I understand much of the feelings against his work.

However, for some time I have felt he has, and has had for quite some time -see his beautiful translation of Nagarjuna- a profound understanding of Buddhism. (His wife Martine is also a lovely teacher- check out a talk on audiodharma or dharmaseed- although I haven't read one of her books.)

When I listen to stephen's talks, or read him, I come to the conclusion that he gives unique dharma talks. It can seem over-intellectualized, picky, critical. But then he always comes back to a presentation of the historical buddha, and of the buddhist path, that is alive, beautiful, full, accurate regarding the practice, and illuminating regarding the Buddha's life and sangha. He helped me to appreciate the Buddha as another man who had become free, and then spent the rest of his life trying to support others in their practice, immersed in his world and relationships, limitations, failure, and tragedy. The more my own practice has deepened, the more I appreciate this humbler (but I think no less inspiring) version of Buddhism, and in turn appreciate Batchelor. In a way, what Stephen is doing, I think, is pointing us away from all the things that keep us from being free here and now. Beautiful.

I recommend his recent talk called "The Four," where he makes a case for dropping the "noble" from the four noble truths- an excellent introduction to his work! As a warning, as part of his style, I think he spars with teachers and ideas that are actually, despite the differences he sees as immense, good guides to the same Awakening he is pointing to. Not knowing fully the quality of his own practice, I can say that his scholarship leads him to a presentation of Buddhism that really manages to find a middle way. The patience you'll have to give him is totally worth the benefits of exploring any of his works. In my opinion, Batchelor is an excellent resource for heartfelt, fascinating, authentic, and enlightening dharma.

Thanks, M B

Here is the link to Batchelor's talk (the one I think you reference?): 4 Noble Truths as a Framework for Action. It is probably truncated as the talk is only about 8 minutes long and ends in the middle of Martine B talking.

I like that he and his partner often focus on the personal and community utility of the pursuing stages of insight.

(I moved this comment when I saw your "I recommend" thread was deleted and moved here)

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/14295/

Thank you for sharing the Dharma Seed website with me. I've never seen it before. It is an incredible treasure...

I fall into this camp as well "atheist, philosophical and materialist background, Batchelor appealed to me".
As pragmatic minded people are we not secular and without belief in gods?
The god question is old and dull. Life after death? Meh.
Karma? Means volitional action. "Buddha used narrative and cosmological explanations to persuade his listeners to explore the phenomenology of skillful action so that they too might gain release; his descriptions of the role of action in shaping the vast expanses of space, time, and existence was designed to focus the listener's attention on the liberating potential of what he/she was doing in the here and now." -thanissaro, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings/part1.html#part1-b
Rebirth? Basically about that Twelve Nidānas.The cycle of dukkha.
But where does Stephen Batchelor talk about practice...where is the meat? Without that not so interesting to me.

Batchelor in response to critics:
“Critics have accused me of ‘cherry picking’ Buddhist sources…To this objection I can only point out that it has ever been thus. Each Buddhist school that has emerged in the course of history has done exactly the same. Chinese Buddhists selected the texts that best fit their needs as Chinese, just as Tibetan Buddhists chose those that best fit theirs. If Buddhism is a living tradition for you, one to which you turn for clues about how to lead your life here and now rather than for cold impersonal facts, then how could it be otherwise?”
See BuddhistGeeks for some more content and controversy: http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/?s=Stephen+Batchelor&x=0&y=0

His website http://www.stephenbatchelor.org (not up currently?) had a decent amount of content.