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<\/a>When I mentioned to a friend that I was reading Stephen Batchelor\u2019s new book, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma<\/a> for a Secular Age<\/em>, he asked, \u201cIs it as acerbic as his last book?\u201d<\/p>\nOuch!<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019ve been reading Batchelor for a long time. Way back in 1983, Batchelor\u2019s\u00a0Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism<\/em>, was a powerful and important book for me. Living with the Devil<\/em>\u00a0(2005) is still a personal favorite. And perhaps because of my own acerbic proclivity, I haven\u2019t found any of his works to be primarily such. I don\u2019t necessarily resonate with all the atheist and secular threads, but always find his work to be coming from a like-minded practitioner who earnestly follows his line of inquiry wherever it might lead.<\/p>\n Sometimes it leads to a critical examination of dharma training and beliefs, especially those in the Tibetan Gelug tradition where he was ordained and practiced for nearly a decade. Batchelor\u2019s background has led him, in a series of books, to examine Buddhist<\/a> orthodoxy and to find much of it wanting.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re going to criticize, you risk being thought of as being acerbic from time to time. I\u2019ve been there and have been accused of that.<\/p>\n In any case, I told my friend, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t find it acerbic \u2026 but then you know me.\u201d<\/p>\n To be clear, I found After Buddhism<\/em> to be a smart and delightful read and am grateful to Batchelor for the decade-long process that resulted in this book.<\/p>\n For starters, Batchelor\u2019s narrative voice is evocatively sincere and probing. Like many intent on offering a new expression of the buddhadharma, Batchelor returns to the source \u2013 for him, the collection of works now referred to as the Pali Canon, previously thought of as the \u201coriginal teachings\u201d of the Buddha, but now, thanks to the work of modern scholars, we know that this collection contains texts with a wide-range of themes and perspectives (repetitive, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory)\u00a0that developed during the centuries following the Buddha\u2019s death. Sorting out what might be Gautama Buddha\u2019s voice from all of what was added is an impossible task. Still, Batchelor offers some careful speculation.<\/p>\n In addition, Batchelor adroitly pulls off a risky thematic structure with the odd-numbered chapters rearticulating the dharma for the modern practitioner (\u201cAfter Buddhism,\u201d \u201cA Fourfold Task,\u201d \u201cLetting Go of Truth,\u201d \u201cExperience,\u201d \u201cThe Everyday Sublime,\u201d and \u201cA Culture of Awakening\u201d) and the even-numbered chapters offering a detailed synthesis of a handful of marginal characters whose stories are spread through the Pali Canon (\u201cMahanama: The Convert,\u201d \u201cPasenadi: The King,\u201d \u201cSunakkhatta: The Traitor,\u201d \u201cJivaka: The Doctor,\u201d and \u201cAnanda: The Attendant\u201d). Batchelor skillfully connects his rearticulation of the dharma in the odd chapters to the ancient (freshly emphasized) tradition in the even chapters. This entangling vine organization creates two foci in intimate conversation.<\/p>\n As a person who has spent some time working through the Pali Canon (I studied it for a couple years with Katagiri Roshi), I\u2019m awed by the sections of the book that offer a detailed examination of the marginal figures cited above, fleshing out the contexts in which the Buddha taught so much more fully than I had understood in my own cursory study. Especially powerful is how Batchelor shows how the Buddha was a person, immersed in time and place with joys and tragedies like any of us. Batchelor notes, for example, that the Buddha said, \u201cNow I mainly<\/span> dwell by dwelling in emptiness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMainly\u201d \u2013 what the heck? Even the Buddha only \u201cmainly\u201d dwells in emptiness. And there are plenty of examples with the old guy getting reactive (like when his former attendant Sunakkhatta quits, or Devadata turns against him) that more than support the \u201cmainly.\u201d<\/p>\n For me, the most striking aspect of this part of the book lay in how\u00a0it shows the\u00a0last months of the Buddha\u2019s life. We learn that the Buddha died at a time that his community was in chaos and his dharma career was limping along. Some of his key allies had either died or turned away, his native people (the Sakiyans) had been nearly annihilated, his most senior, trusted disciples had died, and others (especially the conservative meanie Mahakassapa who Batchelor calls a \u201cprig\u201d) vied to lead the order.<\/p>\n Although these sections were always engaging for me, I sometimes wondered if the less dharma geekee would find them as compelling.<\/p>\n Batchelor summarizes some of the essential dharma points of the book (expressly developed the odd-numbered chapters) like this:<\/p>\n \u201cAn understanding of conditionality as the context for a fourfold task: to comprehend suffering, to let go of the arising of reactivity, to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and to cultivate an eightfold path<\/a> that is grounded in the perspective of mindful awareness and leads one to become self-reliant in the practice of the dharma.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTask\u201d is used consciously rather than \u201ctruth.\u201d Batchelor, refreshingly, directs dharma practice away from abstract truths to doing, so what are generally called the Four Truths (here the four tasks) are expressed like this: \u201cEmbrace life, Let go of what arises, See its ceasing, Act!\u201d<\/p>\n This perspective is certainly right up the Zen alley of practicing enlightenment where it isn\u2019t so much about what you believe but what you do. And there\u2019s not much to argue about \u2013 rebirth, karma, enlightenment, religion, secular, yadda, yadda, yadda. The message is clear \u2013 get off your dharma soap box and get to work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe purpose of the Buddha\u2019s teaching,\u201d says Batchelor, \u201cis not to resolve doubts about the nature of \u2018reality\u2019 by providing answers to such conundrums but to offer a practice that will remove the \u2018arrow\u2019 of reactivity, thereby restoring practitioners\u2019 health and enabling them to flourish here on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n I especially appreciate Batchelor\u2019s argument against the two truths doctrine (the absolute and relative truths) that quickly became pervasive across schools, but was never mentioned in the Pali Canon (see Chapter 5, \u201cLetting Go of Truth\u201d). For more on my view of the pernicious two truths doctrine, see this previous post \u2013 \u201cThe No of No No<\/a>.\u201d Batchelor calls the adoption of the two truths, \u201c\u2026a fatal fork in the road for the Buddhist tradition.\u201d \u00a0This fatal fork, among other things, is a \u201c\u2026 dualism [that] led to a recurrent emphasis on the innate purity of mind as opposed to the defiled, unclean nature of the body.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than an absolute truth that is divorced from this very body and mind, Batchelor presents the Buddha\u2019s awakening and practice as being right here:\u00a0\u201c\u2019It is just in this fathom-high mortal frame endowed with perception and mind,\u2019 says Gotama, \u2018that I make known the world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And in Batchelor\u2019s words,<\/p>\n \u201cEmptiness thus seems to be a perspective, a sensibility, a way of being in this poignant, contingent world. The \u2018great person\u2019 would be one who has cultivated such a sensibility until it has become entirely natural. Rather than being the negation of \u2018self,\u2019 emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human.\u201d<\/p>\n Another strong section begins with an introduction of embodied meditation and moves into the vital role of questioning and doubt. Batchelor frames the role of meditation like this:<\/p>\n \u201cMeditation is an integral part of a caring\/care-full relationship to oneself and the world. As such, it forms a crucial dimension of each aspect of the fourfold task. It is involved in the cultivation of the eightfold path, which requires fully embracing the conditions of one\u2019s life, letting go of habitual reactivity, and beholding the ceasing of that reactivity. Such a meditative sensibility allows one to flourish by leading a life of ethical commitment, contemplative attention, philosophical reflection, and aesthetic appreciation.\u201d<\/p>\n About Great Doubt, Batchelor writes, \u00a0\u201cThe kind of doubt spoken of in S\u014fn [Zen] \u2026 should be thought of as a psychosomatic condition of astonishment and bafflement rather than as a discursive mental process.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple limitations of the book are worth a brief mention. First, Batchelor diminishes the role of kensho (i.e., breakthrough or turnaround) and misses the chance to fully unpack the significance of that experience in light of ongoing practice. Second, his emphasis on the secular vs. religious has the (reactive?) ring of lumping all the good stuff in one pile (e.g., doubt and inquiry) and calling it \u201csecular\u201d and all the not-so-good stuff (dogmatism, belief in rebirth, and rigid orthodoxy) into another pile and calling it \u201creligious.\u201d I don\u2019t find this distinction to have much utility. I consider myself religious, for example, but agree with all of his \u201cTen Theses for a Secular Dharma<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, in After Buddhism, <\/em>Batchelor makes another strong contribution to the ongoing exploration of the buddhadharma for modern, global practitioners like us. I strongly recommend it.<\/p>\n