Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening

by Stephen Batchelor

To understand a worry is to know it calmly and clearly for what it is: transient, contingent, and devoid of intrinsic identity. Whereas to misunderstand it is to freeze it into something fixed, separate, and independent.

Whenever such feelings arise, the habitual reaction is either to indulge them or to deny them. Which again blinds us to the phrase stamped on them by the Buddha: “Let Go!”

Awakening is no longer seen as something to attain in the distant future, for it is not a thing but a process—and this process is the path itself.

Yet as Buddhism became institutionalized as a religion, awakening became progressively more inaccessible. Those who controlled the institutions maintained that awakening was so exalted that generally it could be attained only with the detachment and purity of heart achieved through monastic discipline. Even then, they admitted, it was rare.

Before he died he refused to appoint a successor, remarking that people should be responsible for their own freedom. Dharma practice would suffice as their guide.

The dharma in fact might well have more in common with Godless secularism than with the bastions of religion. Agnosticism may serve as a more fertile common ground for dialogue than, for example, a tortured attempt to make Buddhist sense of Allah.

First and foremost the Buddha taught a method (“dharma practice”) rather than another “-ism.” The dharma is not something to believe in but something to do. The Buddha did not reveal an esoteric set of facts about reality, which we can choose to believe in or not. He challenged people to understand the nature of anguish, let go of its origins, realize its cessation, and bring into being a way of life.

This approach works well enough until the unmanageable erupts again as sickness, aging, sorrow, pain, grief, despair. No matter how expertly we manage our lives, how convincing an image of well-being we project, we still find ourselves involved with what we hate and torn apart from what we love. We still don’t get what we want and still get what we don’t want. True, we experience joy, success, love, bliss. But in the end we find ourselves once more prone to anguish.

distraction is a state of unawareness.

Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is. It is the symptom of flight from birth and death, from the pulse of the present. It is the gnawing mood of unease that haunts the clinging to “me” and “mine.”

might be that all I can trust in the end is my integrity to keep asking such questions as: Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do? And then to act on them.

In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it.

if there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily.” This is the second comfort acquired.

Dharma practice can never be in contradiction with science: not because it provides some mystical validation of scientific findings but because it simply is not concerned with either validating or invalidating them. Its concern lies entirely with the nature of existential experience.

our actions will reverberate beyond our deaths. Irrespective of our personal survival, the legacy of our thoughts, words, and deeds will continue through the impressions we leave behind in the lives of those we have influenced or touched in any way.

The meaning-laden feelings do not last. We resolve to become wealthy and famous, only to discover in the end that such things are incapable of providing that permanent well-being we initially projected onto them. Wealth and success are all very well; but once we have them their allure fades. It is like climbing a mountain. We expend great energy and hope on reaching the top, only to find when we get there that it is dwarfed by another even higher ridge.

ANGUISH EMERGES FROM craving for life to be other than it is.

Dharma practice is founded on resolve. This is not an emotional conversion, a devastating realization of the error of our ways, a desperate urge to be good, but an ongoing, heartfelt reflection on priorities, values, and purpose. We need to keep taking stock of our life in an unsentimental, uncompromising way.

The process of awakening is like walking on a footpath. When we find such a path after hours of struggling through undergrowth, we know at last that we are heading somewhere. Moreover, we suddenly find that we can move freely without obstruction. We settle into a rhythmic and easy pace. At the same time we are reconnected to others: men, women, and animals who have walked here before us. The path is maintained as a path only because of the tread of feet. Just as others have created this path for us, so by walking on it we maintain it for those who will come after us. What counts is not so much the destination but the resolve to take the next step. Treading the path of awakening can embrace a range of purposes.

At times we may concentrate on the specifics of material existence: creating a livelihood that is in accord with our deepest values and aspirations. At times we may retreat: disentangling ourselves from social and psychological pressures in order to reconsider our life in a quiet and supportive setting. At times we may engage with the world: responding empathetically and creatively to the anguish of others. There is no hierarchy among these purposes; one is not “better” than the other; we do not “progress” from one to the next. They each have their time and place. If we seek inner detachment and clarity while our outer life is a mess, we may enjoy periodic escapes from turmoil but find no lasting equanimity. If we devote ourselves to the welfare of the world while our inner life is riven by irrational ideals and unresolved compulsions, we can easily undermine our own resolve.

COMMITMENT TO THE most worthy purpose is of little value if we lack confidence in our ability to realize it.

few. Conversely, if we see ourselves as superior to others, then while outwardly disdainful of hardship, we are tormented by humiliation when it defeats us.

Self-confidence is not a form of arrogance. It is trust in our capacity to awaken. It is both the courage to face whatever life throws at us without losing equanimity, and the humility to treat every situation we encounter as one from which we can learn.

In terms of dharma practice, a true friend is more than just someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone whom we can trust to refine our understanding of what it means to live, who can guide us when we’re lost and help us find the way along a path, who can assuage our anguish through the reassurance of his or her presence.

In varying degrees, the authority of the dharma was replaced by the authority of the guru, who came, in some traditions, to assume the role of the Buddha himself.

WHILE MEDITATION MAY be cultivated as a formal practice once or twice a day for half an hour or so, the aim is to bring a fresh awareness into everything we do. Whether walking or standing still, sitting or lying down, alone or in company, resting or working, I try to maintain that same careful attention. So when I go to get milk, I will notice the scratching sound of the leaves on the sidewalk as well as my anger and hurt at what S said.

WHEN YOU FIRST try to make a pot on a wheel, the clay does not obey your fingers. You end up with a wet, muddy mess. With practice, though, you become adept at handling clay in relation to the spin of the wheel and can create functional and beautiful things. I likewise have become adept at configuring myself from the spinning clay of my existence, creating a personality, a home, friendships, children, ideas.

So I set out on the absurd task of reordering the world to fit my agenda. I try to create a perfect situation, one in which I have everything I want and nothing I don’t want. I dream of a life in which all imperfections are removed. In doing so I find myself at odds with the very presence of things.

Under the spell of craving, my whole life hinges on the acquisition or banishment of something. “If only . . .” becomes the mantra of unconsummated desire. A world of contingency and change can offer only simulacra of perfection.

My sense of having found a new lease on life turns out to be merely a repetition of the past. I realize I am running on the spot, frantically going nowhere.

Just as a potter forms a pot on the wheel, so I configure my personality from the spinning clay of my existence.

is as though this self—which is a mere configuration of past and present contingencies—has been fired in the kiln of anxiety to emerge as something fixed. Fixed but also brittle. The more precious it becomes to me, the more I must guard it against attack. The circumstances in which I feel at ease become ever narrower and more circumscribed.

This calm, free, open, and sensitive space is the very center of dharma practice. It is immediate, imminent, and dynamic. It is a path, a track. It grants an intimation of the invisible point to which the lines of our life converge. It allows unobstructed movement. And it assures us that we are not alone: it implies indebtedness to those who have trodden this path before and responsibility to those who will follow.

There is nothing thinglike about me at all. I am more like an unfolding narrative. As we become aware of all this, we can begin to assume greater responsibility for the course of our lives. Instead of clinging to habitual behavior and routines as a means to secure this sense of self, we realize the freedom to create who we are. Instead of being bewitched by impressions, we start to create them. Instead of taking ourselves so seriously, we discover the playful irony of a story that has never been told in quite this way before.

Dharma practice is the cultivation of a way of life in which such moments are not just left to chance. However much we may treasure and value these moments, we soon find ourselves swept along again on the tides of unreflective self-absorption. But there is another choice: we can continually question the assumption of a fixed, immutable nugget of self at the core of experience. And we can persistently challenge the validity of the emotionally charged images by which we define others. Through both disciplined meditation and ongoing reflective inquiry, we can loosen the grip in which habitual perceptions of self and others hold us.

THE GREATEST THREAT to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority. Exhilarated by the outpouring of selfless altruism toward others, we may come to believe that we are their savior.

The way of the Buddha is to know yourself; To know yourself is to forget yourself; To forget yourself is to be awakened by all things. —Dogen

this: at the end of the next out-breath, just wait for the following in-breath to occur—as though you were a cat waiting for a mouse to emerge from its hole. You know that the next in-breath will come, but you have no idea precisely when. So while your attention remains as alert and poised in the present as that of a cat’s, it is free from any intention to control what will happen next. Without expectation, just wait. Then suddenly it happens and you catch “it” breathing.

Such unknowing is not the end of the track: the point beyond which thinking can proceed no further. This unknowing is the basis of deep agnosticism. When belief and opinion are suspended, the mind has nowhere to rest. We are free to begin a radically other kind of questioning.

Expectations of goals and rewards (such as Enlightenment) are recognized for what they are: last-ditch attempts by the ghostly self to subvert the process to its own ends. The more we become conscious of the mysterious unfolding of life, the clearer it becomes that its purpose is not to fulfill the expectations of our ego. We can put into words only the question it poses. And then let go, listen, and wait.

Potters or writers can be enthralled by the endless creative possibilities of each moment but paralyzed by their hesitation to realize even one of them.

Just as the meditator flees to the safety of a consoling memory or fantasy, so the artist races out to get another cup of coffee.

DHARMA PRACTICE IS more akin to artistic creation than technical problem solving. The technical dimension of dharma practice (such as training to be more mindful and focused) is comparable to the technical skills a potter must learn in order to become proficient in his craft. Both may require many years of discipline and hard work. Yet for both such expertise is only a means, not an end in itself. Just as technical proficiency in pottery is no guarantee of beautiful pots, so technical proficiency in meditation is no guarantee of a wise or compassionate response to anguish.

The art of dharma practice requires commitment, technical accomplishment, and imagination. As with all arts, we will fail to realize its full potential if any of these three is lacking.

This is not a process of self- or world-transcendence, but one of self- and world -creation.

Self-creation entails imagining ourself in other ways. Instead of thinking of ourself as a fixed nugget in a shifting current of mental and physical processes, we might consider ourself as a narrative that transforms these processes into an unfolding story.

We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to.

Yet by suppression of the imagination, the very life of dharma practice is cut off at its source. While religious orthodoxies may survive and even prosper for centuries, in the end they will ossify. When the world around them changes, they will lack the imaginative power to respond creatively to the challenges of the new situation.

Instead of creatively realizing their freedoms, many choose the unreflective conformism dictated by television, indulgence in mass-consumerism, or numbing their feelings of alienation and anguish with drugs. In theory, freedom may be held in high regard; in practice it is experienced as a dizzying loss of meaning and direction.