Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World

by Stephen Batchelor

As a practitioner, the task is to stabilize attention on the fluid, unpredictable, and contingent nature of experience as the ground that enables one to take ethical choices that are not conditioned by habitual reactive patterns of greed, hatred, and self-centeredness.

Julius Cesare Andrea Evola was born to a devout Catholic family

Ñāṇavīra recognizes a yawning gulf between the worldview of the average Western person and the teaching of the Buddha. For those not inclined to the somewhat dry and technical approach of “Fundamental Structure,” he recommends prior study of existentialist philosophy, as found in the writings of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, and, in particular, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. For these thinkers had also discarded the detached, rationalist approach to philosophy and emphasized immediate questions of personal existence. He also speaks highly of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the early novels of Aldous Huxley, and the writings of Franz Kafka, all of which had a strong influence on him as a young maṇ Ñāṇavīra nonetheless warned against confusing existentialism with Buddhism. For “one who has understood the Buddha’s Teaching no longer asks these questions; he is ariya ‘noble,’ and no more a puthujjana, and he is beyond the range of the existential philosophies.” The Dhamma does not offer answers; it shows “the way leading to the final cessation of all questions about self and the world.”69

clear away with reason much of the confusion surrounding its orthodox interpretation,

paucity

For certain people, an unintended consequence of such mindfulness practice is the experience of a still, vivid, and detached awareness that does more than just deal with a specific pain; it opens a new perspective on how to come to terms with the totality of one’s existence, that is, birth, sickness, aging, death, and everything else that falls under the broad heading of what the Buddha called dukkha. The simple (though not necessarily easy) step of standing back and mindfully attending to one’s experience rather than being uncritically overwhelmed with the imperatives of habitual thoughts and emotions can allow a glimpse of an inner freedom not to react to what one’s mind is insisting that one do. The experience of such inner freedom, I would argue, is a taste of nirvana itself.

memes

In the parable of the raft, the Buddha describes “a man in the course of a journey” who arrives at a body of water that he has to cross. Since there are no boats or bridges available, his only option is to assemble a raft out of the “grass, twigs, branches, leaves” and whatever other materials are to hand. Having bound them together, and “making an effort with his hands and feet,” he manages to get across to the opposite shore. Despite its evident usefulness, he realizes that there is no point in carrying the raft any further once it has accomplished its purpose. So he leaves it by the shore and continues on his way. Likewise, the Buddha concludes, “I have shown you how the dharma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping.”28 This story shows how the dharma is an expedient, a means to achieve an urgent task at hand, not an end in itself that is to be preserved at all cost. It emphasizes how one needs to draw upon whatever resources are available at a given time in order to accomplish what you have to do. It doesn’t matter whether these resources are “what the Buddha truly taught” or not. The only thing that matters is whether such a configuration of disparate elements is of any help in getting you across the river. So it is with Buddhism 2.0. In the light of this parable, it makes little sense to ask “Is this really Buddhism?” The only relevant question is “Does it float?”

Buddhism is no exception to this. It is undeniable that the historical Buddha accepted the idea of rebirth. He spoke of rebirth and frequently described, sometimes in considerable detail, how actions committed in this life determine the form of existence in a future world. He also spoke of enlightenment in terms of how many times one must be reborn before one will be freed from the cycle of birth and death. Although there are instances in his discourses (the Kālāma Sutta, for example) where he says that the practice of dharma is meaningful, whether you believe in a hereafter or not, the overwhelming mass of evidence does not suggest that he held an agnostic position himself.5

Even though the Buddha accepted the idea of rebirth, one could argue that he simply reflected the generally held beliefs of his time.

While Tibetan Buddhists tend dogmatically to assert it, practitioners of Zen and Vipassana tend either to overlook it or explain it away as a metaphor.

A truly agnostic position is not an excuse for indecisioṇ If anything, it is a powerful catalyst for action, since in shifting concern away from a hypothetical future life to the dilemmas of the present, it demands precisely the kind of compassion-centered ethic advocated by Śāntideva.

If Buddhism is to survive, it needs to find a firm communal footing within the framework of secular culture.

The term “agnostic” is the one I identify with most closely. It was coined only in the late 1880s, by the biologist Thomas Huxley—and as a joke.

What happened before birth, what will happen after death, the nature of the soul and its

is largely an invention of Western scholars.

Meditation on emptiness is not a mere intellectual exercise but a contemplative discipline rooted in an ethical commitment to nonviolence.

individuality.

By paying mindful attention to the sensory immediacy of experience, we realize how we are created,

molded, formed by a bewildering matrix of contingencies that continually arise and vanish.

To not know, to be agnostic, is nothing more than an honest acceptance of the limited human conditioṇ

To live according to Buddhism’s ethical precepts, to apply its instructions on

meditation, and to engage with its philosophical ideas seemed sufficiently self-validating and worthwhile in themselves. None of these activities needed to be justified or motivated by arcane theories of multiple lives and karmic causatioṇ

conceits

While a tiny handful of Europeans converted to Buddhism from the late nineteenth century onward, it was only in the late 1960s that the dharma started to spread rapidly in the West.

For me, secular Buddhism is not just another modernist reconfiguration of a traditional form of Asian Buddhism. It is more radical than that: it seeks to return to the roots of the Buddhist tradition and rethink Buddhism from the ground up.

We are exceptionally fortunate as English speakers to have not only a complete translation of the Pali Canon, but one that is continually being improved—

something that speakers of other European languages can still only dream of.

The Pali Canon is a complex tapestry of linguistic and rhetorical styles, shot through with conflicting ideas, doctrines, and images, all assembled and elaborated over about four centuries. The canon does not speak with a single voice. How then to distinguish between what is likely to have been the word of the Buddha as opposed to a well-intended “clarification” added by a later commentator? We are not yet—and may never be—at a point where such questions can be answered with certainty.

As one who feels an urgency about such concerns, I am bound, therefore, to risk choices of interpretation now that may or may not turn out to be viable later.

Batchelor admits taking the risk of mis-interpretation in the name of his certain type of faith he calls 'ultimate concern'.

emasculated

Above all, secular Buddhism is something to do, not something to believe iṇ

This pragmatism is evident in many of the classic parables: the poisoned arrow, the city, the raft—as well as in the Buddha’s presentation of the four noble truths as a range of tasks to be performed rather than a set of propositions to be affirmed.

Here we see Batchelor reasons for what makes Buddhism something to do rather than something to believe in.

“Mindfulness,” writes its foremost proponent, the American emeritus professor of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn, “is a way of being in wise and purposeful relationship with one’s experience, both inwardly and outwardly. It is cultivated by systematically exercising one’s capacity for paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, and by learning to inhabit and make use of the clarity, discernment, ethical understanding, and awareness that arise.”

purpose of one’s life and the ethical values needed to realize that purpose.

Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness endorses certain values.

Mindfulness is the seventh element of the noble eightfold path, the doctrine the Buddha declared to constitute the very heart of his teaching.

Heart is a strong word. This shows the significance of mindfulness.

Buddhism to recover its secular soul that has long been obscured by the encrustation of religious beliefs.

The sould of Buddhism, claims Batchelor, has been long obscured by the encrustation of religious beliefs.

raison d’être.

This means 'reason for being'.

A secular Buddhist celebrates the adoption of mindfulness in nonreligious settings, while recognizing that for its potential to be fully realized a meditative practice alone is insufficient.

Just as Jon Kabat-Zinn and others have secularized Buddhist mindfulness, the challenge now is to secularize Buddhist ethics and philosophy in such a way that they can address the current conditions of our world by articulating a way a life in which humans and other beings can flourish together on this earth.

values and practices

Values and practices are what help us liev the good life.

conviviality,

The outlook for religion might seem to be poor, but I think there is great need for it.

There is so much talk about power relations, and about economic relations, but there’s not enough talk about the quality of personal life and personal happiness.