Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World

by Stephen Batchelor

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