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p9ng's review against another edition
3.0
The author describes himself, with some humility, as a failed Buddhist - because he does not agree with some of the so-called fundamental Buddhist teachings. As he says, perhaps some of the traditional teachings are more indicative of Indian culture than the words of Gotama. He relies on the Pali Canon to construct a life history of the Buddha which is more complex than the Hagiography we are given in the traditional teachings. So for my part, I found that life history interesting. Personally, as a student of Buddhism, it does not matter to me that there is a historical record which has some differences to the mythology we create around the master. They could both be true, or neither.
It strikes me as puzzling that an author who seems to favor materialism (I mean a Western skeptical method of observation) takes umbrage at the idea of karma. Isn't karma cause and effect? It comes up in the context of reincarnation, but you could challenge the idea of reincarnation without discussing karma. We certainly are aware of times in our lives when previous actions we were unaware of caused events in our lives to occur.
This book lead me to read Poison is Medicine, by Dzongsar Khyentse, which discusses topics important for students of Tibetan Buddhism.
It strikes me as puzzling that an author who seems to favor materialism (I mean a Western skeptical method of observation) takes umbrage at the idea of karma. Isn't karma cause and effect? It comes up in the context of reincarnation, but you could challenge the idea of reincarnation without discussing karma. We certainly are aware of times in our lives when previous actions we were unaware of caused events in our lives to occur.
This book lead me to read Poison is Medicine, by Dzongsar Khyentse, which discusses topics important for students of Tibetan Buddhism.
christopherc's review against another edition
3.0
Stephen Batchelor has been an advocate of Buddhism for several decades, but his thought has turned to stripping away from Buddhism what he feels are extraneous beliefs and practices. His book Buddhism without Beliefs caused a firestorm for suggesting that the doctrines of rebirth and karma, present in all historical expressions of Buddhism across Asia, are not essential to the religion. In Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, he expands on this new viewpoint.
This is essentially two books in one. Batchelor chronicles his life as a Buddhist, and then presents his new interpretation of the Pali canon. This double theme has irked some previous reviewers, but I think it makes sense. Batchelor's view of the Buddha's teachings has evolved as he moved from Tibetan Buddhism with its magical rituals and emphasis on the supernatural, though Korean Zen with a more austere but still arcane and unquestioning doctrine, to finally his late acquaintance with the Pali canon that he believes hides within it the truth of Gotama's life and teachings.
I quite enjoyed the memoir portion of the book. I knew that he was one of the late 1960s/early 1970s overland travellers to India, as he contributed a few remarks to David Tomory's oral history A Season in Heaven, but here we get a fuller account of his experiences on the overland trail and how he ended up becoming a Buddhist monk among India's Tibetan exile community. His account of his Buddhist career after leaving India offers some enjoyable anecdotes about the spread of the religion among Westerners, as well as an insight onto ideological rivalries among Tibetan Buddhists (namely whether to venerate a certain protector god or not) that have torn that community apart.
I found Batchelor's reconstruction of the life of Gotama generally interesting. Batchelor believes that Gotama depended heavily on the patronage of contemporary rulers, and that the abandonment he felt in the final years of his life were due to regional political intrigues in which he played some part. Batchelor in fact constructs an elaborate biography for Gotama, and though I'd like to see it confirmed by trained historians before I fully swallow it, I appreciated hearing something of the fifth-century BC North Indian society in which Gotama lived.
When it comes to reconstructing what Gotama really taught, however, Batchelor's method is suspect. He aims to establish the Buddha's original teaching by removing all elements present in other religions of India at the time. Thus in translating the Buddha's first sermon, he leaves out the phrase "This is the last birth", as he assumes the presence of the doctrine of rebirth is a later corruption of the Buddha's teachings. But who is to say that the Buddha didn't believe in a few of the typical beliefs of contemporary Indian religious thought? Batchelor claims that he wants to remove all the mythology of Buddha as a perfect man, but he still assumes that the Buddha taught a doctrine that was wholly original and in no way mistaken, which to me seems the same kind of faith-based mythologising. Maybe the guy just didn't have it right after all and it was a mistake for a religion to pop up around his teachings.
Batchelor in fact tries to defend the reconstructed beliefs by claiming that what really matters is if they work to prevent suffering, not if they are "right" or "wrong". But if such is the case, why advocate Buddhism as opposed to astrology, Transcendental Meditation or myriad other practices that their adherents claim offer peace of mind? Ultimately this feels like the desperate thoughts of a man who has become so invested in Buddhism over his life that he has to, to save face, prove there is really something in it.
This is essentially two books in one. Batchelor chronicles his life as a Buddhist, and then presents his new interpretation of the Pali canon. This double theme has irked some previous reviewers, but I think it makes sense. Batchelor's view of the Buddha's teachings has evolved as he moved from Tibetan Buddhism with its magical rituals and emphasis on the supernatural, though Korean Zen with a more austere but still arcane and unquestioning doctrine, to finally his late acquaintance with the Pali canon that he believes hides within it the truth of Gotama's life and teachings.
I quite enjoyed the memoir portion of the book. I knew that he was one of the late 1960s/early 1970s overland travellers to India, as he contributed a few remarks to David Tomory's oral history A Season in Heaven, but here we get a fuller account of his experiences on the overland trail and how he ended up becoming a Buddhist monk among India's Tibetan exile community. His account of his Buddhist career after leaving India offers some enjoyable anecdotes about the spread of the religion among Westerners, as well as an insight onto ideological rivalries among Tibetan Buddhists (namely whether to venerate a certain protector god or not) that have torn that community apart.
I found Batchelor's reconstruction of the life of Gotama generally interesting. Batchelor believes that Gotama depended heavily on the patronage of contemporary rulers, and that the abandonment he felt in the final years of his life were due to regional political intrigues in which he played some part. Batchelor in fact constructs an elaborate biography for Gotama, and though I'd like to see it confirmed by trained historians before I fully swallow it, I appreciated hearing something of the fifth-century BC North Indian society in which Gotama lived.
When it comes to reconstructing what Gotama really taught, however, Batchelor's method is suspect. He aims to establish the Buddha's original teaching by removing all elements present in other religions of India at the time. Thus in translating the Buddha's first sermon, he leaves out the phrase "This is the last birth", as he assumes the presence of the doctrine of rebirth is a later corruption of the Buddha's teachings. But who is to say that the Buddha didn't believe in a few of the typical beliefs of contemporary Indian religious thought? Batchelor claims that he wants to remove all the mythology of Buddha as a perfect man, but he still assumes that the Buddha taught a doctrine that was wholly original and in no way mistaken, which to me seems the same kind of faith-based mythologising. Maybe the guy just didn't have it right after all and it was a mistake for a religion to pop up around his teachings.
Batchelor in fact tries to defend the reconstructed beliefs by claiming that what really matters is if they work to prevent suffering, not if they are "right" or "wrong". But if such is the case, why advocate Buddhism as opposed to astrology, Transcendental Meditation or myriad other practices that their adherents claim offer peace of mind? Ultimately this feels like the desperate thoughts of a man who has become so invested in Buddhism over his life that he has to, to save face, prove there is really something in it.
vegantrav's review against another edition
5.0
First, I should say a brief word about the title: Buddhism is an atheistic religion, so being a Buddhist atheist is not anything at all unusual. Now, granted, many sects of Buddhism believe in various deities and spirits; however, one of the key teachings of Siddhattha Gotama (Batchelor uses the Pali spellings) was his rejection of the theism--his rejection of the existence of Brahman and Atman: God, The Absolutle, the Self--of the Hindu culture in which he lived. Gotama's atheism, as Batchelor points out, was not an explicit argument against the existence of God but rather a recognition that the existence of God is not relevant to the human condition.
Batchelor's confession leads us down two intertwining paths: Batchelor's own personal spiritual journey and a biography of the life of Siddhattha Gotama.
Batchelor relates his initiation into Tibetan Buddhism and his life as a monk and his eventual "disrobing"--giving up the monastic life to become a lay Buddhist teacher. Despite belonging to a branch of Buddhism that retains many superstitious beliefs, Batchelor never had much, if any, affinity for the supernatural elements of that sect but rather sought the peace and truth to be discovered in meditation and in following Gotama's Dhamma (the Pali spelling of Dharma).
The real interest in this book, for me anyway, is Batchelor's quest for the historical Gotama, which is not unlike the quest for the historical Jesus in which biblical scholars are engaged. The Gotama whom Batchelor finds is a man who teaches some things that many Buddhists would find shocking: for example, Batchelor argues that Gotama rejected the belief in karma and reincarnation.
Batchelor's Gotama, though, is not terribly unlike other portraits of the Buddha (I am thinking here of Karen Armstrong's biography of the Buddha): Gotama is a wise and witty man who urges his followers to think for themselves, who urges them to take nothing on faith or on authority or even on his own word but to test all things for themselves. Yes, Gotama does think he has found the answer to salvation in this life, but nibbana (Pali for nirvana) is not some heavenly bliss or even just escape from samsara; rather, nibbana is the condition that is attained upon a recognition and acceptance of the contingency of one's existence and an acceptance of the suffering of life, an embracing of this suffering, and then a transcending of the suffering so that, despite its existence, there is a cessation (a blowing out: nibbana) of the effects of suffering and of one's contingent status upon one's life.
The biography of Gotama that Batchelor provides is drawn from the Pali Canon, and Batchelor uses many of the same critical methods that biblical scholars use in approaching the historical Jesus. Batchelor gives readers a great perspective on the political and social world in which Gotama lived. I am certainly no scholar of Buddhism or of the life of Siddhattha Gotama; however, it seems to me that Batchelor does a great job of providing an accurate portrayal of the life and times of Siddhattha Gotama, and he does so without trying to persuade anyone of any particular religious or philosophical beliefs.
Batchelor is simply telling us the story of the life of the Buddha, and for anyone interested in that story, I would highly recommend this book. The figure of Siddhattha Gotama who emerges in this book is one of who was far more of a philosopher than a religious figure, and Gotama was certainly not dogmatist and seems to have little interest at all in organized religion or in the supernatural elements (God, life after death, karma, spirits, etc.) with which many religions are deeply concerned.
What I found most attractive in this portrait of Gotama (and this feature is born out in other biographies of Gotama) was the emphasis on the individual finding truth for herself or himself. Gotama had attained enlightenment for himself, but he did not ask us to take anything that he taught on faith but rather to seek the truth for ourselves and even to put to the test the core teachings of his Dhamma.
Batchelor's confession leads us down two intertwining paths: Batchelor's own personal spiritual journey and a biography of the life of Siddhattha Gotama.
Batchelor relates his initiation into Tibetan Buddhism and his life as a monk and his eventual "disrobing"--giving up the monastic life to become a lay Buddhist teacher. Despite belonging to a branch of Buddhism that retains many superstitious beliefs, Batchelor never had much, if any, affinity for the supernatural elements of that sect but rather sought the peace and truth to be discovered in meditation and in following Gotama's Dhamma (the Pali spelling of Dharma).
The real interest in this book, for me anyway, is Batchelor's quest for the historical Gotama, which is not unlike the quest for the historical Jesus in which biblical scholars are engaged. The Gotama whom Batchelor finds is a man who teaches some things that many Buddhists would find shocking: for example, Batchelor argues that Gotama rejected the belief in karma and reincarnation.
Batchelor's Gotama, though, is not terribly unlike other portraits of the Buddha (I am thinking here of Karen Armstrong's biography of the Buddha): Gotama is a wise and witty man who urges his followers to think for themselves, who urges them to take nothing on faith or on authority or even on his own word but to test all things for themselves. Yes, Gotama does think he has found the answer to salvation in this life, but nibbana (Pali for nirvana) is not some heavenly bliss or even just escape from samsara; rather, nibbana is the condition that is attained upon a recognition and acceptance of the contingency of one's existence and an acceptance of the suffering of life, an embracing of this suffering, and then a transcending of the suffering so that, despite its existence, there is a cessation (a blowing out: nibbana) of the effects of suffering and of one's contingent status upon one's life.
The biography of Gotama that Batchelor provides is drawn from the Pali Canon, and Batchelor uses many of the same critical methods that biblical scholars use in approaching the historical Jesus. Batchelor gives readers a great perspective on the political and social world in which Gotama lived. I am certainly no scholar of Buddhism or of the life of Siddhattha Gotama; however, it seems to me that Batchelor does a great job of providing an accurate portrayal of the life and times of Siddhattha Gotama, and he does so without trying to persuade anyone of any particular religious or philosophical beliefs.
Batchelor is simply telling us the story of the life of the Buddha, and for anyone interested in that story, I would highly recommend this book. The figure of Siddhattha Gotama who emerges in this book is one of who was far more of a philosopher than a religious figure, and Gotama was certainly not dogmatist and seems to have little interest at all in organized religion or in the supernatural elements (God, life after death, karma, spirits, etc.) with which many religions are deeply concerned.
What I found most attractive in this portrait of Gotama (and this feature is born out in other biographies of Gotama) was the emphasis on the individual finding truth for herself or himself. Gotama had attained enlightenment for himself, but he did not ask us to take anything that he taught on faith but rather to seek the truth for ourselves and even to put to the test the core teachings of his Dhamma.
yellowdaniel's review against another edition
5.0
This book has much more than I thought it would. It not only deals with the life and the way of thinking of the author, but also reformulates and elaborates on the Four Noble Truths and gives a more realistic account of the Buddha's life. The book also touches on existentialism for example.
If it sounds interesting to you at all, you definitely should give it a read.
In one of Sam Harris's podcasts Joseph Goldstein talked about how in the Four Noble Truths the word suffering is essentially a mistranslation. The original word dukkha means something more like unsatisfactoriness. Since then the reformulations on the Truths in this book are the only remotely new thing I've read about Buddhism. Putting together those two just really makes this proto version (meaning you're really trying to get as close to the core teachings cutting trough the thousands of pages of canon) of Buddhism even more relevant in my life than before. I like telling people I'm a proto-buddhist, if not for anything else but to provoke a conversation about what that means.
I can kind of compare this to one of my favorite movies, the documentary Kumaré. The premise is that the director of the movie is of Indian descent so he can dress up and act like an Indian guru. But he was brought up in the USA and wasn't even religious so it's as fake as possible. But things that happen just go deeper and deeper into the rabbithole and it finishes as true as fake it started. This book doesn't go that far, but it starts as a simple biography but really it goes way deeper.
If it sounds interesting to you at all, you definitely should give it a read.
In one of Sam Harris's podcasts Joseph Goldstein talked about how in the Four Noble Truths the word suffering is essentially a mistranslation. The original word dukkha means something more like unsatisfactoriness. Since then the reformulations on the Truths in this book are the only remotely new thing I've read about Buddhism. Putting together those two just really makes this proto version (meaning you're really trying to get as close to the core teachings cutting trough the thousands of pages of canon) of Buddhism even more relevant in my life than before. I like telling people I'm a proto-buddhist, if not for anything else but to provoke a conversation about what that means.
I can kind of compare this to one of my favorite movies, the documentary Kumaré. The premise is that the director of the movie is of Indian descent so he can dress up and act like an Indian guru. But he was brought up in the USA and wasn't even religious so it's as fake as possible. But things that happen just go deeper and deeper into the rabbithole and it finishes as true as fake it started. This book doesn't go that far, but it starts as a simple biography but really it goes way deeper.
vikramx's review against another edition
5.0
A young British nomad/monk Stephen Batchelor autobiograhical rendition articulates probably the “true spirit” of Buddhism is this book as he journeys as a young 18 year old departing England through Europe and to the far east ; eventually ends up tracking the path of the Buddha to his last days as decades pass by .
Buddhism through the eons (predates all abrahamic religions) has been absorbed by each culture and now reduced to a splinter groups ( Tibetan - Theravada / Mahayana ) each affirming their interpretation holds the path to salvation ; and yet they are all plagued by dogmatic , authoritarian , misogynic propaganda which is synonymous with abrahamic religions .
In retrospection with Karen Amstrong’s version “The Buddha” ( Richard Gere narration) I see how flawed and heavily biased towards hinduism when compared to the original transcripts of the Buddha ; which in summary was an exuberance of rationalism and non-theistic in nature .
Buddhism through the eons (predates all abrahamic religions) has been absorbed by each culture and now reduced to a splinter groups ( Tibetan - Theravada / Mahayana ) each affirming their interpretation holds the path to salvation ; and yet they are all plagued by dogmatic , authoritarian , misogynic propaganda which is synonymous with abrahamic religions .
In retrospection with Karen Amstrong’s version “The Buddha” ( Richard Gere narration) I see how flawed and heavily biased towards hinduism when compared to the original transcripts of the Buddha ; which in summary was an exuberance of rationalism and non-theistic in nature .
acesarrows's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating story of both Stephen Batchelor's time within the Buddhist community, and the history of the Buddha.
Batchelor is a great writer and his story flows off the page and flies by. At times I wished to know more about him and his story and his religious travels and reasons.
I would also have loved to have heard more about Martine, his wife, and why she also became a Buddhist layperson after being a Zen nun.
His history of the Buddha is told from a historical perspective, with historical context, and that makes for a very interesting read of the history of Buddhism.
Highly recommended!
Batchelor is a great writer and his story flows off the page and flies by. At times I wished to know more about him and his story and his religious travels and reasons.
I would also have loved to have heard more about Martine, his wife, and why she also became a Buddhist layperson after being a Zen nun.
His history of the Buddha is told from a historical perspective, with historical context, and that makes for a very interesting read of the history of Buddhism.
Highly recommended!
zeekaygee's review against another edition
4.0
4.5. At times transcendent, at times dull, at all points strikingly relatable and nourishing.
lnbrittain's review against another edition
4.0
Pretty interesting, especially as the footsteps of the Buddha as told in the Pali Canon are traced through India. Interesting political and social ideas about the true nature of the Buddha.
Frustrating at times, but I learned from this book.
The title is a bit sensational.
Frustrating at times, but I learned from this book.
The title is a bit sensational.
petertruog's review against another edition
2.0
Mixed feelings about this book; it had incredibly boring parts about the author’s personal journey through Buddhism, his exploration of different Buddhist sects, his experience traveling around India writing for magazines, etc. - all this personal religions memoir stuff was not very interesting. On the other hand, he had a great exposition of the Buddha’s life, and really great takes on some of the core elements of Buddhist thought. My biggest takeaway from the book however was the attack he laid against doctrinal schools of Buddhism that require you to blindly follow your teacher; he insists that man of his Buddhist teachers were just as inflexible and dogmatic as leaders from other religions - the are equally unable to doubt their faith. The Buddha didn’t ever as for this, as he shows through his examination of the Pali cannon. Therefore, this “experiential learning” that Buddhism is so often lauded for is actually often not attainable through participation in a Buddhist school or organization, but only if you strike out alone like a renegade (like the author). he advocates for a practical Buddhism focused on the here and now, not concerned with re-birth and reincarnation.