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A review by christopherc
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor
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.