exchange of views between alan wallace and stephen batchelor with various comments

8/3/2019 Exchange of Views Between Alan Wallace and Stephen Batchelor With Various Comments

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Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist

by B. Alan Wallace

As Buddhism has encountered modernity, it runs against widespread prejudices, bothreligious and anti-religious, and it is common for all those with such biases to misrepresentBuddhism, either intentionally or unintentionally. Reputable scholars of Buddhism, bothtraditional and modern, all agree that the historical Buddha taught a view of karma andrebirth that was quite different from the previous takes on these ideas. Moreover, histeachings on the nature and origins of suffering as well as liberation are couched entirelywithin the framework of rebirth. Liberation is precisely freedom from the round of birth anddeath that is samsara. But for many contemporary people drawn to Buddhism, theteachings on karma and rebirth don’t sit well, so they are faced with a dilemma. Alegitimate option is simply is adopt those theories and practices from various Buddhisttraditions that one finds compelling and beneficial and set the others aside. An illegitimate

option is to reinvent the Buddha and his teachings based on one’s own prejudices. This,unfortunately, is the route followed by Stephen Batchelor and other like-minded peoplewho are intent on reshaping the Buddha in their own images.

The back cover of Batchelor’s most recent book, entitled Confession of a Buddhist Atheist ,describes his work as “a stunning and groundbreaking recovery of the historical Buddhaand his message.” One way for this to be true, would be that his book is based on a recentdiscovery of ancient Buddhist manuscripts, comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls or theNag Hammadi library for Christianity. But it is not. Another way is for his claims to bebased on unprecedented historical research by a highly accomplished scholar of ancientIndian languages and history. But no such professional research or scholarship is inevidence in this book. Instead, his claims about the historical Buddha and his teachingsare almost entirely speculative, as he takes another stab at recreating Buddhism toconform to his current views.

To get a clear picture of Batchelor’s agnostic-turned-atheist approach to Buddhism, thereis no need to look further than his earlier work, Buddhism without Beliefs. Claiming toembrace Thomas Huxley’s definition of agnosticism as the method of following reason asfar as it will take one, he admonishes his readers, “Do not pretend that conclusions arecertain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”1 He then proceeds to explain whothe Buddha really was and what he really taught, often in direct opposition to the teachingsattributed to the Buddha by all schools of Buddhism. If in this he is following Huxley’sdictum, this would imply that Batchelor has achieved at least the ability to see directly intothe past, if not complete omniscience itself.

Some may believe that the liberties Batchelor takes in redefining the Buddha’s teachingsare justified since no one knows what he really taught, so one person’s opinion is as goodas another’s. This view ignores the fact that generations of traditional Buddhists, beginningwith the first Buddhist council shortly following the Buddha’s death, have reverently takenthe utmost care to accurately preserve his teachings. Moreover, modern secular Buddhistscholarship also has applied its formidable literary, historical, and archeological skills totrying to determine the teachings of the Buddha. Despite the many important differencesamong Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism, traditional Buddhists

1 Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening . (New York:Riverhead Books, 1997), 17-18.

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of all schools recognize the Pali suttas as being the most uncontested records of theBuddha’s teachings.

In the face of such consensus by professional scholars and contemplatives throughouthistory, it is simply an expression of arrogance to override their conclusions simply due toone’s own preferences or “intuition” (which is often thinly disguised prejudice). To ignorethe most compelling evidence of what the Buddha taught and to replace that by assertionsthat run counter to such evidence is indefensible. And when those secular, atheisticassertions just happen to correspond to the materialistic assumptions of modernity, it issimply ridiculous to attribute them to the historical Buddha.

For example, contrary to all the historical evidence, Batchelor writes that the Buddha “didnot claim to have had experience that granted him privileged, esoteric knowledge of howthe universe ticks.” To cite just two of innumerable statements in the Pali canon pertainingto the scope of the Buddha’s knowledge: “Whatever in this world – with its devas, maras,and brahmas, its generations complete with contemplatives and priests, princes and men – is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect, thathas been fully awakened to by the Tathagata. Thus he is called the Tathagata.” 2 In a similar

vein, we read, “the world and its arising are fully known by a Tathagata and he is releasedfrom both; he also knows the ending of it and the way thereto. He speaks as he does; he isunconquered in the world.”3

Batchelor brings to his understanding of Buddhism a strong antipathy toward religion andreligious institutions, and this bias pervades all his recent writings. Rather than simplyrejecting elements of the Buddha’s teachings that strike him as religious – which would beperfectly legitimate – Batchelor takes the illegitimate step of denying that the Buddha ever taught anything that would be deemed religious by contemporary western standards,claiming, that “There is nothing particularly religious or spiritual about this path.” Rather,the Buddha’s teachings were a form of “existential, therapeutic, and liberating agnosticism”

that was “refracted through the symbols, metaphors, and imagery of his world.”4

Being anagnostic himself, Batchelor overrides the massive amount of textual evidence that theBuddha was anything but an agnostic, and recreates the Buddha in his own image,promoting exactly what Batchelor himself believes in, namely, a form of existential,therapeutic, and liberating agnosticism.

Since Batchelor dismisses all talk of rebirth as a waste of time, he projects this view ontohis image of the Buddha, declaring that he regarded “speculation about future and pastlives to be just another distraction.” This claim flies in the face of the countless times theBuddha spoke of the immense importance of rebirth and karma, which lie at the core of histeachings as they are recorded in Pali suttas. Batchelor is one of many Zen teachersnowadays who regard future and past lives as a mere distraction. But in adopting thisattitude, they go against the teachings of Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto school of Zen,who addressed the importance of the teachings on rebirth and karma in his principalanthology, Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma (Shobogenzo). In his book Deep Faithin Cause and Effect (Jinshin inga), he criticizes Zen masters who deny karma, and inKarma of the Three Times (Sanji go), he goes into more detail on this matter.5

As to the source of Buddhist teachings on rebirth, Batchelor speculates, “In accepting theidea of rebirth, the Buddha reflected the worldview of his time.” In the Kalama Sutta, the

2 Itivuttaka 1123 A guttara Nikāya II 23ṅ

4 Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs, 10, 15.5 Yuho Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen: An Introduction with Selected Writings (New York: Weatherhill, 1976).

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Buddha counsels others not to accept beliefs simply because many people adhere tothem, or because they accord with a tradition, rumor, scripture, or speculation. SoBatchelor, in effect, accuses the Buddha of not following his own advice! In reality, theBuddha’s detailed accounts of rebirth and karma differed significantly from other Indianthinkers’ views on these subjects; and given the wide range of philosophical views duringhis era, there was no uniformly accepted “worldview of his time.”

Rather than adopting this idea from mere hearsay, the Buddha declared that in the firstwatch of the night of his enlightenment, after purifying his mind with the achievement of samadhi, he gained “direct knowledge” of the specific details of many thousands of hisown past lifetimes throughout the course of many eons of cosmic contraction andexpansion. In the second watch of the night, he observed the multiple rebirths of countlessother sentient beings, observing the consequences of their wholesome and unwholesomedeeds from one life to the next. During the third watch of the night he gained directknowledge of the Four Noble Truths, revealing the causes of gaining liberation from thiscycle of rebirth.6 While there is ample evidence that the Buddha claimed to have directknowledge of rebirth, there is no textual or historical evidence that he simply adopted

some pre-existing view, which would have been antithetical to his entire approach of notaccepting theories simply because they are commonly accepted. There would be nothingwrong if Batchelor simply rejected the authenticity of the Buddha’s enlightenment and thecore of his teachings, but instead he rejects the most reliable accounts of the Buddha’svision and replaces it with his own, while then projecting it on the Buddha that exists onlyin his imagination.

Perhaps the most important issue secularists ignore regarding the teachings attributed tothe Buddha is that there are contemplative methods – practiced by many generations of ardent seekers of truth – for putting many, if not all, these teachings to the test of experience. Specifically, Buddhist assertions concerning the continuity of individualconsciousness after death and rebirth can be explored through the practice of samadhi,probing beyond the coarse dimension of consciousness that is contingent upon the brainto a subtler continuum of awareness that allegedly carries on from one lifetime to the next.7 Such samadhi training does not require prior belief in reincarnation, but it does call for great determination and zeal in refining one’s attention skills. Such full-time, rigoroustraining may require months or even years of disciplined effort, and this is where theBuddhist science of the mind really gets launched. If one is content with one’s owndogmatic, materialist assertions – content to accept the uncorroborated assumption that allstates of consciousness are produced by the brain – then one is bound to remain ignorantabout the origins and nature of consciousness. But if one is determined to progress from astate of agnosticism – not knowing what happens at death – to direct knowledge of the

deeper dimensions of consciousness, then Buddhism provides multiple avenues of experiential discovery. Many may welcome this as a refreshing alternative to the blindacceptance of materialist assumptions about consciousness that do not lend themselvesto either confirmation or repudiation through experience.

Batchelor concludes that since different Buddhist schools vary in their interpretations of theBuddha’s teachings in response to the questions of the nature of that which is reborn andhow this process occurs, all their views are based on nothing more than speculation. 8

6 Majjhima Nikāya 36: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html7 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, trans. Ñā amoli Bhikkhu (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society,ṇ

1979), XIII 13-120; B. Alan Wallace, Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and

Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 115 – 118.8 Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs, 35-36.

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Scientists in all fields of inquiry commonly differ in their interpretations of empiricalfindings, so if this fact invalidates Buddhist teachings, it should equally invalidate scientificfindings as well. While in his view Buddhism started out as agnostic, it “has tended to loseits agnostic dimension through becoming institutionalized as a religion (i.e., a revealedbelief system valid for all time, controlled by an elite body of priests).” 9 Since there is noevidence that Buddhism was ever agnostic, any assertions about how it lost this status are

nothing but groundless speculations, driven by the philosophical bias that he brings toBuddhism.

As an agnostic Buddhist, Batchelor does not regard the Buddha’s teachings as a source of answers to questions of where we came from, where we are going, or what happens after death, regardless of the extensive teachings attributed to the Buddha regarding each of these issues. Rather, he advises Buddhists to seek such knowledge in what he deems theappropriate domains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and so on. Withthis advice, he reveals that he is a devout member of the congregation of Thomas Huxley’sChurch Scientific, taking refuge in science as the one true way to answer all the deepestquestions concerning human nature and the universe at large. Ironically, a rapidly growing

number of open-minded cognitive scientists are seeking to collaborate with Buddhistcontemplatives in the multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural study of the mind. Buddhist andscientific methods of inquiry have their strengths and limitations, and many who are eager to find answers to questions of where we came from, where we are going, or whathappens after death recognize that Buddhism has much to offer in this regard. Batchelor’sstance, on the contrary, fails to note the limitations of modern science and the strengths of Buddhism regarding such questions, so the current of history is bound to leave himbehind.

Having identified himself as an agnostic follower of Huxley, Batchelor then proceeds tomake one declaration after another about the limits of human consciousness and theultimate nature of human existence and the universe at large, as if he were the mostaccomplished of gnostics. A central feature of Buddhist meditation is the cultivation of samadhi, by which the attentional imbalances of restlessness and lethargy are graduallyovercome through rigorous, sustained training. But in reference to the vacillation of themind from restlessness to lethargy, Batchelor responds, “No amount of meditativeexpertise from the mystical East will solve this problem, because such restlessness andlethargy are not mere mental or physical lapses but reflexes of an existential condition.”10 Contemplative adepts from multiple traditions, including Hinduism and Buddhism havebeen disproving this claim for thousands of years, and it is now being refuted by modernscientific research.11 But Batchelor is so convinced of his own preconceptions regardingthe limitations of the human mind and of meditation that he ignores all evidence to the

contrary.While there are countless references in the discourses of the Buddha referring to therealization of emptiness, Batchelor claims, “Emptiness…is not something we ‘realize’ in amoment of mystical insight that ‘breaks through’ to a transcendent reality concealed behindyet mysteriously underpinning the empirical world.” He adds, “we can no more step out of language and imagination than we can step out of our bodies.” 12 Buddhist contemplatives

9 Ibid. 16.10 Ibid. 62.11 Progress in this regard can be read by following the series of scientific papers on the “Shamatha Project”

on the website of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies: http://sbinstitute.com/. Other

studies have been cited elsewhere in this volume.12 Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs, 39.

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throughout history have reportedly experienced states of consciousness that transcendlanguage and concepts as a result of their practice of insight meditation. But Batchelor describes such practice as entailing instead a state of perplexity in which one is overcomeby “awe, wonder, incomprehension, shock,” during which not “just the mind but the entireorganism feels perplexed.”13

Batchelor’s account of meditation describes the experiences of those who have failed tocalm the restlessness and lethargy of their own minds through the practice of samadhi,and failed to realize emptiness or transcend language and concepts through the practiceof vipashyana. Instead of acknowledging these as failures, he heralds them as triumphsand, without a shred of supportive evidence, attributes them to a Buddhism that existsnowhere but in his imagination.

Although Batchelor declared himself to be an agnostic, such proclamations about the trueteachings of the Buddha and about the nature of the human mind, the universe, andultimate reality all suggest that he has assumed for himself the role of a gnostic of thehighest order. Rather than presenting Buddhism without beliefs, his version is saturatedwith his own beliefs, many of them based upon nothing more than his own imagination.

Batchelor’s so-called agnosticism is utterly paradoxical. On the one hand, he rejects amultitude of Buddhist beliefs based upon the most reliable textual sources, while at thesame time confidently making one claim after another without ever supporting them withdemonstrable evidence.

In Batchelor’s most recent book,14 he refers to himself as an atheist, more so than as anagnostic, and when I asked him whether he still holds the above views expressed in hisbook published thirteen years ago, he replied that he no longer regards the Buddha’steachings as agnostic, but as pragmatic.15 It should come as no surprise that as he shiftedhis own self-image from that of an agnostic to an atheist, the image he projects of theBuddha shifts accordingly. In short, his views on the nature of the Buddha and his

teachings are far more a reflection of himself and his own views than they are of any of themost reliable historical accounts of the life and teachings of the Buddha.

In his move from agnosticism to atheism, Batchelor moves closer to the position of SamHarris, who is devoted to the ideal of science destroying religion. In his book Letter to aChristian Nation, Harris proclaims that the problem with religion is the problem of dogma,in contrast to atheism, which he says “is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of theworld; it is simply an admission of the obvious.”16 This, of course, is the attitude of alldogmatists: they are so certain of their beliefs that they regard anyone who disagrees withthem as being so stupid or ignorant that they can’t recognize the obvious.17

In his article “Killing the Buddha” Harris shares his advice with the Buddhist community,

like Batchelor asserting, “The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religionof Buddhism,” and he goes further in declaring that “merely being a self-described“Buddhist” is to be complicit in the world’s violence and ignorance to an unacceptabledegree.” By the same logic, Harris, as a self-avowed atheist, must be complicit in themonstrous violence of communist regimes throughout Asia who, based on atheisticdogma, sought to destroy all religions and murder their followers. While Harris has recently

13 Ibid. 97.14 Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010).15 Personal correspondence, July 6, 2010.16 Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 51.

17 Cf. B. Alan Wallace, “Religion and Reason: A Review of Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation.” InShambhala Sun, October/November 2006: 99-104.

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distanced himself from the label “atheist,” he still insists that religious faith may be themost destructive force in the world. It is far more reasonable, however, to assert thatgreed, hatred, and delusion are the most destructive forces in human nature; and theists,atheists, and agnostics are all equally prone to these mental afflictions.

Harris not only claims to have what is tantamount to a kind of gnostic insight into the trueteachings of the Buddha, he also claims to know what most Buddhists do and do notrealize: “If the methodology of Buddhism (ethical precepts and meditation) uncoversgenuine truths about the mind and the phenomenal world – truths like emptiness,selflessness, and impermanence – these truths are not in the least ‘Buddhist.’ No doubt,most serious practitioners of meditation realize this, but most Buddhists do not.” 18 In thewake of the unspeakable tragedy of communist regimes’ attempts to annihilate Buddhismfrom the face of the earth, it comes as an unexpected blow when individuals who havebeen instructed by Buddhist teachers and profess sympathy for Buddhism seem intent oncompleting what the communists have left undone.

The current domination of science, education, and the secular media by scientificmaterialism has cast doubt on many of the theories and practices of the world’s religions.

This situation is not without historical precedent. In the time of the Weimar Republic, Hitler offered what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of religion, Lenin and Stalin did the same in the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong followed suitin China. Hugh Heclo, former professor of government at Harvard University, writes of thistrend, “If traditional religion is absent from the public arena, secular religions are unlikely tosatisfy man’s quest for meaning. … It was an atheistic faith in man as creator of his owngrandeur that lay at the heart of Communism, fascism and all the horrors they unleashedfor the twentieth century. And it was adherents of traditional religions – Martin Niemöller,C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber – who often warned mostclearly of the tragedy to come from attempting to build man’s own version of the NewJerusalem on Earth.”19

While Batchelor focuses on replacing the historical teachings of the Buddha with his ownsecularized vision and Harris rails at the suffering inflicted upon humanity by religiousdogmatists, both tend to overlook the fact that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong caused morebloodshed, justified by their secular ideologies, than all the religious wars that precededthem throughout human history.

I am not suggesting that Batchelor or Harris, who are both decent, well-intentioned men,are in any way similar to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao Zedong. But I am suggesting thatBatchelor’s misrepresentation of Buddhism parallels that of Chinese communist anti-Buddhist propaganda; and the Buddhist holocaust inflicted by multiple communist regimesthroughout Asia during the twentieth century were based upon and justified by propagandavirtually identical to Harris’s vitriolic, anti-religious polemics.

The Theravada Buddhist commentator Buddhaghosa refers to “far enemies” and “near enemies” of certain virtues, namely, loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, andequanimity. The far enemies of each of these virtues are vices that are diametricallyopposed to their corresponding virtues, and the near enemies are false facsimiles. The far enemy of loving-kindness, for instance, is malice, and that of compassion is cruelty. Thenear enemy of loving-kindness is self-centered attachment, and that of compassion isgrief, or despair.20 To draw a parallel, communist regimes that are bent on destroying

18 Sam Harris, “Killing the Buddha” In Shambhala Sun, March 2006, 73-75.

19 Hugh Heclo, “Religion and Public Policy,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 13, No.1, 2001, 14.20 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, trans. Bhikkhu Ñā amoli (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society,ṇ

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Buddhism from the face of the earth may be called the far enemies of Buddhism, for theyare diametrically opposed to all that Buddhism stands for. Batchelor and Harris, on theother hand, present themselves as being sympathetic to Buddhism, but their visions of thenature of the Buddha’s teachings are false facsimiles of all those that have been handeddown reverently from one generation to the next since the time of the Buddha. However benign their intentions, their writings may be regarded as “near enemies” of Buddhism.

The popularity of the writings of Batchelor, Harris, and other atheists such as RichardDawkins – both within the scientific community and the public at large – shows they are far from alone in terms of their utter disillusionment with traditional religions. Modern science,as conceived by Galileo, originated out of a love for God the Father and a wish to know themind of their benevolent, omnipotent Creator by way of knowing His creation. As long asscience and Christianity seemed compatible, religious followers of science could retainwhat psychologists call a sense of “secure attachment” regarding both science andreligion. But particularly with Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selection and themilitant rise of the Church Scientific, for many, the secure attachment toward religion hasmutated into a kind of dismissive avoidance.

Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid parents and caregivers – no longer seeking comfort or contact with them – and this becomes especially pronounced after aperiod of absence. People today who embrace science, together with the metaphysicalbeliefs of scientific materialism turn away from traditional religious beliefs and institutions,no longer seeking comfort or contact with them; and those who embrace religion andrefuse to be indoctrinated by materialistic biases commonly lose interest in science. Thistrend is viewed with great perplexity and dismay by the scientific community, many of whom are convinced that they are uniquely objective, unbiased, and free of beliefs that areunsupported by empirical evidence.

Thomas Huxley’s ideal of the beliefs and institution of the Church Scientific achieving

“domination over the whole realm of the intellect” is being promoted by agnostics andatheists like Batchelor and Harris. But if we are ever to encounter the Buddhist vision of reality, we must first set aside all our philosophical biases, whether they are theistic,agnostic, atheist, or otherwise. Then, through critical, disciplined study of the most reliablesources of the Buddha’s teachings, guided by qualified spiritual friends and teachers,followed by rigorous, sustained practice, we may encounter the Buddhist vision of reality.And with this encounter with our own true nature, we may realize freedom through our ownexperience. That is the end of agnosticism, for we come to know reality as it is, and thetruth will set us free.

B. Alan Wallace is an American author, translator, teacher, researcher, interpreter, and Buddhist practitioner interested in the intersections of consciousness studies and scientific disciplines such as psychology, cognitive neuroscience and physics.

1979) IX: B. Alan Wallace, The Four Immeasurables: Cultivating a Boundless Heart (Ithaca, NY: SnowLion Publications, 2004).

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An Open Letter To B. Alan Wallace

by Stephen Batchelor

Dear Alan,

I have read your piece Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist , whichappeared in the previous issue of Mandala. While I recognize that some of what I sayconflicts with Buddhist orthodoxy, I do not believe that I am distorting the message of Siddhattha Gotama. I am offering an interpretation of the Dharma in the hope that theBuddha’s teaching will continue to speak to the core concerns of people in today’s worldand provide an effective philosophy and practice with which to address them. I realize thatwhat I say might seem puzzling, objectionable and even heretical to followers of traditionalBuddhist schools. And I regret any offence I might inadvertently have caused you andothers through my writings.

Here is an email I received via my website a few days ago from a complete stranger:

“Dear Stephen, thank you for the knowledge of Buddhism that you pass on to all of usengaged with the complexity of Buddhism in a modern Western world. Personally youhave helped me recover the devotion to and belief in a Buddhist and ethical approach tolife. Since I travelled in Asia 12 years ago, I have been very fascinated with Buddhism, butthe question of rebirth always made me doubt whether I could call myself a Buddhist or not – and whether this was the right approach to life for me if I had to force myself to believesomething I actually questioned. It was such a relief to read about agnosticism andBuddhism as being actually able to work together. You have helped me find my way backto something dear to me. So I have taken up my practice again, and this really bringsfocus back after many years in the dark.

I get a steady stream of letters like this. After being inspired to practice the Dharma, manythen become disillusioned and frustrated by their involvement with traditional forms of Buddhism. Having been presented with an image of Buddhism as open-minded, rational,scientific and tolerant, they often find themselves confronted with a Church-like institutionthat requires unconditional allegiance to a teacher and acceptance of a non-negotiable setof doctrinal beliefs. Some, as you suggest, are advised to pursue their practice whileputting aside those aspects of Buddhist doctrine they find hard to accept. Yet while thisapproach may work in certain cases, in others it does not. For many people today – likemy correspondent above – are seeking in Buddhism a way of life that integrates allaspects of their humanity: philosophical, ethical and spiritual. To be told simply to ignoredoctrines such as rebirth strikes them as intellectually unsatisfying and even dishonest.

I found myself in a similar dilemma after eight years of studying with Geshe Rabten andother teachers in the Gelug tradition. Although I could no longer in good faith acceptcertain traditional beliefs, I was still convinced that the Dharma offered the mostcomprehensive framework within which a human life could flourish. It was then, as youknow, that I went to Korea to study and train in Zen.

It has always puzzled me why you and my other Tibetan Buddhist friends never showedthe slightest interest in what I did there. Zen does not sit comfortably with the Indo-Tibetanforms of the Dharma. It seems oddly different, even troubling. As we know, it was outlawedin Tibet after the Samye debate in the 8th century. Yet because of its antiquity andpopularity, today one cannot just dismiss it out of hand. So you likewise felt obliged in your

essay to appeal to the authority of Dogen to make your case for belief in rebirth more

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watertight by including Zen. I do not dispute that Zen Buddhists, broadly speaking, believein rebirth. But, in terms of Zen practice, it is irrelevant. The fact that I questioned it madenot an iota of difference to pursuing my study and training in the monastic community atSonggwang Sa.

A key significance of Zen in the coming of the Dharma to the West is that it provides anexcellent historic case study of the encounter between Indian Buddhism and a civilizationwith a highly evolved and distinctive culture of its own, i.e. China. By contrast, whenBuddhism entered South-East and Central Asia, together with the Dharma it alsointroduced a high culture – that of India – as well. By seeing how Buddhism wastransformed by its encounter with China, we may get a clue as to how it also might changeas it struggles to find a voice in the modern world.

I was trained in the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school of Zen, whose founder was the 9th centurymonk Lin-chi I-hsuan, perhaps best known for his admonition: “If you meet the Buddha, killhim!” Were you to read the Record of Lin-chi, I suspect you might find the writings of Batchelor rather timid and orthodox by comparison. Or consider this exchange betweenBodhidharma, who brought Zen to China from India in the 6th century, and the devout

Emperor Wu of Liang:Wu: “What is the meaning of the Holy Truths?”

Bodhidharma: “Unholy emptiness.”

Wu: “So who is standing before me?”

Bodhidharma: “I don’t know.”

How’s that for an atheist-agnostic double whammy?

I found all this terribly refreshing and liberating. The Zen masters of the Tang dynasty (618-907) – regarded as the golden age of Buddhism in China – exhibited a wonderful,

irreverent vitality that sprang from their native genius as it engaged with the Dharma of theBuddha. They gave rise to the Zen culture that spread throughout East Asia, producingsublime works of philosophy, poetry, literature, painting and architecture. Or would youregard the entire movement as a distortion of Buddhism, in which the Chinese projectedtheir own prejudices on the Dharma, and recreated the Buddha in their own image as aTaoist sage?

I do not, however, consider myself a “Zen teacher” as you describe me; I have no moreinterest in promoting that form of Asian Buddhism than any other. Yet my experience of Zen was empowering – it affirmed the value of imagination and creativity in Dharmapractice, it gave me the courage to speak out in my own voice. I would be the first torecognize that this can be a risky and hazardous endeavor. I am only too aware that I willbe accused of arrogance or worse. At times I am assailed by doubts. Yet for better or worse, this is the way my path has unfolded, and I feel a responsibility for those who seemto benefit from what I say.

Since I returned to Europe from Korea 25 years ago, my studies have been focused on thediscourses in the Pali Canon, which you acknowledge as “the most uncontested record of what the Buddha taught.” While it would be foolish to maintain that in these discourses theBuddha never spoke of rebirth or framed some of his key doctrines in the light of thatbelief, I would still argue that he did so because that was the prevailing worldview of histime. If you read those Upanishads that scholars regard as pre-dating the Buddha, you willfind plenty of passages that talk of a continuity of life after death and the need for the soul

to liberate itself from this cycle by achieving union with the absolute reality of God. The

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Jain tradition of the Buddha’s contemporary Mahavira, which goes back to the figure of Parsva some two centuries earlier, is framed in a similar way but without God. The Buddhagoes a step further and takes the soul out of the equation as well, though, curiously,provides no explanation of what is or ceases to be reborn. According to ThomasMcEvilley’s The Shape of the Ancient World: Comparative Studies in Greek and IndianPhilosophies, the view of rebirth was widespread throughout the whole of antiquity from

India to Greece, and accepted by Pythagoras, who preceded the Buddha, and Socrates,who was his contemporary.

Now if, as you say, the Buddha taught a “quite different” view of rebirth, you would expectto find at least one sutta in the Pali Canon where you find him being criticized for his viewson this matter by brahmins and other ascetics, and defending his unorthodox position. But,as far as I’m aware, you don’t. On the contrary, when reading the Pali discourses, one hasthe overriding impression that speaker and audience are in broad agreement on whatrebirth means. The Buddha doesn’t have to explain himself. I recognize that the Buddha or his followers refined and developed the rebirth doctrine as part of their distinctive schemeof salvation, but this is a Buddhist contribution to the evolution of an established concept,

rather than a departure to something different.I was glad to see that you quoted the Kalama Sutta as an authoritative source in your essay. This is the only text I know of in the Pali Canon where the Buddha explicitly statesthat the practice of the Dharma is valid and worthwhile “even if there is no hereafter andthere are no fruits of actions good or ill.” This is the closest he comes to an agnosticposition on the subject. At the very least it suggests that he did not regard belief in rebirthto be necessary for all those who followed his teaching. Since the Kalama people arethought to have lived outside the area of Brahmanic cultural influence, the text offers us aglimpse as to how the Buddha, were he still alive, might address an audience in the Westtoday.

As to the Buddha’s awakening, it is hardly surprising that you select a Pali text thatdescribes it in terms of remembering past lives, while I prefer to cite the accounts thatdon’t. For me, the most economic and compelling account is found in The Noble Quest (Majjhima, 26), where the Buddha tells his story from the renunciation to his decision toteach. When he describes the awakening, there is no mention at all of remembering pastlives. His awakening consists of his seeing conditioned origination from the perspective of the cessation of craving. Nothing else. Then, as we know, he goes to Sarnath, where hedelivers his first discourse Turning the Wheel of Dharma (an authoritative text if there ever was one) at the conclusion of which he declares that “as long as my knowledge and visionwere not entirely clear about the twelve aspects of the four noble truths, I did not claim tohave had a peerless awakening.” Again, no mention of remembering past lives.

The doctrine of rebirth is not inconsistent with these accounts, and I expect you willrespond by saying that they can only be really understood by framing them in that context.I would claim, however, that they provide an adequate basis for developing a coherent,canonically sound, secular interpretation of the Dharma that has no need at all for belief inmultiple lifetimes.

But there is another way to look at the issue of rebirth which suggests that the Buddhawould have regarded this entire argument as being beside the point. Siddhattha Gotamawas born into a turbulent period in Indian history, where the established social, political,philosophical and religious order was being thrown into question. In this highly disputativeenvironment, some teachers openly rejected the view of rebirth. While we get a general

sense of this intellectual ferment throughout the Pali Canon, it comes into clearest focus, I

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believe, in two parables: those of the poisoned arrow (Majjhima, 63) and the blind men andthe elephant (Udana, 6.4). Following the Biblical scholars of the Jesus Seminar and thePali scholar Richard Gombrich’s recent What the Buddha Thought , parables are regardedas having a high likelihood of being actual words of the founder of the tradition.

Both these parables concern the ten views on which the Buddha famously refused tocomment. In the parable of the blind men, we find these views being debated by brahminsand ascetics, who are “wounding each other with verbal darts, saying ‘the Dharma is likethis!’ ‘the Dharma is not like that!’” Among these views, not only do we find “the mind andbody are the same” and “the mind and body are different,” but also “the Tathagata existsafter death” and “the Tathagata does not exist after death.” Since the parable describesnon-Buddhist brahmins and ascetics arguing about these issues, it seems clear that “theTathagata” here does not refer to the Buddha (who, in any case, repeatedly stated “this ismy last birth”) but just means “one” or “I,” which is how the Pali commentaries explain it. Inother words, these views are simply the “big questions” to which religions traditionallyprovide the answers. The Buddha, by contrast, regards them as utterly irrelevant toaccomplishing the urgent task at hand: removing the poisoned arrow of craving that

pierces one’s heart.The Pali canon might be the most uncontested record of what the Buddha taught, but thatdoesn’t mean it speaks in a single, unambiguous voice. One hears multiple voices, someapparently contradicting others. In part, this is because the Buddha taught dialogically,addressing the needs of different audiences, rather than imposing a single one-size-fits-alldoctrine. And it is precisely this diversity, I feel, that has allowed for different forms of theDharma to evolve and flourish.

Your attack on atheism puzzled me. I was surprised that you found it at all contentious todescribe the Buddha’s teaching as atheistic. Many readers have said to me: “Why did youcall your book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist ? I thought all Buddhists were atheists?” To

then launch into a tirade against the evils perpetuated by atheists during the 20th century,insinuating that by declaring myself an atheist I am unwittingly preparing the ground for another anti-Buddhist pogrom, is absurd. Unlike Stalin and Mao, I am a Buddhist atheist,

remember. By choosing this title, I was hoping to show how Buddhism can offer a way of life that embodies our deepest ethical, spiritual and religious concerns, yet without havingto believe in anything resembling God.

I was glad you mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who is a great inspiration for me. Here wasa courageous and deeply religious man, who nonetheless envisioned a “religionlessChristianity” that embraced the secular world. While the German Churches compromisedand vacillated in their dealings with Hitler, he stood alone in bodhisattvic opposition to theNazi tyranny. I entirely sympathize with his view that religious institutions can often hinder a heartfelt engagement with the most pressing issues of the day. Some of us believe that if the Dharma is to breathe again with the same creativity and vitality that characterized allits schools at their inception, it will need a reformation.

Yours in the Dharma,

Stephen

This letter was in response to Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist by B. Alan Wallace, first published as a Mandala online exclusive.

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A Reply to B. Alan Wallace's article "Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist"

by Ted Meissner, The Secular Buddhist

The article from B. Alan Wallace was posted for review on the FaceBook fan page for the podcast on October 5, 2010, and prompted much interest and discussion. Many points andcounter points were made, and some themes have risen to the surface. It is my hope toexplain a bit more about what this practice of secular Buddhism is, why people areintegrating the eightfold path in their daily lives in this particular way, and respond to someof the points that were made in the article.

I will do my sincere best to provide meaningful examples and dialogue, without engagingin logical fallacies of argument. As a human being, subject to mistakes, I may not catch myerrors, and ask for your patience and honesty in helping me correct those mistakes when

they are made. As Buddhism has encountered modernity, it runs against widespread prejudices, both religious and anti-religious, and it is common for all those withsuch biases to misrepresent Buddhism, either intentionally or unintentionally.

This is a true statement, but incomplete. Buddhism is not exempt from the naturalevolutionary process of adaptation, all religions go through cultural assimilation as theyencounter new environments from the one in which they initially formed. They are allencountering modernity. The book The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David L.McMahan does a very respectful investigation of some modern impacts to our tradition.

There is also a positive side to this. Buddhism and other faiths do encounter prejudices,

but they also encounter fertile ground for growth with people who have not heard theteaching and resonate with it. Any departure from classical early Buddhism, the whole of the rich Mahayana school, was able to come from that original teaching and provide aspiritual path to those who found it. Alan Wallace himself is an example of that growth, thatopportunity for a Westerner to practice a tradition they would not otherwise encounter except for that very engagement outside of the land of its formation.

Reputable scholars of Buddhism, both traditional and modern, all agree that the historical Buddha taught a view of karma and rebirth that was quitedifferent from the previous takes on these ideas.

What is the definition of "reputable scholars of Buddhism?" Who is the defining authorityfor what is reputable? This touches on the first point of secularism I'd like to share, notsimply in Buddhism but with all religious traditions -- authority is arbitrary. Anyone can (andmany have) declared themselves the authority by lineage, divine inspiration, by years onthe cushion, by fiat. Secularism is in total agreement with the Canki sutta's criticism of tradition, and the Kalama sutta, which describe authority as not being a valid means of determining the truth of a statement. This does not mean we completely reject allstatements by figures with experience and skills in the realm for which they're speaking. Itsimply means that we can and should question the validity of statements made, and putthem to the test for ourselves. This is in complete accord with the Buddha's teaching.

Moreover, his teachings on the nature and origins of suffering as well as

liberation are couched entirely within the framework of rebirth. Liberation is

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precisely freedom from the round of birth and death that is samsara.

I agree that the Pali canon has rebirth, and liberation as being freed from the rounds of rebirth. Not all agree on that point, so please understand this is my own accordance. This,however, brings up a second point of the secular point of view. Again, in alignment with theCanki sutta, I am completely honest and open about not having been present 2,500 yearsago, nor were my teachers, nor my teachers' teachers, for far more than sevengenerations.

The simple fact is I don't know -- none of us do.

We have a wonderful teaching in the words of the Pali canon. But, we weren't there. Wedon't know what the Buddha said, we only find some degree of reasonable expectationthat what is said, when tested for ourselves, is of value in our personal spiritual growth.

This is a discussion I have had many times with devout Christians, absolutely certain thatthe words in their Bible are true and the divinely inspired word of God. And yet, without anyclear definition beyond their own belief, they reject out of hand the Book of Mormon. Andwithout any experience with Buddhism, dismiss it just as completely. Again, Buddhism is

not exempt because we practice it -- there is absolutely no way for all religious texts to becompletely and literally true, as they say different things. When you practice Buddhism andidentify as Buddhist, or Christian, or Hindu, or Muslim, you're making a choice to dismissother traditions in favor of your own. And that is why I as a secular person reject untestedacceptance of religious texts as the source of authority for my spiritial growth. It doesn'tmean I don't find value in them, or that I don't resonate more with some traditions thanothers. It means I question what is said, and put it to the test.

But for many contemporary people drawn to Buddhism, the teachings onkarma and rebirth don’t sit well, so they are faced with a dilemma. A legitimateoption is simply to adopt those theories and practices from various Buddhist traditions that one finds compelling and beneficial and set the others aside. Anillegitimate option is to reinvent the Buddha and his teachings based on one’sown prejudices. This, unfortunately, is the route followed by StephenBatchelor and other like-minded people who are intent on reshaping theBuddha in their own images.

This is not a dilemma for us in the least, because the secular expression is one of questioning and not adhering to that which is unproven, and has no basis in the naturalworld. And, again, who is the judge of what is legitimate, and why? I am being describedquite clearly here as being like minded to Stephen Batchelor. I am; it has been my great joy to speak with him on these topics and have him as a guest on the podcast. I amunreservedly atheist in the sense that I do not believe in deities or the supernatural, there

is nothing agnostic about it. I am also unreservedly Buddhist in the sense that I have apractice of personal growth, and that practice is the eightfold path. This is not a choicemade out of faith in the Judeo-Christian sense, but in the Pali connotation of faith (saddha)being "confidence."

I disagree with the concept that we are intent on reshaping the Buddha in our own image.We are not. This brings me to the third point about secular Buddhist practice, that of providing another inroad to the dhamma.

We are all people. We all have the same propensity for suffering, for joy, for ignorance, for understanding. But we all do have different personal experiences, backgrounds, likes, andinclinations. Many of us know or are ourselves Westerners who started out with a Judeo-Christian background, but have come to have a Buddhist practice. Whether it's Zen,

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Theravada, Vajrayana, etc., they have left another tradition and taken the precepts.

For some, there remains a cognitive dissonance with having a very rational spiritualpractice, but what feels like an irrational religious framework. Some have left their "home"religion because of rites and rituals -- the forms of religion which are among the first fettersto go upon stream entry -- which were meanginless to them. They came to Buddhismbecause of the practice, but remain uncomfortable having replaced one set of beliefs thatcan't be proven and provide no value to them, with another.

Secular Buddhism is about providing a means to practice the eightfold path to those of usfor whom supernatural claims, rites, rituals, and lineage traditions do not contribute topersonal growth. It does not in the least discourage others from practicing in that way if they find it beneficial to their practice -- far from it. Secularism is about choosing thepractice that is best suited to the personal experience of spirituality, rather than insisting onadherence to its own views.

The back cover of Batchelor’s most recent book, entitled Confession of aBuddhist Atheist, describes his work as “a stunning and groundbreaking recovery of the historical Buddha and his message.” One way for this to betrue, would be that his book is based on a recent discovery of ancient Buddhist manuscripts, comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Nag Hammadi library for Christianity. But it is not. Another way is for his claims tobe based on unprecedented historical research by a highly accomplished scholar of ancient Indian languages and history. But no such professional research or scholarship is in evidence in this book. Instead, his claims about the historical Buddha and his teachings are almost entirely speculative, as hetakes another stab at recreating Buddhism to conform to his current views.

Stephen is very open about his experience as a scholar, and his book is a personal story,not an academic presentation. Of course there's conjecture, that is part of one's personal

journey.To get a clear picture of Batchelor’s agnostic-turned-atheist approach toBuddhism, there is no need to look further than his earlier work, Buddhismwithout Beliefs. Claiming to embrace Thomas Huxley’s definition of agnosticism as the method of following reason as far as it will take one, headmonishes his readers, “Do not pretend that conclusions are certain whichare not demonstrated or demonstrable.” He then proceeds to explain who theBuddha really was and what he really taught, often in direct opposition to theteachings attributed to the Buddha by all schools of Buddhism. If in this he isfollowing Huxley’s dictum, this would imply that Batchelor has achieved at

least the ability to see directly into the past, if not complete omniscience itself.Huxley's definition of agnosticism is simply showing the difference between belief andknowledge. And, in keeping with not only the tentative and therefore corrective claims of science, it is appropriate to avoid certainty of conclusions about things that cannot bedemonstrated. If that were not the case, every supernatural claim from every religionwould be acceptable. I suspect that no one believes every claim of every religion.Secularism suggests we put things to the test -- as does Buddhism. Stephen is openlyquestioning the traditional texts and commentaries with rational and critical thinking. A viewin opposition to many schools of thought does not make it incorrect. It is only the validity or invalidity of something that makes it correct or incorrect, nothing else. Not lineage. Notbecause it was written. Not because it was divinely inspired.

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From a modern academic perspective, the most historically reliable accountswe have of the Buddha’s life and teachings are found in the Pali canon. Most Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhists acknowledge theauthenticity of these Pali writings, but Batchelor repeatedly overrides themwith his own agnostic preconceptions that cause him to portray the Buddha asthe spitting image of himself.

I would agree that the Pali canon represents the best we can hope to have as indicative of what an historical Buddha may have said. Again, this does not make it true, however muchwe may want it to be. We don't know, we only have some degree of reliance due toreasoned inquiry of scholarship and experience.

As for Stephen's agnostic stance, I share it, as do many others. And we still find the actualpractice of the eightfold path to be of value. This does not mean we're trying to make it inour own image. It means we're embracing the practice within our own modern, culturalcontext. And though many of us have interests in Asian culture, we were not raised with it,and the practices are not a part of our personal heritage. The rites, rituals, and manypractices that have been brought along from the East do not always create a comfort zone

for practice in the West.For example, contrary to all the historical evidence, Batchelor writes that theBuddha “did not claim to have had experience that granted him privileged,esoteric knowledge of how the universe ticks.” To cite just two of innumerablestatements in the Pali canon pertaining to the scope of the Buddha’sknowledge: “Whatever in this world – with its devas, maras, and brahmas, itsgenerations complete with contemplatives and priests, princes and men – isseen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by theintellect, that has been fully awakened to by the Tathagata. Thus he is called the Tathagata.” In a similar vein, we read, “the world and its arising are fully

known by a Tathagata and he is released from both; he also knows the ending of it and the way thereto. He speaks as he does; he is unconquered in theworld.”

Quoting religious texts is not evidence, it's quoting religious texts. If someone quotes theChristian bible, do Hindus accept what it says? Neither do I. Nor should we allow our "preconceptions" for the validity of traditional religious alignment with the Pali canon causeus to ignore that and give our own interpretation greater strength. It is when we are mostcertain, that we are most in need of checking ourselves.

Batchelor brings to his understanding of Buddhism a strong antipathy toward religion and religious institutions, and this bias pervades all his recent writings.

Rather than simply rejecting elements of the Buddha’s teachings that strikehim as religious – which would be perfectly legitimate – Batchelor takes theillegitimate step of denying that the Buddha ever taught anything that would be deemed religious by contemporary Western standards, claiming, that “There is nothing particularly religious or spiritual about this path.” Rather, theBuddha’s teachings were a form of “existential, therapeutic, and liberating agnosticism” that was “refracted through the symbols, metaphors, and imagery of his world.” Being an agnostic himself, Batchelor overrides themassive amount of textual evidence that the Buddha was anything but anagnostic, and recreates the Buddha in his own image, promoting exactly what Batchelor himself believes in, namely, a form of existential, therapeutic, and

liberating agnosticism.

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Stephen is conjecturing that the Buddha's teaching of the practice is not religious. Theeightfold path does not involve rites and rituals, praying to divinities, or prostrations of anykind. In that, secular Buddhists are in agreement with this not being a religious path. Thisis one of several reasons there continues to be discussion about Buddhism being areligion or a philosophy, as it retains qualities of both.

Since Batchelor dismisses all talk of rebirth as a waste of time, he projects this

view onto his image of the Buddha, declaring that he regarded “speculationabout future and past lives to be just another distraction.” This claim flies inthe face of the countless times the Buddha spoke of the immense importanceof rebirth and karma, which lie at the core of his teachings as they arerecorded in Pali suttas.

Buddha very specifically stated in the suttas -- if that's what we're taking as evidence -- not to speculate about the workings of kamma, which Wallace points out right here as beingdirectly associated with rebirth. Which brings me to the fourth point about secularism, thata belief in an afterlife of any kind is not necessary to the practice.

So, I'm on retreat. I'm practicing anapanasati, or perhaps mindfulness, with the samediligence as the person next to me. We both practice silence during this time, we bothpractice right speech at other times. And we both have personal experiences in thebroadening of this present moment to help us make better decisions, to be free fromsuffering.

How does a belief in rebirth impact that moment by moment practice? Knowing that mygrandfather was a toymaker or a horse thief has no more effect on my meditation than theother person's conviction that they were Eleanor Roosevelt, nor should it. Whoever I wasin the past is totally irrelevent to what I choose to do this very moment .

Secular practice does not require the promise of a better afterlife, or the threat of a woefulrebirth, to practice the eightfold path in this lifetime. The practice itself is unchanged.Secularists don't practice right action to get a reward later, or even just because it's theright thing to do, we practice right action to see and experience for ourselves cause andeffect, which encourages us without reliance on an unprovable claim of rebirth.

Batchelor is one of many Zen teachers nowadays who regard future and past lives as a mere distraction. But in adopting this attitude, they go against theteachings of Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto school of Zen, who addressed the importance of the teachings on rebirth and karma in his principal anthology, Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma (Shobogenzo). In his book Deep Faith in Cause and Effect (Jinshin inga), he criticizes Zen masters whodeny karma, and in Karma of the Three Times (Sanji go), he goes into more

detail on this matter. Since Batchelor feels such liberty to rewrite the Pali suttas, perhaps he should have a go at Dogen’s writings next, to enlighten usas to their true meaning.

Wallace is right, secular Buddhists do tend to view previous and past lives as a distraction.And again because a teacher said something, even Dogen (whom I admire, as someonewho *is* from a zen lineage), doesn't make it true.

Stephen is also not rewriting the Pali suttas. That would be creating new Pali texts, or making wild claims of finding new ones that have been guarded by dragons. Does thatmean we should dismiss all Mahayana tradition as dangerous?

As to the source of Buddhist teachings on rebirth, Batchelor speculates, “In

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accepting the idea of rebirth, the Buddha reflected the worldview of his time.” In reality, the Buddha’s detailed accounts of rebirth and karma differed significantly from other Indian thinkers’ views on these subjects; and given thewide range of philosophical views during his era, there was no uniformly accepted “worldview of his time.”

I agree that Buddha's interpretation of rebirth (if we take the Pali canon at face value)differs from reincarnation in that there is no unchanging self which is reborn. What I thinkStephen is saying is that rebirth as a concept, however much Buddha's introduction of anatta diverged from the norm, was pervasive in that culture. More than it is in, say,modern Western culture.

Rather than adopting this idea from mere hearsay – a gullible approach theBuddha specifically rejected – he declared that in the first watch of the night of his enlightenment, after purifying his mind with the achievement of samadhi,he gained “direct knowledge” of the specific details of many thousands of hisown past lifetimes throughout the course of many eons of cosmic contractionand expansion. In the second watch of the night, he observed the multiple

rebirths of countless other sentient beings, observing the consequences of their wholesome and unwholesome deeds from one life to the next. During thethird watch of the night, he gained direct knowledge of the four noble truths,revealing the causes of gaining liberation from this cycle of rebirth. Whilethere is ample evidence that the Buddha claimed to have direct knowledge of rebirth, there is no textual or historical evidence that he simply adopted some pre-existing view, which would have been antithetical to his entire approach of not accepting theories simply because they are commonly accepted. Therewould be nothing wrong if Batchelor simply rejected the authenticity of theBuddha’s enlightenment and the core of his teachings, but instead he rejectsthe most reliable accounts of the Buddha’s vision and replaces it with his own,

while then projecting it on the Buddha of his imagination.

Again, quoting religious texts is meaningless as a source of truth, even for the Buddha. Itis a guide. It is a reference to truth. It is not truth itself. Taking the suttas as absolute truthmeans one needs to take all aspects of the teaching as absolute truth. And all aspects of all religions, which no one is prepared to do.

I'd also like to point out that rebirth is hearsay, unless validated with evidence.

Batchelor concludes that since different Buddhist schools vary in their interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings in response to the questions of thenature of that which is reborn and how this process occurs, all their views are

based on nothing more than speculation. Scientists in all fields of inquiry commonly differ in their interpretations of empirical findings, so if this fact invalidates Buddhist teachings, it should equally invalidate scientific findingsas well. While in his view Buddhism started out as agnostic, it “has tended tolose its agnostic dimension through becoming institutionalized as a religion(i.e., a revealed belief system valid for all time, controlled by an elite body of priests).” Since there is no evidence that Buddhism was ever agnostic, any assertions about how it lost this status are nothing but groundlessspeculations, driven by the philosophical bias that he brings to Buddhism.

Wallace makes a subtle but profound change in wording here. Stephen is correct, thedifferent schools do vary in their interpretation, and are all speculation. And Wallace isright, scientists do vary in their interpretation of empirical findings. That is conjecture, or

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more correctly for the context, hypothesis. Wallace then introduces "invalidates" to thetopic, which Stephen does not, and then tries to use this incorrect transition from'interpretation' to 'invalidation'.

Scientific findings are not invalidated by having differing hypothesis; indeed, it is the verynature of science to be tentative and corrective. In the case McLean v. Arkansas in 1981,science witnesses helped the court with defining science as having the following traits:

1. It is guided by natural law2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law3. It is testable against the empirical world4. Its conclusions are tentative5. It is falsifiable

That is part of its great value, to remove that which is shown to be not true or non-contributory. Secular practice is the same. If there is no value shown, remove it. The DalaiLama agrees in his book The World In A Single Atom with his statement, ".. if scientificanalysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then wemust accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."

Of course, this is something of a logical trick, as proving a negative is problematic. AsBertrand Russell demonstrated with this analogy in 1952, "If I were to suggest thatbetween the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an ellipticalorbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add thatthe teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I wereto go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerablepresumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to betalking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancientbooks, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children atschool, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and

entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of theInquisitor in an earlier time."

This is every bit as true for claims our own Buddhism makes, including those claims someof us hold most dear.

As an agnostic Buddhist, Batchelor does not regard the Buddha’s teachingsas a source of answers to questions of where we came from, where we aregoing, or what happens after death, regardless of the extensive teachingsattributed to the Buddha regarding each of these issues. Rather, he advisesBuddhists to seek such knowledge in what he deems the appropriatedomains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and so on. With

this advice, he reveals that he is a devout member of the congregation of Thomas Huxley’s Church Scientific, taking refuge in science as the one trueway to answer all the deepest questions concerning human nature and theuniverse at large.

This mixes two concepts, that of naturalism and that of personal meaning. Stephen J.Gould views science and religion as "non-overlapping magisteria" or NOMA as highlightingthis difference. The scientific method is indeed the best way we have to learn about howthe natural world works, unless we believe the Buddha's body-hairs are coloured deepblue and grow clockwise in rings, and that adepts in meditation can multiply their bodies. If not, perhaps even Wallace doesn't take everything in the Pali canon at face value, exactly

like a secularist.

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A method for learning about the natural world does not, nor is it intended, to ascribepersonal meaning to the experience of that world. That's what this practice is about, notabout providing a cosmological map of the universe with Mt. Sumeru at the center.

Stephen is committed to growing the eightfold path as a viable and practical method of training the mind, just like other secular Buddhists. We simply don't believe in supernaturalclaims, we're not tossing out the baby with the bathwater. One of the most commondiscussions secular Buddhists have is how to ensure the teaching does not get reduced to just another relaxation technique, as that is not what our practice is about, and not whatwe find of value.

Having identified himself as an agnostic follower of Huxley, Batchelor then proceeds to make one declaration after another about the limits of humanconsciousness and the ultimate nature of human existence and the universeat large, as if he were the most accomplished of gnostics. A central feature of Buddhist meditation is the cultivation of samadhi, by which the attentional imbalances of restlessness and lethargy are gradually overcome throughrigorous, sustained training. But in reference to the vacillation of the mind from

restlessness to lethargy, Batchelor responds, “No amount of meditativeexpertise from the mystical East will solve this problem, because suchrestlessness and lethargy are not mere mental or physical lapses but reflexesof an existential condition.” Contemplative adepts from multiple traditions,including Hinduism and Buddhism have been disproving this claim for thousands of years, and it is now being refuted by modern scientific research.But Batchelor is so convinced of his own preconceptions regarding thelimitations of the human mind and of meditation that he ignores all evidence tothe contrary.

I'm glad Wallace brought up the work done by Cliff Saron of the Samatha project, as I've

had him on the podcast. We've discussed this work, and at no point is it intended toconvey personal meaning. It is meant to quantify what is happening during theexperiences of meditation, and what the long-term (within this lifetime) effects of meditation are.

Also, Stephen is not a "follower" of Huxley, any more than any secularist is a follower of anyone. That is completely contrary to secular practice.

While there are countless references in the discourses of the Buddha referring to the realization of emptiness, Batchelor claims, “Emptiness … is not something we ‘realize’ in a moment of mystical insight that ‘breaks through’ toa transcendent reality concealed behind yet mysteriously underpinning the

empirical world.” He adds, “we can no more step out of language and imagination than we can step out of our bodies.” Buddhist contemplativesthroughout history have reportedly experienced states of consciousness that transcend language and concepts as a result of their practice of insight meditation. But Batchelor describes such practice as entailing instead a stateof perplexity in which one is overcome by “awe, wonder, incomprehension,shock,” during which not “just the mind but the entire organism feels perplexed.”

Reporting experiences does not make those experiences true, any more than claims of stigmata throughout history are true validations of Christian belief, or the claim thatcommunion wafers and wine are magically transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ -- unless he was constituted of flour and alcohol. As Wallace has referenced

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http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu/labs/Saron/shamatha-project/

http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu/labs/Saron/shamatha-project/



scientific studies, I'll reciprocate with a machine which recreates the out of body experiences such contemplatives claim to have. Such is just one example that our mindscan be deceived.

Stephen's point is that emptiness is a reference to our concepts, that those concepts arenot the actual thing, and the actual thing is not what we conventionally view it as. There isnothing mystical about it.

Batchelor’s account of meditation describes the experiences of those whohave failed to calm the restlessness and lethargy of their own minds throughthe practice of samadhi, and failed to realize emptiness or transcend language and concepts through the practice of vipashyana. Instead of acknowledging these as failures, he heralds them as triumphs and, without ashred of supportive evidence, attributes them to a Buddhism that existsnowhere but in his imagination.

Since Wallace is asking for evidence, I hope he'll please provide evidence of rebirth. He can win $1,000,000 from the JREF if he does. Or any supernatural power claimed byBuddhist contemplatives, for that matter.

Although Batchelor declared himself to be an agnostic, such proclamationsabout the true teachings of the Buddha and about the nature of the humanmind, the universe, and ultimate reality all suggest that he has assumed for himself the role of a gnostic of the highest order. Rather than presenting Buddhism without beliefs, his version is saturated with his own beliefs, many of them based upon nothing more than his own imagination. Batchelor’s so-called agnosticism is utterly paradoxical. On the one hand, he rejects amultitude of Buddhist beliefs based upon the most reliable textual sources,while at the same time confidently making one claim after another without ever supporting them with demonstrable evidence.

Stephen makes no claims whatsoever about the universe or ultimate reality, Wallace isdoing that. He's making claims about rebirth without "demonstrable evidence". IanStephenson studied this, and the most he could do was be intellectually honest in his book by stating that it was not evidence, but was merely suggestive of rebirth.

In Batchelor’s most recent book, he refers to himself as an atheist, more sothan as an agnostic, and when I asked him whether he still holds the aboveviews expressed in his book published thirteen years ago, he replied that heno longer regards the Buddha’s teachings as agnostic, but as pragmatic. It should come as no surprise that as he shifted his own self-image from that of an agnostic to an atheist, the image he projects of the Buddha shifts

accordingly. In short, his views on the nature of the Buddha and his teachingsare far more a reflection of himself and his own views than they are of any of the most reliable historical accounts of the life and teachings of the Buddha.

I would suggest that a 2,500 year old story of someone else's personal journey is not morereliable than one happening today. It's not the form, teacher, culture, or timeframe thatmatters, it's the teaching.

In his move from agnosticism to atheism, Batchelor moves closer to the position of Sam Harris, who is devoted to the ideal of science destroying religion. In his book Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris proclaims that the problem with religion is the problem of dogma, in contrast to atheism, which

he says “is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCVzz96zKA0&feature=player_embedded


http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html


http://www.amazon.com/dp/0813908728?tag=thesecubudd-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0813908728&adid=1ZS2ZY91DK9QWT60KEWK





http://www.amazon.com/dp/0813908728?tag=thesecubudd-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0813908728&adid=1ZS2ZY91DK9QWT60KEWK



admission of the obvious.” This, of course, is the attitude of all dogmatists:they are so certain of their beliefs that they regard anyone who disagrees withthem as being so stupid or ignorant that they can’t recognize the obvious.

How is that different from what Wallace is doing here in his criticism? I would also like topoint out that Sam isn't being dogmatic, as he is just insisting on proof for supernaturalclaims.

In his article “Killing the Buddha” Harris shares his advice with the Buddhist community, like Batchelor asserting, “The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism,” and he goes further in declaring that “merely being a self-described “Buddhist” is to be complicit in the world’sviolence and ignorance to an unacceptable degree.” Harris not only claims tohave what is tantamount to a kind of gnostic insight into the true teachings of the Buddha, he also claims to know what most Buddhists do and do not realize: “If the methodology of Buddhism (ethical precepts and meditation)uncovers genuine truths about the mind and the phenomenal world – truthslike emptiness, selflessness, and impermanence – these truths are not in the

least ‘Buddhist.’ No doubt, most serious practitioners of meditation realize this,but most Buddhists do not.” It is sad when communist regimes throughout theworld seek to annihilate Buddhism from the face of the earth, but it is evensadder when people who are allegedly sympathetic to Buddhism seem intent on completing what the communists have left undone.

I've also found great value in that article of Sam's, and link to it frequently. He's right. If theteaching of Buddhism is correct as a teaching for sentient beings, it will hold true withoutthe rites and rituals of the culture in which it manifests. It will be timeless and prove to betrue without religious trappings which are not a part of the eightfold path.

What has come up in interfaith dialogues I've had is that this practice is of value to people.

If it's only of value to Buddhists, there's a problem. The attitude that one must "become aBuddhist" to practice meditation, let alone the eightfold path, is a problem that must beovercome if the value it brings is to be brought to fruition.

Our culture is one that questions authority, questions supernatural claims, and puts thingsto the test. Buddhists need to rise to that challenge, and show that this practice is validunder all circumstances, not just when one adopts a belief in the unseen. If we can't, weshould set aside our beliefs as being invalid.

The current domination of science, education, and the secular media by scientific materialism has cast doubt on many of the theories and practices of the world’s religions. This situation is not without historical precedent. In the

time of the Weimar Republic, Hitler offered what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of religion, Lenin and Stalin did thesame in the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong followed suit in China. HughHeclo, former professor of government at Harvard University, writes of thistrend, “If traditional religion is absent from the public arena, secular religionsare likely to satisfy man’s quest for meaning. … It was an atheistic faith in manas creator of his own grandeur that lay at the heart of communism, fascismand all the horrors they unleashed for the twentieth century. And it wasadherents of traditional religions – Martin Niemöller, C.S. Lewis, DietrichBonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber – who often warned most clearly of the tragedy to come from attempting to build man’s own version of the New Jerusalem on Earth.”

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Surely he doesn't mean domination in modern American culture, with constant attempts tointroduce biblical creationism in the classroom as science, and a National Day of Prayer held despite a federal judge's ruling against it? Doubts exist about that kind of thingbecause they have no evidence, and as such, should be questioned.

While Batchelor focuses on replacing the historical teachings of the Buddhawith his own secularized vision and Harris rails at the suffering inflicted upon

humanity by religious dogmatists, both tend to overlook the fact that Hitler,Stalin, and Mao Zedong caused more bloodshed, justified by their secular ideologies, than all the religious wars that preceded them throughout humanhistory.

I'm going to call "shenanigans" here. The Pope recently made the same biased error in historical revisionism that is being made in this article. Let's set the record straight, as I'vehad to do so many times with dogmatic Christians -- Hitler was not an atheist. He was aChristian. Here are a set of quotes of Hitler's, showing his adherence to Christianity. Healso outlawed books criticizing religion.

I am not suggesting that Batchelor or Harris, who are both decent, well-intentioned men, are in any way similar to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao Zedong. But I am suggesting that Batchelor’s misrepresentation of Buddhism parallels that of Chinese communist, anti-Buddhist propaganda; and the Buddhist holocaust inflicted by multiple communist regimes throughout Asia during the twentiethcentury were based upon and justified by propaganda virtually identical toHarris’s vitriolic, anti-religious polemics.

I'm going to call "shenanigans" again. Yes, Wallace is suggesting Harris and Batchelor aresimilar to Hitler. Quite clearly. He made the tie between them in the same sentence.

But, more importantly, it is utterly irrelevant to the discussion. To say that Hitler was anatheist (though he was not) and therefore atheism is bad, is no more sensible than sayingHitler was a vegetarian, so vegetarianism is bad. The criticism needs to be made on thevirtues or vices of the ideological stance, and when practiced correctly, its effects in thereal world.

The Theravada Buddhist commentator Buddhaghosa refers to “far enemies” and “near enemies” of certain virtues, namely, loving-kindness, compassion,empathetic joy, and equanimity. The far enemies of each of these virtues arevices that are diametrically opposed to their corresponding virtues, and thenear enemies are false facsimiles. The far enemy of loving-kindness, for instance, is malice, and that of compassion is cruelty. The near enemy of loving-kindness is self-centered attachment, and that of compassion is grief,

or despair. To draw a parallel, communist regimes that are bent on destroying Buddhism from the face of the earth may be called the far enemies of Buddhism, for they are diametrically opposed to all that Buddhism stands for.Batchelor and Harris, on the other hand, present themselves as being sympathetic to Buddhism, but their visions of the nature of the Buddha’steachings are false facsimiles of all those that have been handed downreverently from one generation to the next since the time of the Buddha.However benign their intentions, their writings may be regarded as “near enemies” of Buddhism.

We're trying to preserve Buddhism and the wonderful teaching and practice it has, for the

benefit of all mankind, not just the ones who believe in rebirth.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0506/National-Day-of-Prayer-is-on-despite-court-ruling


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11332515


http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/list_of_hitler_quotes_in_honor.php#more

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/who_was_on_the_nazis_naughty_l.php#more






http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/list_of_hitler_quotes_in_honor.php#more




The popularity of the writings of Batchelor, Harris, and other atheists such asRichard Dawkins – both within the scientific community and the public at large – shows they are far from alone in terms of their utter disillusionment withtraditional religions. Modern science, as conceived by Galileo, originated out of a love for God the Father and a wish to know the mind of their benevolent,omnipotent Creator by way of knowing His creation. As long as science and

Christianity seemed compatible, religious followers of science could retainwhat psychologists call a sense of “secure attachment” regarding both scienceand religion. But particularly with Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selection and the militant rise of the Church Scientific, for many, the secureattachment toward religion has mutated into a kind of dismissive avoidance.

Galileo's faith is utterly irrelevant to the validity of his scientific work. And his treatment atthe hands of the church -- when he was correct in his findings -- came from a fear of theloss of ascendancy of dogmatic belief that was not in evidence. My preference wouldn't beto associate my stance with religion on this particular topic! And that's an excellentexample of why secularists find dogmatic belief to be harmful.

Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid parents and caregivers – no longer seeking comfort or contact with them – and this becomesespecially pronounced after a period of absence. People today who embracescience, together with the metaphysical beliefs of scientific materialism, turnaway from traditional religious beliefs and institutions, no longer seeking comfort or contact with them; and those who embrace religion and refuse tobe indoctrinated by materialistic biases commonly lose interest in science.This trend is viewed with great perplexity and dismay by the scientific community, many of whom are convinced that they are uniquely objective,unbiased, and free of beliefs that are unsupported by empirical evidence.

The scientific community is made up of people, filled with the usual set of human issues.That does not detract from the scientific method as a means of investigating the naturalworld as being vastly more effective than religious doctrines in that particular sphere of knowledge. This does not take away from our spiritual practice, and the comfort it bringsus. It's not one or the other -- they both can have contributing roles in realms of learning,one as a way of knowing, another as a way of experiencing.

Thomas Huxley’s ideal of the beliefs and institution of the Church Scientific achieving “domination over the whole realm of the intellect” is being promoted by agnostics and atheists like Batchelor and Harris. But if we are ever toencounter the Buddhist vision of reality, we must first set aside all our philosophical biases, whether they are theistic, agnostic, atheist, or otherwise.

Then, through critical, disciplined study of the most reliable sources of theBuddha’s teachings, guided by qualified spiritual friends and teachers,followed by rigorous, sustained practice, we may encounter the Buddhist vision of reality. And with this encounter with our own true nature, we may realize freedom through our own experience. That is the end of agnosticism,for we come to know reality as it is, and the truth will set us free.

I agree that we should set aside biases. That means encouraging different ideologicalviews to participate in meaningful dialogue, but it does not mean we simply give a freepass for every unsubstantiated claim those views make about the natural world. I wouldalso agree that we need critical and disciplined study of the most reliable sources of the

Buddha's teaching, and that does mean questioning every aspect of it, without a pre-

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determined conclusion about what the right answer must be. Asking questions only as longas one comes to the "right" conclusion isn't sincere inquiry, it's prejudicing the results.

Only then, when we have been transparent and completely honest about our inquiry, our practice of the eightfold path, do we eliminate the hindrance of doubt without remainder.Then we can set aside the raft, concepts of agnosticism vs. faith, us vs. them, and simplypractice together -- as people.

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An Old Story of Faith and Doubt: Reminiscences of Alan

Wallace and Stephen Batchelor

In the exclusive online content of the October-December 2010 issue of Mandala, B. Alan Wallace sparked a heated debate about truth and doubt withthe controversial “ Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist .”

Stephen Batchelor , who was a focus of Alan Wallace’s criticism, responded thoughtfully in an open letter in the January-March 2011 issue. In “An Old Story of Faith and Doubt,” Stephen Schettini examines the debate between thesetwo well-known thinkers from a more personal and person-centered perspective.

by Stephen Schettini

I first met Alan Wallace and Stephen Batchelor in 1975, in the tiny Swiss hamlet of

Schwendi. I lived upstairs from them in our four-roomed house. From day one, I wasimpressed that the two of them could share such close quarters without argument eventhough their temperaments were strikingly different. The philosophical gulf between themtoday reflects those personal differences remarkably closely. It doesn’t surprise me, but Iam saddened by the increasingly strident tone of those differences. After three decades,the old restraint seems finally to be bursting out of its emotional containment. This is not just a debate of ideas.

On the face of it, the Batchelor-Wallace face-off is an archetypal battle between faith andskepticism, one that characterizes not just Buddhism but all philosophical thought. Itdoesn’t actually require two people; that very conflict has played out in my own mind since

early childhood. My memoir The Novice explores that theme at length, and many readershave written to tell me what a relief it’s been to know they’re not alone.

Wallace and Batchelor, however, have chosen to entrench their positions and stick their necks out quite publicly. This might be a fruitful debate with the potential to sensitizeWestern Buddhists to the profound and ubiquitous issue of faith versus doubt – or, it could just turn nasty. Perhaps it already has.

Alan’s recent Mandala article, “Distorted Visions of Buddhism,” accuses Stephen of rewriting history, and therein lies the crux: what to Alan is historical fact is to Stephendebatable; what to one must remain beyond question is to the other the very thing thatmust most urgently be questioned. The troubling thing about the article is that Alan

questions Stephen’s integrity. That’s not debate; it’s personal. Alan sees himself asrepresentative of the tradition in a way that Stephen is not (though I dare say Stephenwould agree with a sigh of relief). Where do I stand? I think that icons are importantfixtures in the Dharma landscape and so are iconoclasts.

When we were monks together all those years ago, we often referred to certain teachersas “fully enlightened beings” as if we knew what that meant or could recognize suchpeople when we saw them. We were in awe of all Tibetan lamas, even mere geshes. Byany Western standards, the scholarship of our teachers Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey andGeshe Tamdrin Rabten was impressive. The openness and enormous attractiveness of theTibetan monks in exile were hard to resist. Here were intelligent, kind men who urged us to

think and debate. For me, and I suspect for others, they were (at least for a while)

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http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2010/october/distorted-visions-of-buddhism-agnostic-and-atheist/

http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2011/january/an-open-letter-to-b-alan-wallace/



http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2011/january/an-open-letter-to-b-alan-wallace/




surrogate fathers.

We did our best to follow the monastic rule and tried to honor the rules of guru devotionimplicit in Tibetan Buddhism (and Tibetan convention). Alan seemed quietly determined inhis pursuit of these relationships, but Stephen never shied away from second guessing ateacher if something didn’t sit well with him. You might make the case that Buddhismencourages skepticism, but Stephen brought his skepticism along with him. It certainlywasn’t foreign to the non-denominational English secularism in which he was raised. Alan,on the other hand, was an American son of a Baptist minister. I can only presume he grewup with a very different sense of belief. This isn’t to imply that Alan is a dogmatist: hedescribed his budding interest in Tibetan Buddhism as having “entailed a very painfulbreak with my father, resulting in four years of poverty, malnutrition and terrible health inDharamsala.”21 I think we all had father issues of one sort or another, and I suspect thatshaped our attitudes towards and relationships with our teachers, relationships that in theTibetan tradition are given enormous weight. My father was a difficult man with whom Inever established a satisfactory relationship; Stephen grew up without a father.

Alan and Stephen were both elder monks and teachers in our little community, and so role

models to the rest of us. Both came across as self-protective, but each cultivated thisattribute in his own way. Stephen put on an air of nonchalance that I took as a feint; henever shied from any challenge to the status quo, but was prone to express it with asarcastic word, even a slight sneer. Such comments would cast a shadow over Alan’sbrow, though he usually managed to bite his lip. Nevertheless, a little exploration usuallyrevealed Stephen’s “offhand” remarks to be anything but casual.

I don’t remember Alan expressing any doubts in public, and presume that he would haveshared them in private with his own teachers. He does claim to have entertained doubts,though I’ve no idea how existential they were.22 He was discrete to the point of beingopaque, and his shell seemed more straightforward than Stephen’s. He shared his

knowledge freely, but expressed little of his self. I thought him uncomfortable in his skin.He preferred to speak of things he could back up with scriptural citations or logicalargument than stories or opinions that entailed personal feelings. He was an impressivescholar with a sharp eye, an excellent memory and a zeal for correctness. These are mysubjective impressions, but in the years since, I’ve learned that many who admired Alan’sintellect also felt uncomfortable with him. As for his scholarly qualities, he was oncedescribed as an “encyclopaedia of Buddhism.” Indeed.

The end result of these different personalities was that although Stephen could be moreacidic and aloof, he was fundamentally more approachable. Alan was harder to approach,but if you were looking for clear answers to troubling questions, he was more likely todeliver a consoling thought.

The main thrust of Alan’s article is that Stephen is rewriting history and reconstructingwhat’s been “true” for generations of Buddhists in a subjective and idiosyncratic way.Stephen’s interpretation of what the Buddha taught and – even more contentiously – whathe meant , are not a product of strict scholarship and philology, but a reworking derived onhis own intuition. Alan doesn’t like this. He says it’s:

“… an expression of arrogance to override their [professional scholars and contemplativesthroughout history] conclusions simply due to one’s own preferences or ‘intuition’ (which isoften thinly disguised prejudice). To ignore the most compelling evidence of what the

21 March 12, 2004: personal email correspondence

22 “I have been critical of it from the beginning, but no less critical than I have been of Western civilization.”March 12, 2004, email.

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Buddha taught and to replace that by assertions that run counter to such evidence isindefensible.”23

Even if Stephen’s work is a product of the most subjective feelings, how does that call hisintegrity into question? As a born skeptic, Stephen is more concerned about the plausibilityof the teachings ascribed to the Buddha than dependent on whether or not he actuallytaught them. He values experience over tradition. Who is his role model for this?Siddhartha Gotama. Nevertheless, by using that method to draw his picture of the Buddha,he undermines the august pretentions of scholarship and tradition, and infuriates Alan.

Alan is trying to be a good Buddhist, but his article raises two questions:

First, are these teachings and people really sacred? For Alan, “yes,” because Buddhism isa religion; for Stephen, “no,” because Buddhism is a non-religion. There’s not much roomfor compromise here.

Second, and more chillingly, is Alan trying to keep Buddhism pure? Is such a thingpossible? Buddhism is a construct or, as Shariputtra says to the Buddha’s greatsatisfaction in the Heart Sutra, “There is no Dharma.” With all their fears and defenses,

human beings are the real actors in the world. The Dharma, no matter how revered, onlytakes shape through people. To express his dissatisfaction with the way Stephen shapesit, Alan draws parallels with the methods of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. As circumspectly as heexplores this comparison, that’s an emotionally charged accusation that should bereserved for discussion of real atrocities. It’s out of line. Is Stephen’s questioning of Siddhartha’s true nature an atrocity ? Is Buddhism too fragile to withstand such an affront?Are Buddhists so gullible that they must be guided by scholars? If so, when, if ever, willthey lose their gullibility?

And what of Siddhartha Gotama’s true nature? Stephen has spent his life trying toreconcile what the man taught with the fact that he was a man and that whatever wasspecial about him wasn’t the fruit of high privilege but of right effort. If the Buddha didn’twork his own way to awakening in a way that we can follow, what’s the point of his life andteaching? Buddhism in its religious incarnations is presented as a stairway to nirvana, andthe Buddha himself as virtually – if not actually – supernatural. How important is it tobelieve that instead of squeezing through the birth canal like other newborns, he poppedout of his mother’s side, traced the compass points and pronounced his future?

Alan allows us to reject this and exit Buddhism by the back door, but not to stay and fight,by suggesting that those who aver it might be mistaken, or even willfully inventive.Perhaps some were well-intentioned but misguided – but no; there were so many of them,for so many centuries, they must be right. Such is the logic of the institutional lineage-treethat Tibetans use to trace their respective traditions back to the oral teachings of the

Buddha himself, and which “proves” their unquestionable veracity.The Buddha taught 2,600 years ago. For 500 years, his lessons were recited by variousgroups and eventually written down by one or some of them. No one really knows howfaithful that process was over the centuries, but to not even wonder is to stick your headdecidedly in the sand. With a little lubrication from the doctrine of skillful means it survivesthe test of consistency remarkably well, but what does that prove? To suggest that in twoand a half millennia none of those whose lives and careers were invested in Buddhistinstitutions all over Asia added the least accretion is an act of religious faith, not of scholarly discipline.

23 Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist, paragraph 5. Mandala October-December 2010,online content.

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Are we to rely on those who came afterwards for the truth of what the Buddha taught? Canwe not go straight to his words and put them to the test for ourselves? The Buddha enjoinsus to do just that in the Kalama Sutra – probably the most influential document inspreading the Dharma to the West.24

Stephen is unafraid to weigh those words for himself; Alan finds that arrogant. Alan is aloyal traditionalist and authority figure. He feels both qualified and responsible to statewhat is acceptable and what is not.

It would be a terrible thing to have only one option in this dilemma: to be obliged to beorthodox or to be forced to question everything. I ask again: can Western Buddhism nothandle diversity? History shows that some traditions were indeed unable to do just that.Even today, some forms of Christianity and Judaism, Islam and Hinduism are markedmore by intolerance than by the simple embrace of common humanity. What’s the point of that ? Well, sometimes it’s not about rational argument; it’s about human behavior.

Is it really presumptuous to prioritize the Buddha’s teachings? Isn’t it just good sense? Isn’tthe practice of mindfulness evidently more important than belief in a Mount Meru-centereduniverse? Won’t your willingness to acknowledge denial bring you tangibly closer toawakening than a belief in reincarnation? Is it unreasonable that the way you answer thosequestions affects the way you perceive and talk about the Buddha? Does it forbid you tospeculate, or to prod, goad and even denounce the status quo?

Perhaps two old Dharma cronies have rubbed each other the wrong way for too long. Or,perhaps Stephen’s individual ego is all caught up in itself. Or, then again, perhaps Alan’scollective institutional ego is too big for its boots. Too much freedom of thought is notconducive to humility, but too much scholarship is bad for the heart. The questions of faithand doubt have been explored for millennia, and will hopefully continue to be explored.They form a dialectic between which we approach awakening. Personal attacks do no oneany service, even if they’re couched between the lines of clever argument.

Alan’s article scores some very crisp points, but its tone is unfriendly. That may soundlame, but to me it’s paramount. It’s rude to Stephen and all of like mind. We’re all trying toget to the root of what the Buddha taught. Stephen is an upstart; Alan is a paragon of correctness. They’re both entitled. In any case, they’re not likely to change now.

As a junior monk back in Switzerland in 1975, I was haunted by the tension between them.Wanting to avoid confusion at all cost, I chose not to see it. I practiced denial in order to bemore mindful! In the years since, I’ve learned that the practice of Dharma is usually aschaotic as this, which is in part why I lost faith in the scholarly illusion of the straight andnarrow. My chaos has nevertheless led me to greater acceptance, peace and clarity. Thepath is not straight. How could it be when life is a mass of contradictions and a comedy of

errors? You need a sense of humor, especially about those things you hold most sacred.You know, we almost didn’t have Alan and Stephen to talk about. A closed vent in theSwiss heating system one night filled their room with assorted gases, including carbondioxide and monoxide, almost asphyxiating the two of them in one stroke. What a loss thatwould be for us … or would it? This argument they’re having is so done, and yet soirresolvable that there’ll always be a pair of old rivals somewhere arguing about what the

24 “Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down inscriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a viewafter pondering over it or with someone else’s ability or with the thought, ‘This monk is our teacher.’ Whenyou know in yourselves: “These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being

adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness,” then you should practice and abide inthem.” – Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha; from the Kalama Sutra (trans. Nanamoli Thera)

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exchange of views between alan wallace and stephen batchelor with various comments

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