Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist: A Review

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist: A Review

Last updated on: November 1, 2011 at 3:02 pm by James Ford

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist: A Review 2011-11-01T15:02:00-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Stephen Batchelor’s Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist came out in 2010. I didn’t order it in advance of publication, but did acquire it soon after. It went right on top of my pile of bedside books. And then I ignored it. Too much on my plate, or book pile. Finally, a month ago I picked it up and started reading.

Interestingly as I started reading it I was attending a Buddhist teachers conference and so found myself during the day seeing and occasionally speaking with Stephen (a major regret was how I saw but never got a chance to actually speak beyond, hello, with Martine who wrote perhaps my all time favorite brief introduction to Zen) and then in the evening reading a few pages of this book.

I’ve just finished it. And my short response is: buy it and read it. It is a good book. It is at times deeply moving.

It is also challenging through and through.

Also, while not pretending to his stature in the public conversation about Buddhism in the West, as I believe we both stand in a range of what I call “liberal Buddhism,” I think it important to note some of the areas that I found myself in conflict with Stephen (hey, I met him, we took a picture together, I figure I can call him Stephen…).

Liberal Buddhism as I see it is a modernist expression of the Buddhadharma that can claim roots back to the nineteenth century. It shares many characteristics. One is bringing a critical eye particularly as it has evolved within Western religious and philosophical circles to the project. Here assertions of any sort are measured against the insights of other traditions, particularly scientific analysis, but also sociology, history and, very significantly, textual criticism. Among the more attractive elements of liberal Buddhism, as I understand it, is the trending toward egalitarianism with particular attention to raising the place of lay practice and practitioners, the assumption of equality among women and men, and a turning away from the historic scapegoating of homosexuality and homosexual persons. “Liberal” as in open and generous.

Within liberal Buddhism there are many places to stand. One can be a pretty consistent liberal Buddhist and remain pretty obviously within the “mainstream” of Buddhism. And, one can stand at a place where few others would agree that one remains a Buddhist. And there are various spots in between. In my view Stephen’s journey has been taking him ever more to the far edge of this spectrum. And I’m certainly aware others have said something similar about me…

This book Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist contains many things.

One is his autobiography, or at least a memoir. It is a compelling story and one which many of my generation can identify with, in actual reality or perhaps within the dreamscape. As a youth he traveled East and became a Tibetan monk. His descriptions of that tradition are pretty clear eyed, particularly around the authoritarian aspects of the religion.

Then he moved to Korea becoming a Zen monk. Here I thought it interesting that he consciously rejected a more “liberal” possibility in going to Japan, which might have been more congenial to his growing discomforts with vinaya Buddhism, in favor of continuing the monastic emphasis taught in Korean Son. There are many reasons why he might decide one way or the other, but he really doesn’t explore that in the book, beyond what seemed to me a casual dismissal of Japanese monasticism as a seminary program for married clergy.

What he does acknowledge about this time is a growing ironic distance between his own inner life and his religious tradition.

I have to admit I didn’t feel he gave Zen a real chance – a difficult assertion about someone who lived fully within a Zen monastic community for three years. But his descriptions of his inner life suggest this is so. Here we find the deeper formation of his profoundly analytical approach and his deepening concern with finding the historical Buddha as a major project.

From where I stand the most important part of this time in his life is this is where he would meet Martine who would become his life partner. And that is nothing to be disparaged.

He goes on to describe how he and Martine moved first back to England living in a community for a number of years and eventually settling into a private home life in France as well as his publishing history and gradual taking of his place as a public Buddhist intellectual.

Now Stephen is famous for his critical analysis of karma and rebirth. In his seminal study Buddhism Without Beliefs he took a radical agnostic stance in regard to what many consider to be pillars of the Buddhist message.

Here we stand together. I do not consider the classic doctrines of karma and rebirth, that is karma flows out of our intentions and lead to new lives, as particularly likely. In that older book Stephen articulated my agnostic stance regarding these doctrines. And I remain grateful. Also, I’ve noticed that agnostics tend to lean, one toward belief and the other away. In this particular area, I admit while I am agnostic, I lean away from belief in its likelihood.

I find the word karma a very good term for causality, that everything exists in causal relationships. And as far as future lives go, I find I’m reborn with every breath. Not as a throw away line, but as a deep truth. But I am more than wary of attaching moral content to these terms as is commonly the case. Or, for that matter, needing future lives to close various moral quandaries we find if we claim a universe where everything gets put right eventually. If there are future lives I think there needs to be a mechanism and as nothing so far has presented in a way I find even vaguely satisfactory (including the numerous accounts of people who allege memories of past lives), the classic and popular understandings of karma and rebirth will likely remain on my highly unlikely list.

Now, the Buddha posited how within our conditioned existence, clinging to any part as if it were permanent is ipso facto suffering. I see that. I believe that. I lead much of my life from that understanding. And I do not find it necessary to believe in some postmortem reanimation of the bundle of conditions and circumstances that I call James in order to have a life-transforming encounter with this teaching.

In his Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen also stated that this view was pretty much what the Buddha thought, as well. Here we begin to part company. I just don’t see it this way. I see no compelling reason to think the Buddha did not think the project turned on an assumption of a wheel of birth and death and rebirth that was ultimately unsatisfactory and that the enterprise turned on how to stop it.

I also see no reason to think the Buddha didn’t believe in something along the lines of a postmortem reanimation. But that the Buddha didn’t believe this either seems very important to Stephen. And he goes a long way, devotes a lot of energy to trying to establish this as a fact on the ground. And despite some very good efforts he doesn’t convince me.

That said I found among the most moving parts of Confessions was his reconstruction of Gautama Siddhartha’s life. I especially enjoyed, perhaps perversely, his droll description of Mahakassapa, who in Zen myth is the successor to the Buddha, as a climber and institutionalist. His life of the Buddha was perhaps my favorite part of the book. It reminded me of Thomas Jefferson’s New Testament, where he simply clipped out the parts he didn’t like, particularly miracles. Stephen’s Buddha is similar, if more theological.

Now, in his defense Stephen acknowledges the challenges to his construction, and defends his position noting that a certain amount of picking and choosing is how history is written. “I am fully aware that the passages to which I am drawn in the Canon are those that best fit my own views and biases as a secular Westerner. Critics have accused me of ‘cherry picking’ Buddhist sources, of extracting only those citations that support my position while either ignoring or explaining away everything else. To this objection, I can only point out that it has ever been thus.”

True enough. And, I felt Stephen’s story of the Buddha as wonderful and compelling as I found it, was also a pretty consistent exercise in retrojection – a projection of his values onto the life and teachings and person of the Buddha.

It seems pretty clear that Stephen believes in his bones that we do arise as conditioned creatures, the four Noble Truths are invaluable, and that mindfulness is a worthy discipline. He also puts a lot of energy into the idea of self-reliance. Stephen outlines the Buddha’s teaching as embrace, let go, stop, act.

And that appears to be his Buddhism.

He writes “There are no wormholes in this intricate and fluid field through which one can wriggle out, either to reach union with God or move on to another existence after death. This is a field in which one is challenged to act; it is your actions alone that define you. There is no point in praying for divine guidance or assistance. That, as Gotoma told Vasettha, would be like someone who wishes to cross the Aciravati River by calling out to the far bank: ‘Come here, other bank, come here!’ No amount of “calling, begging, requesting or wheedling” will have any effect at all.’”

He says, “Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility.”

Stephen deeply admires the Existentialist tradition, as I hasten to add, do I.

This is no shallow religion he has found. It has nobility to it.

And up to this point, much of this works for me. If something claims an objective reality or a super reality, it still leaves traces. If it cannot be observed or experienced in a reliable way, I’m pretty suspicious of it. Call me a critical Buddhist.

For me the problem with Stephen’s Buddhism turns on his apparent rejection of sunyata. Perhaps I misunderstood, but he seemed to suggest, actually he wrote of the insight that existence is empty, that it is merely a “conceptual and linguistic abstraction.” In asserting this he seemed to reject the possibility of awakening itself, of his, or for that matter for you or I, ever coming to a place of liberation. Instead he seems locked in a box where the mind is something that can somehow observe what’s going on, and our actions do have consequences, but that’s kind of the end of the deal.

Near the end of the book Stephen notes his admiration for the Anglican theologian Don Cupitt, of Sea of Faith fame, and someone I also admire. He goes a bit farther and says “I have a greater affinity with Don Cupitt than with any living Buddhist thinker.” My sense of Cupitt (I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him, so I return to the more formal use in such things as a book review, of the Reverend Cupitt’s family name) beyond his rigorous thinking is a certain aridity in his actual religion. I find this in Stephen, as well…

In all his wonderful and relentless analysis I think Stephen misses something really important.

For a time in Korea Stephen relentlessly watched his heart and mind using the koan “What is this?”

Kusan Sunim, his Zen teacher explained where this was taking him, “Finally, when this mass of questioning enlarges to a critical point, it will suddenly burst. The entire universe will be shattered and only your original nature will appear before you. In this way you will awaken.”

Sadly, Stephen’s reaction was “Once again, I found myself confronted by the specter of a disembodied spirit. The logic of Kusan Sunim’s argument failed to convince me. I t rested on the assumption that there was ‘something’ (i.e. Mind) that rules the body, which was beyond the reach of concepts and language. At the same time, this ‘something’ was also my true nature, my face before I was born, which somehow animated me. This sounded suspiciously like the Atman (Self/God) of Indian tradition that the Buddha had rejected. I could not reconcile the Zen Buddhist love of snow on bamboo, cypress trees in the courtyard, or the plot! Of a frog jumping into the pond with the mystical experience of a transcendent Mind revealed once the universe of bamboo, cypresses, and frogs was ‘shattered.’”

He seems to think the grand language of Zen’s pointing is pointing to something outside. It isn’t. Rather it is a pointing to the wondrous fact that the whole mess and every individual part is one, or rather, is nondual. And the splendid, magic thing about our human consciousness, in the make up of who we are as we are, is that we can “know” this. Rather, it is a letting go of clinging. It is, in fact, a not knowing. It is a finding of openness, of our boundlessness that exists with our vary limitations, our boundedness… Not one. Not two.

Stephen was invited to this place. He stood in the doorway. He, I’m pretty sure, even stepped inside. But, he also quickly withdrew.

There is an old joke about Unitarians that should they be taking a walk in the country and come to a fork in the road with two signs, one pointing to “heaven” and the other to “a very good conversation about heaven” that they would invariably go for the conversation. Stephen is nowhere near so silly. But, he sees the word heaven and recoils at it. Also with God. Also with anything that might possibly be metaphysical, beyond the physical. He is a master of our English language, a beautiful writer. But when the metaphor is theological, he seems to withdraw and sometimes even becomes rigid. He seems to hear the word Mind and cannot extract himself from theological discourses or abstractions as he found in his studies of the Mind Only School. He relates the experiences to theological analysis, and safely put into a box, he seems able to walk away.

As best I understand the Zen way, the invitation that he turned from because he saw capital “M” Mind as something outside is in fact that it is identical with all the parts that are Stephen and me and the chair and the ants and the dirt and exploding stars. One thing.

This is the very heart of my Buddhism. My Zen.

It can be found many places, in many religions, and without any religion. And without any doubt for me this gift is to be found in Zen, which he seemed to just plain miss, was how this very life as it is, lived into fully, is liberation.

To open completely to our conditioned self and the conditioned world is to find liberation.

It is found when we let go of our separation, ironic or otherwise.

It is found when we truly embrace that only don’t know, that deepest agnosticism which is the way I’ve found within Zen.

Enough…

In summary, no doubt there are many liberal Buddhisms. Stephen Batchelor clearly expounds upon one. And he is a thinker to listen to. I recommend his book, strongly.

But he has not, nor do I think he’d claim, to have written the last word on Buddhism, or liberal Buddhism.

Still, it is an important word.

And, as I said, I hope you’ll read it.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

July 8, 2011

Koan Introspection: A Quick and Dirty Introduction

Next Post

July 11, 2011 Fire Monks: Colleen Busch's Lovely Tale of Fire and Humanity and Zen

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Bible say about giving?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Never give God loves a cheerful giver Only give under pressure Give to get rich