SOF 41 / May 2000 PATTI WHALEY reflects on two very different books on Buddhism, including one by Stephen Batchelor, a principal speaker at this year's SoF annual conference Buddhism without Beliefs: a Contemporary Guide to Awakening, by Stephen Batchelor, Riverhead Books, £9.99 Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Riverhead Books, £10.99 FIONAL BESTS BUDDHISM WITHOUT BELIEFS the importance of being agnostic Like any number of Westerners, I've often fallen into the trap of seeing Buddhism in a much more idealistic light than Christianity. I can see the encrusted hierarchies, the outmoded beliefs, and the rigidity of my own religion; seeing only the somewhat rarified forms of Buddhism that exist in the West, I imagine it as a much more flexible, democratic, non-dogmatic belief system than Christianity.
It's useful, then, to see the furor raised among Buddhist circles by Stephen Batchelor's book. Batchelor's aim is to set aside the aspects of Buddhism that have turned it into a religion - the development of a complex body of metaphysical ideas, the elite priesthood of monks and gurus, the insistence on rebirth, the political conservatism - and extract the core characteristics of Dharma practice: compassion, awareness, emptiness, freedom.
Fundamentalist Buddhists (yes, there are some!) complain that he has abandoned the central tenets of Buddhism and reduced it to elementary psychotherapy. Certainly Batchelor has managed to explain aspects of Buddhist practice with such lucidity and immediacy that they seem little more than everyday common sense; but, as anyone who has tried to actualize them will attest, understanding them is not the hard part.
Central to Batchelor's approach is a proper understanding of agnosticism. His agnosticism goes beyond not taking a position on the existence of God or the afterlife; nor is it comparable with scepticism or indifference. It is a passionate and relentless enquiry into the nature of existence, an attitude of mind which "confronts the enormity of being born instead of reaching for the consolation of a belief". Agnosticism keeps us on our spiritual toes; the absence of any final answers acts not as a discouragement but as an opportunity to continually reimagine and recreate the parameters of our existence.
This must, inevitably, imply the possibility of reimagining Buddhism itself. Batchelor suggests two key directions for Dharma practioners of the future: to recover the Buddha's original focus on personal autonomy, and to develop a stronger sense of social engagement. What links these two themes is community: autonomous Dharma practice can never be a merely private affair, but can only be realised in communities in which the understanding of our own existential anguish leads to an active concern for the anguish of society as a whole. This vision of Buddhism is secular, agnostic, decentralised, and democratic; small wonder that some Buddhists regard Batchelor with the same sort of alarm that some Anglicans express towards Don Cupitt.
Thich Nhat Hanh's purpose is somewhat different. In Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, he seeks to guide the reader not into a new, secular Buddhism but back to our own Christianity. He examines some of the central ways in which Buddhism and Christianity are often seen to differ: belief in continual rebirth versus a single life, the non-self versus the soul, emptiness versus being, compassion versus love; and uses each to give new and sympathetic interpretations of the other. In his reading, both Buddhism and Christianity point to one thing: a method of experiencing the noumenal world by deepening our experience of the phenomenal world.
Extracted, some of the statements can sound silly: "Jesus practised meditation...Although it's not recorded in what position he practised, I am sure he did sitting and walking meditation". But the purpose here is not to make SOF 41 / May 2000 extravagant historical claims or to recast Jesus as some sort of Buddhist manqué; rather, the message to the Westerner is: Go home. Don't come looking for something exotic in Buddhism. Everything you need can be found in your own spiritual tradition. Until you understand your own roots, you can't really understand Buddhism either.
Much the same thing is being said by the Dalai Lama; in his recent writings, he points Westerners back to their own culture, insisting that those who can't find what they need in their own tradition won't be able to find it in someone else's. The intent is not to reject the Western seeker, but to warn him: Westerners who reject monotheism will cut off dialogue and mutual learning just as surely as Westerners who reject Buddhism.
Where Batchelor and Thich Nhat Hanh are closest to each other, and farthest from Sof, is in their insistence on "practice", which may mean either formal meditative practice or, more broadly, the reality of lived experience.
Again and again they return to the importance of Buddhism as a way of behaving, not a way of believing.
The Four Noble Truths, says Batchelor, are not propositions to believe but challenges to act. Agnosticism is not a creed but a method for examining life. The Dharma is not a set of teachings but a path. Awakening is not an event but a process. Batchelor's practice is solidly rooted in meditation, through which we compare our ideas and concepts about ourselves ("I am a discrete and constant self, I am in control, I am rational") with the much more chaotic and contingent way that our minds actually work from moment to moment. Only in this way can we translate abstract knowledge into actual experiences and habits of mind; without this translation, the ideas of Buddhism have no real power to effect change in our lives.
Thich Nhat Hanh would agree. "Taking refuge (in the Buddha) is not a matter of faith or belief; it is a matter of practice...you can't take refuge in a notion." Notions are worse than useless - they are obstacles. Our notions about happiness may be the greatest single obstacle to real happiness; likewise, notions about God, about faith, about incarnation, prevent us from experiencing them as lived reality. Resurrection is not a metaphysical concept but a daily practice of being born again; faith and love cannot be developed except as direct experience.
Christianity has lost this immediacy and has become a belief system: "We always speak of eating, but we never really eat. Even though Jesus gave us the bread, we still eat the idea".
Challenging words for an idea-obsessed talkshop like SoF. How do we turn nonrealism from an idea into a practice? Can Western monotheism, like Buddhism, hold the seeds of a new, agnostic awakening? Perhaps this is what we want Stephen Batchelor to examine with us at our next conference.
Patti Whaley is Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International and a member of the SoF steering committee ERICH FReMM THE SANE SOclETY Erich Fromm SoF?" dot.comma Avis Torrance of Teddington writes: "| would like to recommend the work of Erich Fromm, psychologist, and three of his books in particular.
Buddhism without Beliefs: a Contemporary Guide to Awakening, by Stephen Batchelor, Riverhead Books, £9.99; and Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Riverhead Books, £10.99.