I have often felt a strong affinity for Buddha's own writings, if not
those of many of his followers. The religiosity of much of modern
Buddhism is off-putting, but not terribly so, and the imprint of
tribalism on nominal "Buddhist" belief has led to religious wars that
differ from the Irish Catholic/Protestant schism only in the cut and
color of the participants' wardrobe.

And yet it's hard not to find something attractive in his aphorism on
what morals and ethics one should adopt as "true,"

Never be satisfied with hearsay, tradition, legend, scripture,
conjecture, rationalization, or the mere words of your
teacher. When you know in yourself, "These things are blameless,
praiseworthy, skillful, and adopting them leads to welfare and
happiness," then you should practice them.

Still, there are a lot of suttas in Buddhism that, quite frankly,
strike me as nonsense, and a lot of the Buddhists I know are rather
silly folk, having adopted an awful lot of New Age practices that have
little in common with Four Ennobling Truths, but the tie-dye is
nifty. And meditation never hurt anyone.

Stephen Batchelor has written a very short little book called Buddhism
without Belief in which he writes a lot of very sensible things about
the way Buddhist religiosity gets in the way of Buddhist practice. His
best example is that of the Four Ennobling Truths, which get turned
into propositions of fact to be believed before one can proceed, that
"Life is Suffering," "Suffering is caused by Desire," "To escape
Suffering one must eliminate Desire," and "Having eliminated Desire,
one must avoid returning to it," and so on. Batchelor's premise is
that this is exactly what the Buddha never wanted, a religion. What
Buddha wanted was a recommended course of action, to understand the
source of a particular anguish, to let go of the source so it can be
dealt with on its own, to realize a cessation of anguish, and to
continue onward.

To me, that sounds exactly right. It's hard to do in many cases, and I
can't imagine myself giving up some of the pleasures I enjoy even as
the Buddha advises that my wanting and enjoying them is itself a
source of anguish. But it sounds right without being a complete
straitjacket approach (as I discussed last week regarding Montessori,
Kubler-Ross, or as one correspondent pointed out, Maslow) or requiring
that I buy into any whacked metaphysics.

Batchelor also wants Buddhism to give up its insistence on
reincarnation, which he considers a drag on it inserted by the
ur-Hinduism of Buddha's time. He writes a lot of nifty things, such as
the conflict of the rebirth-meme with the traditional Buddhist notion
that there is intrinsic "self" independent of its substrate, and he
writes things that my brain automatically asterisks, such as "death is
inevitable," to which my brain appends "(for now)."

But my admiration came to a screeching halt when I read the following:

An agnostic Buddhist eschews atheism as much as theism, and is as
reluctant to regard the universe as devoid of meaning as endowed
with meaning. Yet such an agnostic stance is not based on
disinterest. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do
not know. It confronts the enormity of having been born instead of
reaching for the consolation of a belief. It strips away the views
that conceal the mystery of being here-- either by affirming it as
something or denying it as nothing.

I am sufficiently anguished by this paragraph that I feel compelled to
respond. Batchelor has wedged himself firmly into the intellectual
incoherency of a 19th-century fad that, today, has not only lost its
original meaninglessness but has become a sort-of spiritual cop-out.

It surprises me that, having been so erudite about a 6th century BCE
manuscript, he fails to recognize the absurdity of falling back on a
19th century neologism. Were there no agnostics prior to 1880, when
Huxley coined the term? Of course there were, but they were called
"atheists," and Huxley later stated clearly that he coined the term to
obfuscate the fact that he was one. Agnosticism, at best, is an
intellectual stance regarding knowledge-- it's a position about what
one can know, not about what one believes-- but it discusses that
knowledgeability in terms of an inaccessibility. If you can never
know, why talk about it? It bugs me that people ascribe a quality to
something they claim one can ascribe no qualities at all.

This is one of the things that always confuses me about "agnostics"
like Batchelor. It doesn't matter what you say, really: I want to know
how you act. If you act as if your actions have no consequences except
in the here and now, then whatever "agnostic" knowledge you lay claim
to is irrelevant: your belief is that the metaphysical is irrelevant
to your actions.

In the end, though, Batchelor hasn't come up with anything new: he's
made Buddha's description of the human condition palatable to a
secular west and in doing so he's paralleled modern psychotherapy,
which also hasn't come up with anything new. And the outcome of his
"practice of Buddhism" is still an iffy proposition, to be accepted
not after consideration but with blind belief, and if it doesn't work
for you it's not because you're wired differently from him, but
because you're just not trying.

Elf

Batchelor also wants Buddhism to give up its insistence on
reincarnation, which he considers a drag on it inserted by the
ur-Hinduism of Buddha's time. He writes a lot of nifty things, such as
the conflict of the rebirth-meme with the traditional Buddhist notion
that there is intrinsic "self" independent of its substrate, and he
writes things that my brain automatically asterisks, such as "death is
inevitable," to which my brain appends "(for now)."

But my admiration came to a screeching halt when I read the following:

An agnostic Buddhist eschews atheism as much as theism, and is as
reluctant to regard the universe as devoid of meaning as endowed
with meaning. Yet such an agnostic stance is not based on
disinterest. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do
not know. It confronts the enormity of having been born instead of
reaching for the consolation of a belief. It strips away the views
that conceal the mystery of being here-- either by affirming it as
something or denying it as nothing.

I am sufficiently anguished by this paragraph that I feel compelled to
respond. Batchelor has wedged himself firmly into the intellectual
incoherency of a 19th-century fad that, today, has not only lost its
original meaninglessness but has become a sort-of spiritual cop-out.