This post is
Part Three in a series concerning Stephen Batchelor, author of
Buddhism Without Beliefs and
Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist (
here is a link to a list of Batchelor’s publications at his website). Here are links to the first two parts:
1.
Buddhism Without Ironic Detachment
2.
“I discover as I grow older …”
And now, here are the Top 10 Reasons Stephen Batchelor is Completely Full of Shit:
1. Herman Hesse said all of this already (almost a century ago), and said it much better.
For those poor souls who
simply cannot tolerate any exposure to
actual Buddhism, because anything remotely “
religious” causes you to go into
the spiritual equivalent of anaphylactic shock, that is still no excuse for
lowering yourself to Stephen Batchelor’s
homeopathically diluted version
of Buddhism. Nearly a century ago, Herman Hesse blessed the world with
his own beautifully written iconoclasizingly idiosyncratic redaction of
the Buddhadharma:
Siddhartha. (At least
four new English translations have
appeared since 1998, indicating that many people are already taking
this advice.) Hey, just because you can’t handle the real thing that
doesn’t mean you can’t still have some standards!
2. Also, Hesse was honest about the fact that what he was saying was not really what the Buddha taught.
A few years after first publication of
Siddhartha, the author wrote that, far from promoting Buddhism, the novel actually represented his own “liberation
from
Buddhism” (Gessamelte Briefe, Vol. 2 p. 96 of the 1979 Suhrkamp Verlag
edition. This is cited in Adrian Hsia’s essay “Siddhartha”, which in
turn is to found in
A Companion to the Works of Herman Hesse,
edited by Ingo Cornils.). Hesse was perfectly well aware of, and
perfectly happy with, the fact that the words he was putting into his
protagonist’s mouth, and the ideas he was putting into his mind, were
not the teachings of the Buddha but rather an eclectic mixture of
Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Taoism, Jungianism and Buddhism,
and that this mixture was of his own invention. Batchelor, on the other
hand, delusionally insists that the world accept Stephen Batchelor’s
personal opinions as the original, pure and true teachings of the
Buddha.
3. There is nothing “agnostic” about Batchelor’s New Dispensation.
T.H. Huxley, who first coined and defined the term “agnosticism”,
touched briefly on the subject of Buddhism in his 1893 essay on
Evolution and Ethics. What
Darwin’s Bulldog
had to say on the subject was described by Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys
Davids (who would later become and remain for 20 years as the president
of the Pali Text Society) in her own 1912 publication “
Buddhism: A Study of the Buddhist Norm“,
as the “most remarkable contribution of any lay student to the
philosophy of Buddhism.” My point in bringing up Huxley is twofold.
First of all, Huxley’s own brief non-expert description of basic
Buddhist teachings is far superior to anything Stephen Batchelor has
ever written. Secondly, in the course of his presentation of Buddhist
ideas, the Agnosticator in Chief demonstrates that the same
“metaphysical
tour de force” (Huxley’s words) by which the Buddha obliterated
the notion of “Self” can
be, and indeed must be (and indeed in Buddhist philosophy for the last
2.5 millennia has been consistently), also applied to
the notion of “Matter”: “the ‘substance’ of matter is a metaphysical unknown quantity, of the existence of which there is no proof.” But what is a
crude materialist like Batchelor to do without the
Mammon of “
physical reality” to
grovel before? This is the real reason why Batchelor long ago abandoned any pretense of being an “agnostic”.
4. Why Settle For Goenka-Lite?
For several years, Stephen Batchelor lived as a Tibetan
Buddhist monk and ostensibly was a student of Tibetan Buddhism. Then he
changed teams and became a Zen Buddhist monk and lived in a Korean
Buddhist monastery for several years while ostensibly studying Zen. In
fact, however, during this whole time Batchelor was actually a
practitioner, after a fashion, of “Goenka-style vipassana”. And in fact,
what Batchelor “teaches” (and one can only refer to Batchelor as a
“teacher” if one does so safely within the confines of ironic quotes) is
nothing but his own personal interpretation of Goenka’s teaching. So,
why accept some half-baked knock-off, when
the real thing
is readily available? An even more indelicate question is this: why has
Stephen Batchelor never applied himself to a serious and systematic
study of Goenka’s teachings, but has rather satisfied himself with only a
minimal exposure to the teachings that he claims to hold in such high
regard?
5. The Buddha actually did believe in and teach rebirth and karma.
“The slightest acquaintance with Buddhism, in virutally any of its
forms, shows that … Buddhism teaches that when people (or other beings)
die, they are reborn according to their moral deserts …. In fact,
Buddhism probably has the strongest idea of personal continuity found
anywhere. Christians, for example, believe in personal continuity
through just one life that we live here on earth, and perhaps in a
second life in a place or state of reward or punishment, a heaven 0r
hell — although, since that is often considered to be ‘outside time’, it
is not clear how the term ‘continuity’ can there apply. Buddhists, by
contrast, believe in personal continuity over an infinite series of
lives …. Though karma, ethical volition, is … only one of the elements
of continuity in an individual’s life (and beyond), from the religious
point of view it is the most important.” Richard Gombrich,
What the Buddha Thought,
pp. 11-13. Gombrich, it must be emphasized, is primarily concerned not
only with the Pali Canon, but specifically with that part of the Pali
Suttas that can most reliably be attributed directly to the historical
Buddha.
6. Batchelor’s fundamentalism
Batchelor apparently could not be satisfied with presenting his own
personal vision of what he thinks the Buddha should have taught (but did
not) in an honest and straightforward way and for what it is. Nor was
he interested in simply presenting his own personal interpretation of
Buddha’s teachings as one valid way of looking at things. Rather, he
insists, like any two-bit fundamentalist, that the vast majority of
those who have called ourselves Buddhists for the last 2500 years have
got it all wrong. And it just so happens that Stephen Batchelor, quite
naturally, is just the guy to set us all straight. Like some
Tudor-era Protestant “reformer”/psychopath,
Batchelor sees evil forces lurking wherever priests, or pomp, or
idols, or rituals of any kind are to be found. But it is not enough for
Batchelor to simply choose, for himself, to have nothing to do with
these things of which he disapproves. Because Batchelor has convinced
himself that he possesses The One Truth, and The One Truth must prevail.
The priests must be exposed as frauds, the pomp splattered with mud,
the idols smashed, and the rituals mocked and ridiculed and ultimately
broken up by the mob.
7. What do you mean “we”, Kemosabe?
There is simply no getting around the ugly ethnocentric core at the
heart of Batchelor’s New Dispensation. Batchelor’s mind works in a such a
way that his own failures at Buddhist praxis must not merely be the
fault of Buddhism, but the problem with Buddhism must be explained in
racial and cultural terms. It is not that Batchelor was incapable of
sincerely embracing and practicing Buddhism, you see. The inadequacy
does not lie personally with Batchelor. No, that wouldn’t do at all.
Rather it is a congenital malady afflicting all white people: “I’ve
found that this denial of one’s roots, this denial of one’s cultural
upbringing, is not actually possible to sustain. If one seeks to sustain
it, one often ends up as a kind of mock Tibetan or pseudo-Japanese.
Although I have tried to do that on occasion, dressing up in all of the
appropriate regalia, more than that I feel it to be still seeking to
find an identity outside that of my own culture. It’s, as Freud might
say, impossible to repress these things. They simply come out in other
ways.” [
Deep Agnosticism, 1997]
8.
There is nothing new, or interesting, or admirable, in the sad tale of
an aging hippie manufacturing justifications for why he no longer feels
quite so rebellious, adventurous and culturally flexible as he did in
his youth.
I’m just sayin’.
9. Arrested Development.
I read Siddhartha when I was 17. It is important to read Hesse when one
is still young. Along with Carlos Castaneda. If one did not manage to
read these things when one was 17, then there is perhaps no harm in
allowing such an indulgence at a later stage in life. But this kind of
reading material must be understood for what it is: a starting point, a
point of initial departure. Batchelor appeals to westerners who are
still spiritual infants, a state ideally experienced in one’s late
teens. Sadly, though, Batchelor’s audience is not primarily made up of
teenagers, but rather of those who are, like Batchelor himself, trapped
in a perpetually infantilizing and narcissizing state of arrested
development. But once we have had our fill of pabulum (regardless at
what age this finally happens) it is soon time to move on to solid food.
Like
actual Buddhism and
actual Shamanism.
10. Batchelor, by his own admission, has never made a serious attempt to study and practice actual Buddhism.
According to his own account, Batchelor did not apply himself to the
practice of Tibetan Buddhism during his years as a Tibetan Buddhist
monk. Rather, he chose to devote himself to the practice of his own
personal conception of “Goenka-style vipassana”. And during his years as
a Zen Buddhist monk, Batchelor cultivated an attitude of “ironic
distance” from his teacher, and only put Kusan Sunim’s teachings into
practice “in a way that corresponded with my own interests and needs.”
[for sourcing see:
Buddhism Without Ironic Detachment]
And at no time during his years of supposedly studying and practicing
“Goenka-style vipassana” has Batchelor ever made a serious effort to
systematically learn Goenka’s teaching as it is actually taught by
Goenka.
The so-called “Forum For Hindu Awakening” has posted a story on their website titled “Alert Hindus foil ploy of conversion by Christians on the day of Ashadhi Ekadashi“.
This story brags about the fact that a bunch of thugs in Nashik
(Maharashtra) physically assaulted a group of “8-10 Christians [who]
were going around in two vehicles with the books and explaining
importance of Jesus.”
Sitting atop the US Capitol building is an extraordinary sculpture by Thomas Crawford: "Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace". The statue weighs in at fifteen thousand pounds, was completed in 1862, installed in 1863, taken down for restoration and repairs in May of 1993, and returned to the top of the Capitol in October of that year. More about the "Statue of Freedom" (as she is now "officially" known) can be found here.
"The common people of early modern Britain possessed a wide repertoire of spells and rituals with which they could practise magical self-help, but in those instances where more sophisticated magical knowledge was needed, they turned to a magical practitioner. In contemporary sources these practitioners were referred to under a wonderful variety of generic names: wise man or woman, cunning man or woman, witch (white or black), wizard, sorcerer, conjurer, charmer, magician, wight, nigromancer, necromancer, seer, blesser, dreamer, cantel, soothsayer, fortune-teller, girdle-measurer, enchanter, enchantrix and so on. These generic names, like those used to define categories of spirit, overlapped considerably and were often interchangeable." [p. 26]
"At any given time, the term to be used to define a magical practitioner would have depended upon the type of magic they practiced, where they lived, whether they were liked or disliked and whether the person defining them was illiterate or literate, rural or urban, Puritan or Catholic and so on. The same practitioner, for example, could be referred to as a 'wise man' by one person, a 'witch' by another and a 'conjurer' by yet another."
claim that, on closer inspection, the terms "witch", "wise man", and "conjurer" can be disentangled from each other if we know who is using the terms. That is, even though the same person might be referred to by different terms, this only means (according to Wilby) that different people are using the terms differently. The important thing here is that Wilby intentionally (or so it seems impossible not to conclude) ignores the question of whether or not the same person will refer to the same other person as both a "witch" and a "wise woman" (and perhaps also as a "conjurer").
some of these terms might be today? And, moreover, why are we to believe that the degree to which a term is still "energetic" and/or "numinous" is relevant to whether or not such a term is to be "employed by [21st century] academic historians", especially when the most "energetic" and "numinous" of them all, "witch", is one of the primary terms still in use???"Given such difficulties, we shall follow [unnamed] contemporary scholars in the field and employ the following terms. Any individual who practiced magic in a professional capacity, whether for good or ill, will come under the umbrella term of 'magical practitioner'. Those magical practitioners primarily associated with the practice of maleficient magic will, in the absence of any viable alternative, be termed 'witches'. Those primarily associated with the use of beneficient magic will be termed 'cunning folk' -- a title which, although popular in the early modern period, hanot survived into the present day and therefore is not overlaid with modern connotations."
"In a significant minority of records, the presence of a cunning man or woman can be identified with certainty. Bessie Dunlop's case is a prime example. Bessie was not brought to court because she had performed maleficium, but because a local family had protested that she had falsely accused them of theft. She performed only good magic and her family had fairy connections. Most witch-trial records, however, are not so clear cut, and it is difficult to say with any certainty whether the individual who stood before the bench was a cunning woman or a witch. One of the reasons for this difficulty is the fact that there was a great deal of overlap between the two types of magical practitioner in the period. While historians often make a distinction between cunning folk, who performed good magic, and witches, who performed bad magic, in the early modern period this distinction was often blurred. Although some cunning folk had a reputation for being wholly good, a large proportion of them were considered ambivalent, that is, they could employ their magical powers to both help and harm. Christina Larner describes this dual nature in a Scottish context:
"The healer is a source of hope in the community. But this power is two-edged. If he should fail, demand extortionate and unecomonic returns for his services, or become hostile, then he becomes a source of menace and a focus for anxiety. The refusal of Canon Law to distinguish between black and white magic . . . regardless of whether it is intended to heal or harm, in fact reflects a peasant reality: that the healer can be dangerous." (Christina Larner, Enemies of God, 1981, pp. 138-139)[pp. 53-54]
After quoting from Larner, Wilby goes on to cite the 1608 case of Beigis Tod of East Lothian, who was accused of witchcraft on the basis of her reputation for being able to both "on-lay" and "off-take" sickness. Wilby also recounts cases in which people known as healers were approached by those who were willing to pay them to use their powers to cause harm. Sometimes such offers were (reportedly) accepted, while other times they were (reportedly) declined. Wilby also points out that it could be "good for business" for a healer if she or he also had a reputation for being able to "perform maleficium" -- for one thing, it helped in collecting the bill! Wilby sums up the situation like this: "Given the ambivalent nature of early modern cunning folk, therefore, when we are presented with trial records describing them performing both good and bad magic, it is difficult to establish with any certainty whether the cited practitioner was a cunning woman or a witch." [p. 55]
