BG 175: The Buddhist Atheist
Episode Description:
Secular Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor joins us to explore some of the ideas presented in his newest book, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. We start off by examining the two Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth, using the original teachings of the Buddha, especially the “imponderables” as a touchstone for the conversation. Stephen’s basic claim being that the belief in rebirth doesn’t have sufficient evidence behind it, and it actually takes away from the core practices and teachings of the Buddha. We conclude the interview by exploring the difference between agnosticism and atheism, which Stephen claims can be integrated together into what he calls an “ironic atheism.”
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Transcript:
Vince: Hello Buddhist Geeks. This is Vince Horn and I’m joined today by a very special guest, Stephen Batchelor. Stephen, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today and to speak with us. I really appreciate it.
Stephen: It’s a great pleasure to be here.
Vince: And many people have heard your name in the Buddhist world. You’re a contemporary Buddhist teacher, writer, you’re a former Tibetan monk, and then you’re also a monk in the, is it the Korean Zen tradition?
Stephen: That’s right, yes.
Vince: So you spend a lot of time practicing and a lot of time studying. And then in recent years you’ve started writing a lot on this topic of Buddhist agnosticism or Buddhist atheism. And one of your first books, which I read back in college, was Buddhism Without Beliefs. And then, most recently you’ve written a book kind of following up on that called Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.
Those are two of your books and you’ve written others as well but we wanted to kind of explore some of the material and content from your recent book, because it’s pretty interesting. And I know you’ve gotten both a lot of criticism, and also a lot of praise, for some of the stuff that you’ve been teaching and writing about, and I know a lot of that is related to the way that you look at karma and rebirth, two of the central Buddhist doctrines in the Buddhist tradition—you hear about them a lot. And you’ve approached them rather differently than traditionally. So I was wondering if you could share how you’re approaching these teachings and then how that differs from more traditional approaches.
Stephen: Yes, I’ve noticed how many Buddhists, of all traditions, use the words karma and rebirth as though they refer to one thing; as though if you dispensed with the idea of rebirth, then somehow karma too would also have to be thrown out the window. Now, I find that a little bit odd, frankly, and I certainly have difficulty with the traditional way which Buddhists understand the doctrine of rebirth or reincarnation. It’s the same word in Pali. And what this boils down to is that after physical death some part of you, Vince or Stephen, will continue into another life. Now, again, this is not spoken of in some crude way that literally Vince or Stephen will get reborn, but some element of our consciousness, or something like that, will escape the breakdown of the physical body and find its way into another world or some other means of being born in another realm.
Now, I really just do not understand what that could mean; it simply does not make sense to me. It’s not coherent, and it seems to rest upon our adopting certain metaphysical views, namely that there is some part of our being that is separate, by nature, from the physical body that will continue into another life. And both in terms of what we currently understand through the natural sciences, also in terms of a whole range of philosophical and psychological problems I have with the idea, it’s a doctrine that for many years now I’ve really just put to one side and not really considered to be central to what either the Buddha taught, or how I myself practice the dharma.
Now karma is another matter all together. I find it quite unproblematic to state that when I die, the effects of my actions will continue in the world. If I have a heart attack now, and drop dead, that doesn’t mean that my books or things I’ve said or done, to other people, through my words, through my deeds, will no longer continue to have an effect. They will. I think this is fairly self evident. So the only difference then, in my view, is that I don’t believe it’s necessary for some subtle bit of me to carry over into another life to experience the fruits of my own acts, but rather I simply see that after our death we have an enormous responsibility to ensure that the world we leave for others, be they our own children, be they our students, or so on, anybody, whoever, man, woman, animal. So I have no difficulty with the idea that after death my actions will continue to bear fruit. The only difference is that unlike some Buddhists, I don’t feel any need to be around when they mature.
And I feel that the important point of the doctrine of rebirth in any case is to give a kind of vehicle for the continuity of our moral acts to continue to bear fruit in the future. I think we can dispense with the vehicle and simply recognize that everything we do in this life will have consequences both now and after we are no longer here. And I think both views are equally potent in establishing a sense of moral responsibility, which I feel is really the main point.
Vince: You mentioned there that you didn’t feel like these doctrines weren’t necessarily central to the original Buddhist teachings and I know part of your book is to go back and sort of look at some of the original teachings and to see what’s common among some of the different sutras. I was wondering if you could say a little about your process there and what you discovered.
Stephen: Well this is a long process and it’s still very much ongoing. My journey through Buddhism started with being a Tibetan Buddhist monk in India around the Dalai Lama where I learned Tibetan, translated Tibetan texts, worked closely with Tibetan lamas for some years and then become a Zen monk for about four more years in South Korea. But since I just wrote, in 1985, I’ve been particularly interested in trying to recover, not only a sense of who this man the Buddha was, but also what was it in his teaching that really stood out that really made people say, “Wow, we’ve got to remember this.” This is something that has a greater value than just what it might achieve in 5th century BC India. This is speaking in a very universal language to human beings. So the more that I read through the Pali texts and the more that I travel through India on pilgrimage, the more these different aspects of the early Buddhist teaching and the Buddha’s life started slowly to come into focus.
Now, one of the things that I think is central to the Buddha’s teaching is that he is extremely suspicious of metaphysics and there are of course these famous questions that he refused to answer: Does the universe have a beginning? Does it have an end? Is it finite? Is it infinite? Are mind and body the same or are mind and body two separate things? And then the last four: Does the Tathagata exist after death or does he not exist after death? Now this latter one, I think, is being tampered with slightly. I think it’s almost certainly the case that what the Buddha meant was “Does one continue after death or does one not continue to exist after death?” Tathagata was simply being the way he referred to himself. So in other words, it just means one.
Now I think if you put those unanswered questions together, you’d get a picture of what, even today, remained as the big questions of life and death, and they’re just as unanswered now, by science, as they were at the Buddha’s time. But in any case, the Buddha wasn’t interested in rejecting these ideas because they were somehow wrong. But he was concerned with people getting involved with that kind of speculation because it would lead one away from the actual practice of the path. The Buddha compares his teaching to a medicine. He compares himself to a doctor. He compares the sangha to a group of people who support you in your recovery. Now, on a number of occasions, that he says as long as you are preoccupied with these big metaphysical questions, you won’t be attending sufficiently to the real task at hand, which is the question of suffering. Not just your own suffering, the suffering of others, the suffering of the world. And the Buddha’s teaching is, some would think that, has to be tested in terms of its therapeutic effectiveness. Not to be tested in terms as to whether it is an accurate description of reality or not.
I honestly don’t think the Buddha was interested in the nature of reality. The Buddha was interested in understanding suffering. In opening one’s heart and one’s mind to the suffering of the world. And then learning to be with that and to respond to that in a way that’s not driven by the habits of attachment and fear and hatred and so on. But responding to the condition of our world in a way that’s unconditioned by hatred, unconditioned by greed, unconditioned by confusion. Which leads us into a more enlightened way of living in the world today. And that he calls the eightfold path. So, my sense is that, at least on the basis of those early canonical passages, we have a sense of the Buddha as someone who is very much concerned with how we optimize the quality of our life here and now. That he certainly spoke of things like nirvana, and what that challenges us to, is really, to see whether it’s possible in our own practice, to bring to a stop those drives and instincts and habits that keep propelling us into forms of speech and forms of action that, in the end, rebound upon us, do not get us anywhere, and generally, cause both ourselves and others a great deal of grief. In other words, the heart of the practice lies with how we are living from moment to moment in the actual world, with what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, are the people, language, our own inner psychology, and the great challenges that face the human race as a whole. How do we deal with those from a perspective that is not dictated to by our selfishness and our attachment and our anger?
Vince: Nice. Thank you. And I know this question is maybe a little strange given what you just said, but you write about, in Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, that the notion of rebirth has, as it’s starting assumption, the duality between mind and matter, and that was one of the four imponderables you just mentioned.
Stephen: Well, that’s absolutely right, I should have mentioned that. I find it very strange that the Buddha quite explicitly says that one should not get drawn into speculations as to whether mind and body are the same or different. And yet, the history of Buddhism shows us very unambiguously that that’s exactly what pretty much every Buddhist tradition has gone and done—nearly all of them (there are, I think, some exceptions in Theravada Buddhism). But, the basic idea is that for there to be rebirth, there must be something that does not cease to exist with the death of the physical body. And I find it very difficult to understand how you can propose a theory of rebirth without adopting a mind-body dualism.
And that dualism, I think, is quite at odds with what the Buddha had in mind. And I think it is also very difficult to square with how we actually understand the nature of the world in which we live. I don’t think there are two separate things, one material and one spiritual, that in some weird way, sort of co-exist. I feel that whatever the stuff of the universe is, it is of one nature. And I think probably nowadays you’d have to reject both the word matter and the word mind as being adequate, except perhaps sort of symbolically, to describe what, in fact, is this extraordinary stuff that has come into being that we call life.
Vince: Nice. And have you found that there are any other thinkers or practitioners who have maybe a better way of approaching this whole paradox?
Stephen: Well, when I wrote Buddhism Without Beliefs and suggested that one might adopt an agnostic position to rebirth, I was very surprised by the response I got. A lot of people, and this continues 13 years later, continue to write to me and say, “Thank you very much for writing that book; it really speaks to me as a practitioner; it makes Buddhism intelligible to me.” But I got a lot of flak from people who found that even to adopt an agnostic position, in other words, to say, “I really don’t know, maybe there is rebirth, and maybe not.” Even an agnostic position was certainly one step too far.
In other words, there appears, in the Buddhist community, to be a fault line that demarcates two quite different camps. One, of what one might call the conservatives or the traditionalists who can’t quite imagine how you could have Buddhism without the doctrine of rebirth. And another camp, which would include, obviously, people like myself, who I would maybe portray as more liberal, more secular in orientation, who have exactly the opposite problem—mainly, they cannot conceive of a Buddhist practice or at least an intelligible Buddhist practice, having to incorporate what looks to them, but looks to me, like an antiquated, pre-modern belief.
So, I’ve certainly got into trouble with Buddhists who’d reject even agnosticism about rebirth, but I feel that my writing, on the other hand, just opened up the door to Buddhism for many people who were either struggling with it and thinking it wasn’t quite for them or who’d simply been put off by the dogmatism that, unfortunately, one sometimes comes across in Buddhist circles. And they found that my writings somehow gave them permission to think in some other ways without abandoning their commitment to the Dharma, their commitment to the Three Jewels, their commitment to their life as a Buddhist. And I’m glad that’s been something I’ve been able to do.
Vince: Nice, thank you. And kind of connected to this I remember reading in, Buddhism Without Beliefs you actually wrote, quote, “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. For to deny either God or meaning is simply the antithesis of affirming them. It is founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know, and it confronts the enormity of been born instead of reaching for the consolation of belief. It strips away, layer by layer, the views that conceal the mystery of being here—either by affirming it as something or denying it as nothing.”
I found that really interesting, and then also a little confusing when I picked up the title of your newest book and saw that it was a Buddhist Atheist, and I wondered if your position had changed since then from being a Buddhist agnostic or how if it hasn’t your reconciling that with your thinking on atheism as being harmful in your earlier writings?
Stephen: Well that’s a very good quote you singled out there Vince, and this often happens to one as a writer, one gets “hoisted by one’s own petard” I think is the expression. Well you see, although this might seem a bit odd, I don’t actually find that the two positions are in contradiction. I think an agnostic position is a very very healthy one to hold, and I think for myself agnosticism was like finding an enormous breathing space out of the constrictions of doctrine and dogma basically, that I was free now to admit what I didn’t know and to say, “I just don’t know,” without having to lock onto any particular view. And I found that very liberating and I continue to find that liberating, and in certain areas of my practice, particularly meditation and also philosophically. I have to have the humility that, fundamentally, no human being knows the answer to these great questions. I think we need to accept that as a given—that in a way all believers are agnostic. In other words, if I say, “I believe in the existence of God,” that’s not saying that I know that God exists. That, curiously, all belief is agnostic. In other words, we adopt these ideas, and yet we need to have the humility to recognize that although we believe in them, we don’t actually know. Now that, unfortunately, is one of the weaknesses of agnosticism because it is really, when it comes down to it, just a rather honest way of acknowledging the limitations of human knowledge.
So in the new book when I use the word atheist, I am in a way moving beyond an agnostic position. I am saying that, OK, deep down I do not know whether there is, let’s say reincarnation, but to the extent to which I can say anything, to the extent to which we understand, now-a-days, the human body, the nervous system, the brain, the way the organism operates within the context of its environment, the fact that we have such an extraordinary paucity of any hard evidence that people have ever been reborn, let alone live to tell the tale, then I think it’s extremely unlikely that rebirth is going to happen. So unlikely, in fact, that it’s probably quite a good idea just to put that idea just out of circulation all together. In other words to say, “Frankly, I don’t believe there is rebirth.” Notice I’ve used the word believe. I don’t believe—I am not saying I don’t know, but I don’t believe there is rebirth. So when I say I don’t believe there is rebirth that is not actually denying the more basic point of agnosticism, which is I don’t really know whether there is really rebirth or not, but I don’t believe there is. That’s the shift that I have made I suppose.
You see the other problem with agnosticism is that it’s very open-minded, it’s very good for giving a basis for inquiry. But it doesn’t give us much of a basis for making a firm, intellectual commitment or stand on a particular issue. Everything is: Well, I just don’t know. I do think that, although there are many things we do not know, we have sufficient evidence to be able to say, well, I cannot believe this, I cannot believe that. I cannot believe that there is a creator God who exists independently of the universe somehow, who has brought it into being and is guiding it towards its redemption. I cannot believe that there is a little bit in me somewhere that will sneak out of my body when I die and get reborn in another womb. I simply cannot believe those things.
And I feel it’s important if Buddhism is to evolve into a secular tradition that is able to speak to the kind of culture we live in today, that is able to address issues in our human life that extend far beyond the interest of mere Buddhists. I do feel that a lot of this baggage has not just to be suspended but actually really locked away, put aside, and no longer really worried much about at all.
And I suppose recently one of the big gripes I have with the whole rebirth business is that in some ways it prevents us from a wholehearted commitment to addressing the suffering of this world. I find it strange that many Buddhist seem to think that this world, and what happens in the course of this short life is somehow not as significant or as important as the many lifetimes that will follow after this one and lead us eventually to hopefully Buddhahood or nirvana. Because we really just don’t know that. The only thing we know for sure is that there is life on this planet and it suffers. Now if you believe in rebirth, even if there were a nuclear explosion, even if because of our over-industrialization we end up polluting the planet to the point where life is no longer feasible upon it, from a rebirth believer’s point of view, that wouldn’t really matter. Of course such a person, if they were Buddhist, would have great compassion for that suffering, and so forth and so on, but at some level it actually doesn’t matter that much because after death, after the mass extinction of life on Earth, every single being, every single sentient being who dies in that extinction will get reborn according to their karma somewhere else and things will just pickup and carry on as before. Now to me that is a rather a dangerous opt-out clause from our great challenge as human beings to address some of the enormous problems and sufferings that are occurring in our world today and which are very likely to have considerable impact on future generations.
Now the advantage of such a view is that you end up in a win-win situation. If I dedicate my life wholeheartedly and fully to alleviating the suffering of this world with no thought whatsoever of any afterlife, or any reward, then when I do die, and if there is another life, I can think of no better way of having prepared for it. And if there is not another life, then I have done whatever I’ve been humanly possible to do, here and now. And that’s the kind of position I would have now. So it’s both agnostic and atheistic. I don’t think the terms are contradictory .
And if you read the chapter on atheism, I call it ironic atheism. I think the Buddha was not a devout atheist. The Buddha simply did not have any time for the very concept or the language of God, and he dismissed it, really, as just yet another example of how human beings can dream up of all sorts of things, and he put it to one side. So Buddhism is atheistic in the sense that it simply it doesn’t have recourse to God language, but it’s not atheistic in the sense that it has as a central doctrine the denial of God. So as long as we are careful about that and we don’t lapse into the kind of militant atheism which seems to be as much in revolt against God as fundamental believers are enthralled to God, then I think we can be atheist without being militant and that will help us, I hope, to treat the suffering of this world as the only thing of primary importance that the human being living a full conscious life needs to address.
Author Info
This is my first post to Buddhist Geeks, stimulated by my wife Judy saying “You’ve got to reply to this claim of no evidence for reincarnation.” So – while I wish I had the time to deal with many aspects of this idea in depth, I don’t, but here’s a factual note on the evidence for reincarnation….
I agree with about 99% of what Stephen Batchelor said in his June 8, 2010 interview, especially about the psychological effects of believing or not believing in ideas like reincarnation. But when he says, e.g.,
“I am saying that, OK, deep down I do not know whether there is, let’s say reincarnation, but to the extent to which I can say anything, to the extent to which we understand, now-a-days, the human body, the nervous system, the brain, the way the organism operates within the context of its environment, the fact that we have such an extraordinary paucity of any hard evidence that people have ever been reborn, let alone live to tell the tale, then I think it’s extremely unlikely that rebirth is going to happen. So unlikely, in fact, that it’s probably quite a good idea just to put that idea just out of circulation all together. In other words to say, “Frankly, I don’t believe there is rebirth.”
I have to comment that, as a scientist who has spent more than 50 years studying the paranormal, as well as a (not very good) student of Buddhism and other spiritual development systems, belief, even if it fits with mainstream materialist scientistic dogma, is not very important if you’re trying to argue for or against the reality of reincarnation: evidence is what is important.
The details of why I think it is reasonable to be both scientific and spiritually oriented, in spite of scientistic (not scientific, scientistic – a psychological set of dismissive materialism masquerading as science) are available in my recent book “The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together.” Way too briefly, what I show there is that we have firm scientific evidence for five phenomena that are the sort of things we would expect spiritual (let’s let “spiritual” here mean more than conventional material) beings to have – telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing), as well as good evidence for phenomena I call the Many Maybes. By this I mean the evidence does not strike me as strong and coherent enough to say these other phenomena are definitely real, but it is strong enough that it would be foolish to disregard this evidence.
One of those Many Maybes is reincarnation.
The primary evidence I cite is the approximately 4,000 cases in the files at the Division of Personality Studies of the University of Virginia Medical School. These are investigated cases of young children who spontaneously recalled memories of past lives, in sufficient detail that a match could be strongly made with a recently deceased person. Besides my book, an excellent feel for these kind of cases can be gotten from psychiatrist Jim Tucker’s recent book, “Life Before Life.”
Don’t take my word for the strength of the evidence for reincarnation. If the question of its reality is important to you, read the above two books and let them guide you into the more primary technical literature. But please, don’t say there is no evidence: there’s plenty, even if almost no one has read it because it doesn’t fit with current scientistic materialism. I don’t know whether Batchelor has read extensively in it and found good reasons to dismiss it all, or, more likely for “normal” people in our society, simply has never heard of this evidence.
Meanwhile I totally agree that you can gain an enormous amount from Buddhist practice without believing in reincarnation, and/or, of course, you can misuse the idea of reincarnation for negative ends. Agnosticism, admitting you don’t know about the reality of reincarnation, is an excellent position if you haven’t studied the evidence.
Charles T. Tart
HI Charles,
Thanks so much for your reply here. I have a great deal of respect for the work you've done and perhaps it would make sense for us to interview you on this topic, to present some counter-perspectives to what Stephen argued. I'll be in touch about this soon.
Sincerely,
-Vincent
Presumably, Dr. Tart, as one Ph.D. to another, you've considered picking up that cool $1 million from James Randi?
I have a good background in statistics, I could help design the protocols.
What a load of hooey. As has already been implied, if there was clear evidence of any of these alleged phenomena, someone would have claimed Randi's $1,000,000. Claims of such evidence have continually surfaced over the last century and a half, and none of them have ever led anywhere.
Jackdaw, what's your evidence for saying "none of them have ever led anywhere?" Chris Carter details a number of such cases in his book. Have you personally studied, say, Tucker's research, or the parapsychological literature in general, or Chris Carter's accounts of the unfair treatment these researchers often receive at the hands of extreme skeptics? If not, are we to discount all the researchers and subjects as liars and hoaxters, or as having flawed methodologies, without ever actually reviewing their claims–all because they've not collected Randi's million bucks? Aren't there some fairly strong incentives for not giving away $1 million?
Like a final line in an obit that reads: "Randi took that $1 million to his grave"?
Also an excellent position if you have looked at the evidence and don't find it compelling in the least.
Cheers,
John http://www.zendirtzendust.com
The problem involves designing a test (experiment) to falsify the hypothesis, "There is no reincarnation."
But from the "evidence" offered on the 'net, it seems that differentiation from alternative hypothesis (suggestion in hypnosis, confirmation bias on the part of the "researcher", etc.) .
It would be trivial to demonstrate the existence of these as causes to convince a researcher that there are people who claim to be reincarnated, but are instead suggested to believe that or decoys.
So unless these are separated, this continues to be non-falsifiable.
Speaking of the paranormal, read Malcom Gladwell's essay on cold reading, which seems very similar to me in terms of the overall science issues here.
Awesome to see a response from the legendary Dr. Tart here!
I'd love to hear an interview with him! Best of luck in arranging this, Vince!
On the phenomenon of scientism, I'd recommend the book "Parapsychology & The Skeptics" by Chris Carter, which is an interesting look at some of the evidence for what we normally consider to be paranormal phenomena, and the extremely ideological responses to this data by some materialists.
I love science. I was just watching a documentary called "Seeing Black Holes" in which leading physicists described how the phenomenon of the singularity–which is found at the heart of all black holes and was what our universe emerged out of in the Big Bang as well–makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is completely crazy, from the point of view of science–infinities upon infinities.
The singularity essentially forces physicists to tear up all of their assumptions about the universe. There's a lot we don't understand. How the universe could have emerged from absolutely nothing–well, it makes no sense. But it also makes no sense that something–anything–could have always existed, neither created, nor destroyed. Am I a staunch believer in rebirth? No. However, dismissing it because it "doesn't make sense" seems a bit hasty. Do we dismiss all NDEs, all past-life memories, etc., as bunk?
Still, I mostly appreciate Batchelor's points and have great respect for him.
I think it's useful to turn our skepticism in on itself sometimes and to question some of our logical positivist assumptions. There is some evidence out there that points to the fundamental weirdness of things. I enjoy reading the occasional book on these topics and will definitely be reading Dr. Tart's new book!
[L]eading physicists described how the phenomenon of the singularity–which is found at the heart of all black holes and was what our universe emerged out of in the Big Bang as well–makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Well, the math behind it makes sense…
Do we dismiss all NDEs, all past-life memories, etc., as bunk?
As somebody mentioned, NDEs can be induced in the laboratory.
The fact is, everything about ourselves worth observing only involves gravitational laws on a gross scale and the electromagnetic force; there is nothing on the "macro" scale about ourselves that involves the other two forces, except if you're exposed to radiation.
That observation, among others, led to this post on my blog http://mumonno.blogspot.com/2009/03/last-word-on-…
Great interview. Thanks for hooking this up Vince!
unconditioned in buddhism = god (at least in hinduism)
Very nice BG: Stephen Batchelor, Charles Tart, …what's not to like about this post, eh?! Bravo!
Also check out Stephen Batchelor's "Deconstructing Buddhism" talks at http://www.audiodharma.org/series/12/talk/1711/
Anyway, it's like Buddhism trying to work through Western Philosophy: Modernism, Post-modernism, Humanism, etc. Makes my head hurt a bit…
But what *kind* of reincarnation does the evidence point to?
I'm thinking of that hoary old question: if Buddhism is correct and there is no soul, essence or self, then what exactly gets re-born?
The standard reply in Buddhism is that it's not self that is reborn, but karma.
Is the child's ability to recall the memories of a recently deceased person evidence that the child 'was' that person in a former life? Or is it perhaps evidence for telepathy, or perhaps for some kind of Akashic record of human experience?
So, is the evidence to which Dr. Tart refers evidence for reincarnation? I'd certainly agree that it's evidence for something very interesting that cannot be dismissed simply by an appeal to belief. Good stuff!
While it's certainly not clear what sort of reincarnation is suggested by the gathered accounts, or even whether they imply reincarnation, the question of what gets reborn doesn't seem to be too much of a problem once we've accepted karma. After all, if there's no essential self now, what is persisting? The standard answer is that nothing is persisting, really. All of the phenomena that we reify as an essential self are, upon closer inspection, constantly arising and passing away. No self can be found. Since there's no self now, and no self after reincarnation, the question of "what exactly gets re-born" largely reduces to the question of what exactly are we calling the self at present.
The asymmetry between the two accounts arises from the fact that we have causal laws, with strong empirical evidence, for physical phenomena such as molecular biology, while we don't have well established laws for karmic causation. Nor is there a clear route toward collecting evidence to support any give hypothesis (as Duncan rightly suggests in his last two paragraphs). That's a problem for karma, and hence a problem for reincarnation.
So, does karma exist?
I don't think we can expect karma to furnish us with any causal laws, because karma is (pretty much) causality itself. Karma is causality expressed at the human level.
No-self means that everything is a universal process. What we think of as a human life is therefore not separate from this process or from other human lives in the way it is our habit to suppose. Life is a series of effects and our consciousness of those effects is actually included among the effects, rather than somehow standing outside them.
For my part, I'd say I'm hesitant to ditch reincarnation because this view seems the logical corollary to the fact of no-self: there is no self to witness the fruits of our acts, but only the act of our witnessing them.
This is all very murky and difficult, but perhaps we can't ditch reincarnation without ditching a more accurate and inclusive view of what life without a self really means. This may be what the kind of evidence that Dr. Tart has highlighted is pointing to: karma persists, but it doesn't belong to a self.
"Is the child's ability to recall the memories of a recently deceased person evidence that the child 'was' that person in a former life? Or is it perhaps evidence for telepathy, or perhaps for some kind of Akashic record of human experience? "
If you're interested enough, you might consider reading Jim Tucker's full description of this research. Here's the link: http://tiny.cc/1ckfo
In the book, Dr. Tucker considers such alternate possibilities very carefully. I was surprised, actually, at how hard he and the other researchers appear to have worked to debunk these claims and/or find alternative explanations. The research was interesting and baffling enough that a reporter from the Washington Post–not exactly a bastion of New Age thought–wrote his own book about it.
Very often, hardcore materialists, when presented with this kind of evidence, will resort to the assertion that the researchers and/or the subjects must all be liars. For instance, when a cardiologist recounted how a patient who had had an out-of-body experience was able to provide a detailed visual account of stuff that happened in the operating room, supposedly while this person was "floating" above the bed, Carl Sagan just dismissed the man as a liar. A couple of years ago, I saw a CBS reporter on Charlie Rose. He was talking about how, after his Humvee had been hit by an IED and he had sustained a terrible head injury, he had been stunned to find himself floating above the truck and seeing everything below him in crisp, vivid detail. There are dozens if not hundreds of such accounts on record, some of which are incredibly compelling. Are all these people liars? Can we really be so sure NDEs are just a neurological phenomenon or some kind of product of the imagination?
IF Jim Tucker and all of the people he has interviewed over the decades from a wide variety of countries, some of which have no belief in rebirth at all, are NOT just a bunch of liars, then this research is at the least … interesting.
On the one hand, I agree with Batchelor–good luck to those looking for ironclad evidence that gives them total surety for a 1-or-0 answer to any of the primary imponderables. All of the time we spend worrying about these things could be wasted–it's time we could have been practicing and looking into our own suffering, right? We have a lot of compelling accounts about ghosts, UFOs, etc. You could spend all your time looking into this stuff.
On the other hand, if we don't turn our skepticism in on itself and question some of the assertions of reductive materialism, future generations might end up throwing out the wisdom traditions altogether. Today, most scientists would scoff at concepts like chi or prana, the Four Path model of awakening, shaktipat, jhanas–one could go on and on. Where does it end?
@"On the other hand, if we don't turn our skepticism in on itself and question some of the assertions of reductive materialism, future generations might end up throwing out the wisdom traditions altogether. Today, most scientists would scoff at concepts like chi or prana, the Four Path model of awakening, shaktipat, jhanas–one could go on and on. Where does it end?"
"Reductive materialism" is just as irrelevant to Buddhist agnosticism as superstitions of reincarnation-and-karma". The Buddha's Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path are just as valid without metaphysical beliefs as with — probably more valid, actually. Chi? Where did the Buddha teach "chi"? This is simply a "slippery slope" fallacy, with no grounding either in the Buddha's iberative teachings or in reality.
@ Dr. Tart — you are right that Stephen should not claim "there is no evidence," however that does not contradict his point that a focus on literal reincarnation at worst interferes with Buddhist practice, and distracts from dealing with suffering here and now. So we can postulate and navel gaze about these "Many Maybes", but does it help our practice?
@ Duncan – your statement about reincarnation being simply karma's lingering effect on the world is the way I have always understood rebirth, and this is exactly what Mr. Batchelor is getting at. The kind of fervent emphasis on literal reincarnation espoused in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (see the film The Unmistaken Child for an example http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286798/ ) strikes me as completely contradictory to the concept of no-self and the crucial acceptance of impermanence. This isn't a practical, pragmatic approach to reality, this isn't The Middle Way.
Will I be reborn as a goat or a king? Perhaps, but right now that guy on the street corner is still hungry…
Vince, thanks for another great podcast.
I thought Dr. Batchelor said not that we shouldn't look for evidence, but (worse than that) that we shouldn't even look – period. Unless what we're looking at has to do with easing suffering.
Having now listened to the podcast in full, to be honest I disliked this view of Buddhism. For instance: 'I honestly don’t think the Buddha was interested in the nature of reality.' I mean – WTF?! If Buddhism is not concerned with the nature of reality then why do we meditate?
On the question of God, if we directly realise the truth of no-self then what the hell else do we suppose is left in the universe apart from God?!
Granted, it may not be helpful to call it 'God', because that makes it a 'thing' or imputes a self to it, which contradicts its nature (and hence Buddhism's inclination to ditch the term, I suspect). But, speaking personally, it was the encounter with Buddhism that enabled me to see how the experience of something we might call 'God' is not a matter of belief at all, but of direct experience.
@"For instance: 'I honestly don’t think the Buddha was interested in the nature of reality.' I mean – WTF?! If Buddhism is not concerned with the nature of reality then why do we meditate? "
Because the Buddha's teachings are concerned with the nature of *suffering*.
I was reminded of these comments by Kenneth Folk:
"…even conservative Theravada Buddhism can be reconciled with the understanding of Absolute Awareness if we consider the possibility that Nibbana and Awareness are one and the same. For example, there is this wonderful Buddha-quote nugget from the Pali Canon (Ud 8.3):
"There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, uncompounded. If there were not this unborn, unbecome, unmade, uncompounded, then there would be no deliverance here visible from that which is born, become, made, compounded. But since there is this unborn, unbecome, unmade, uncompounded, therefore deliverance is visible from that which is born, become, made, compounded."
Is the Buddha talking about Awareness? Hmmm. There is a discussion…"
(Say, what is the singularity at the center of the Milky Way/black holes/our universe?) Wait–that's a big can of worms!
Batchelor would probably dismiss this passage as something added later by people who were intent on harmonizing Buddhism with prevailing Indian philosophical thought. That might be the case. If it's not the case, it's a good example of how the Buddha did concern himself to some extent with "the nature of reality."
Batchelor points to a way of being that transcends thought/concept/belief. That is the essence of Buddhism, after all.
Sometimes, though, he seems to be remaking Buddhism in the image of scientific materialism. That's going to go over well with a lot of us, because it makes Buddhism more comfortable. But what if he's getting a lot of this wrong? In his IMC talks, for example, he cited the suttas to basically assert that Stream Entry is not a yogic attainment, but merely the act of getting in sync with the Eightfold Path. There's a huge living tradition, in Burma and elsewhere, that would contradict this and say, 'No. Stream Entry is a yogic attainment–a specific stage of the path." Relying on what makes the most rational sense and best comports with a scientific view of things might not always be the most accurate approach.
@"Sometimes, though, he seems to be remaking Buddhism in the image of scientific materialism. "
"Scientific materialism" is just as irrelevant to the Buddha's liberative teachings as superstition.
I appreciate Bachelor's attention to detail in regards to the facets of the Buddha's teaching (at least that of the Pali canon) that appear to be totally unique from the going spiritual traditions in India during the Buddha's life. This is an important thing to do in any type of in-depth scholarship.
What I don't like about his approach is that he seems to be attempting to shed all of the Buddha's cultural influences, as if the Buddha could have fully escaped them in his day. This is the same kind of scholarship that figures like John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg apply to the teachings of Jesus in the Christian New Testament. They more or less deny that Jesus would have said anything that anyone else would have said before, and thus only consider a small handful of sayings and teachings in the NT as possibly coming from him.
In essence, a severe consequence (however unintended) of this brand of exegetical scholarship reduces the historical figure into a sort of talking head. Rather than stripping the teachings of the Buddha, or even Jesus for that matter, from any teachings that resemble other teachings that were around in their time, we should at least take into account the fact that many of these redundancies may have been important to their overall message. However, once we feel that we have a good handle on the teachings of any important figure from any given text (as the message may change from text to text, as we see in both the Buddhist and Christian literature), we can freely choose to accept or reject those teachings based on whichever information we find to be more valid. We need not shave off the unsightly aspects of a tradition as if they were never there in order to value certain aspects of the tradition. We can acknowledge the whole catastrophe and allow wisdom to shine light on any aspects that need revision in today's evolving world.
“If Buddhism is not concerned with the nature of reality then why do we meditate?”
To cultivate a mode of experience that is preferable to the one we have without meditating.
Such a mode of experience might include e.g. the felt sense of having understood the nature of reality. But in the end, what is valuable about that in the context of a human life is the nature of the experience of coming to that understanding, not something about the actual veracity of that understanding (if indeed it is meaningful to talk about veracity; perhaps it is more akin to an arbitrary perspective than a definite claim with a well-defined condition for being true or false).
Doesn’t matter what you believe about how you came to be struck by the arrow, just matters that you get it out. For some, perhaps that arrow has something to do with wanting to understand the nature of reality. Doesn’t matter what they come to understand as long as it makes for a better life.
That approach doesn't cut it for me, because it can't specify what 'getting out the arrow' actually is. If 'understanding the nature of reality' is really 'the felt sense of understanding the nature of reality', then surely 'getting out the arrow' is just 'the felt sense of getting out the arrow', in which case this view doesn't lead anywhere.
If we are uncomfortable about asserting that something is 'true' then we have nothing to argue about, and no basis on which to argue it. This is not a Buddhist position, in my view, but nihilist. You don't need Buddhism in order to lead a 'better' life. There are lots of ways to do that. But you do need Buddhism to arrive at certain truths concerning the nature of reality.
Every good argument has a good skeptical counterpoint. In this thread we see materialists giving non-materialist Buddhists the skeptical eye, and the non-materialist Buddhists giving a skeptical eye in return. Is one going to convince the other? If not, to what do we appeal to arbitrate the difference? Even if there can be no such arbitration, does it matter?
The very notion of “truth” itself may change depending on the person and context. Are we sure that it makes sense to talk about metaphysical truths in the same way we talk about mundane everyday truths or scientific truths or mathematical truths? Are we sure that everyone is on the same page, and if not, are we sure we can arrive at such a necessary consensus to begin with? Or is it going to boil down to more drawing lines in the sand?
This is not to assert that there is no such meaningful thing as “truth” or that one cannot meaningfully assert something to be true. It’s more to point out the almost infinite complexities of all this, which we could chase forever and still get nowhere.
One could put forth a good argument that even on a thorough-going agnosticism, one could meaningfully say what ‘getting out the arrow’ is. One could also put forth a good argument that even rejecting a thorough-going agnosticism, one cannot meaningfully say what ‘getting out the arrow’ is. If one disagrees with that, perhaps one is just not applying sufficient inquiry into the view they currently hold. How does one know when they have arrived at the point of sufficient inquiry to justify their view?
We don’t need to bother with all this tangled mess. The worldview which one constructs to interpret the results of contemplative practice is irrelevant; what matters is just the results of contemplative practice.
But the problem with this view is precisely that it doesn't lead to any results if, as you are claiming, the results of contemplative practice are necessarily an interpretation. All that this view therefore leads to is interpretation, interpretation…
Again: this is not Buddhism. It's postmodernist nihilism. Was the Buddha's enlightenment 'an interpretation' of an experience and not the actual experience of truth?
'Getting out the arrow' is enlightenment – i.e. the experience of absolute truth, reality as it is. This is what the Buddha told us to aim at through our practice. I don't recall anything about 'interpreting' experience. That would be so incredibly dull!
I think there’s a middle way between “everything is interpretation” and “experience is truth”. I would say there is experience, and then there is interpretation of experience. The same experience can be interpreted many ways, but this does not make the nature of the experience itself arbitrary or worthless. The ultimate value is in the lived experience itself, which is orthogonal to the epistemological status (true/false/arbitrary) of one’s beliefs about it.
But ultimately that’s another superfluous conceptual issue and it doesn’t matter if we agree or disagree on that. What matters is that we agree that there is a way of being called “enlightenment” and that it is very valuable and worth attaining/realizing/whatever. The rest will take care of itself.
I have to wonder about this notion that the Buddha was trying to get at "the nature of reality". That is simply irrelevant to his own stated goal, which was to get at the cause of suffering, and how to extinguish it. "Nature of reality" is simply irrelevant to this.
@ Brian – good use of the arrow parable… I guess you could say Mr. Batchelor is a wound-healer.
It's hard to argue with that, Brian. And yet, and yet… is there no Truth to be discovered? Is it not the Truth which sets us free?
Somehow I don't think it's all about simple diagnostics in regards to suffering. There's more to it than that.
@"
Somehow I don't think it's all about simple diagnostics in regards to suffering. "
You severely underestimate the importance of this matter. The Buddha himself said that this was what it was all about. It's as simple as that. Along the way we encounter a magnificent, unshakable ethics of reciprocity and a clear and effective prescription for how to conduct one's life.
The Buddha wasn't looking to answer "what is 'Truth'". He was looking to answer "how does suffering come about, and how to stop it?"
“And I feel it’s important if Buddhism is to evolve into a secular tradition that is able to speak to the kind of culture we live in today, that is able to address issues in our human life that extend far beyond the interest of mere Buddhists.”
Why is becoming a secular tradition important? How is a secular tradition defined? And what must Buddhism get and/or lose to become a secular tradition?
clyde
p.s: Stephen, thank you for your teachings and writings. I am one of those who has benefited from your efforts.
And Vince, thank you.
@"Why is becoming a secular tradition important? How is a secular tradition defined? And what must Buddhism get and/or lose to become a secular tradition?"
The modern world, and in particular the Western world, is largely secular. Old superstitions are dying out, and as we come to see and know more and more about the world, the effectiveness of superstition in holding together ethical systems has diminished greatly and is headed for extinction. The nice part about the Buddha's own, liberative teachings is that they are already secular and not based in superstition, and thus are up to the challenge of addressing the problems of life just as well now as they were 2500 years ago.
"…you do need Buddhism to arrive at certain truths concerning the nature of reality." Yes.
And of course, the two (living a better life with less suffering, and an understanding of the nature of reality) are related.
Gil Fronsdal talks about looking at whatever it is that takes us away from our sense of ease. Investigating WHY things take us away from our sense of ease yields insight into the Three Characteristics. Insight into the Three Characteristics illuminates the fact of, cause of and potential for release from our suffering. It simultaneously reveals something about the nature of reality. Some might say it only reveals something about the nature of the reality of being an embodied human mind-body, rather than something ultimately cosmological. Fair enough–but it's still getting at the Truth of being human and of the inconstancy, emptiness and unsatisfactoriness of phenomena.
Two questions for Stephen Batchelor:
1) how do you think you know what Gautama Siddhartha's actual teachings were, given that the oldest Buddhist manuscripts date from around half a millennium after his death?
2) Why does it matter anyway? Something is true or false, useful or not, regardless of whether a particular individual said it.
Hi all,
I wanted to let you know that we'll be closing down the comments for this post at the end of today (Thursday, June 10th). Though this is a very interesting and relevant discussion, to ensure that it doesn't degrade into an online battle (as so many comment threads do with topics this volatile) we felt it important to give this debate a limited time-frame.
Feel free, however, to continue this debate and dialogue on your own blogs, by submitting an article to the BGeeks magazine, or in other ways. It's a really interesting and clearly hot topic.
Sincerely,
-Vincent Horn
Yeah, I'd add that it would be great if we could all just control our exasperation…then the thread could stay open!
It would be nice to see if this otherwise amazing online community could somehow short-circuit Godwin's Law. Hehe…
But maybe we're not ready for that yet.
We've decided to get the comments open on this one, so long as the discussion doesn't start degrading. If it does, we may simply delete comments that are over-the-top. Sorry for the heavy moderation, but we just don't want this very charged topic to move from an interesting and useful debate to an ugly name-calling situation. I thank everyone for their insights and on-going participation!
I appreciate Batchelor's work for the most part, and I am particularly glad that he is backing away from his somewhat disingenuous claim to agnosticism and coming out of the closet as a materialist.
Bhikkhu Punnadhammo put it best (and Batchelor, to his credit, put it on his website):
http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/punnadhammo.htm
Batchelor writes: It is odd that a practice concerned with anguish and the ending of anguish should be obliged to accept ancient Indian metaphysical theories and thus accept as an article of faith that consciousness cannot be explained in terms of brain function.
Punnadhammo responds: Odder indeed to many traditional Buddhists is the article of faith of modernists that it can be. Let's be clear about this. Consciousness has not at all been explained "in terms of brain function" by modern science or by anyone else. It is entirely a metaphysical assumption that it ever
can be, an act of faith of the most credulous sort that Mr. Batchelor should be the first to denounce. There is not a shred of a proof of this claim anywhere, only a pious belief in some quarters that such a proof will shortly be forthcoming.
Even odder is that when there is a conflict between two metaphysical assumptions, a Buddhist writer should be so ready to give the benefit of the doubt to the unbuddhist one.
I'd like to recommend that people read the book Exploring Karma & Rebirth by Nagapriya. It gives a very detailed and balanced analysis of the questions around these issues.
I really appreciate this interview, as well as all of the great comments on it. Thanks so much. Questions of reincarnation aside, I also appreciated Batchelor's discussion of the historical Buddha in Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. I have never felt comfortable with the mythic biography of the Buddha. placing the Buddha in historical and social, and even class context, does so much to bring him and his life closer to me, to my understanding of his teachings as a very human and grounded experience.
JV
Vince, thanks for having Stephen Batchelor on BG! It is always nice to hear someone talk about Buddha and Buddhism from a rational perspective that's actually coherent. I was born into a Buddhist/Hindu family in India but could never find myself to believe in many of the metaphysical trappings/doctrines of the religion. I rediscovered Buddhism only in the West and that too after a prolonged immersion in the western rational (analytic) tradition. Had I come across Batchelor's talks even earlier, such a rediscovery would surely have been expedited! What I find astounding and hard to believe is the fact that so many Westerners seem to be so heavily invested in the doctrine of reincarnation that without it Buddhism, to them, seems almost inconceivable! The theory of Karma in conjunction with the doctrine of reincarnation and that of no-self, in the past, created so many metaphysical problems that a good part of the Madhyamaka tradition spent considerable effort in reconciling all three of those tenets, only to create even bigger metaphysical problems. Many people evidently, due to a clear lack of an understanding of the historical development of various Buddhist ideas, seem unable to appreciate what Batchelor is really trying to communicate. Seems like all practice and no historical understanding skews the mind as much as all knowledge and very little practice does!
Unless one is truly agnostic–and Batchelor seems to be backing away from such claims in this interview–one is always committed to a metaphysics of one sort or another, materialist or otherwise, and inconsistencies are inevitable.
I agree that historical understanding is helpful, but Batchelor is not a scholar in either the traditional or the contemporary sense. His conclusions about what is and isn't supposedly central to the Buddhist teachings are at variance with those of virtually all academics who do have the philological skills and historical understanding with which to approach the subject.
Since Vince will be locking this thread tonight, I am not sure if we can have an extended debate on this one. Nevertheless, I must point out some of the misrepresentations that a few people seem to be harboring about Batchelor's "thesis." In fact, Batchelor is offering us two variants of his thesis. The strong version, if you will, basically states that the theory of reincarnation – and let us be clear that no one has any clue whatsoever on what a theory of reincarnation is supposed to incorporate except that some out-of-body experiences and apparent recollection of past lives are offered as support – is not consistent with the doctrine of no-self; the former contradicts the latter! The milder version of Batchelor's thesis states that one can talk meaningfully about and practice Buddhism without taking recourse to the theory of reincarnation, which merely, plays a secondary and supporting role to the theory of karma. Such a position has several obvious practical (and metaphysical) benefits that I won't go into, for Batchelor does a good job of explicating them. I, for one, think that it is possible to practice Buddhism while believing in reincarnation, but it just isn't healthy metaphysics. When we can get rid of "clutter", why not do it? Occam's Razor, anyone?
Anyway, what contemporary academics think are the central teachings of Buddhism is not germane to this debate. What's important is how all the supposed central teachings cohere with each other. In other words, appeal to "authority" is not what we would like to inject into this debate. Rather, we must weigh all the arguments on our own using the best possible science we have today.
Batchelor has framed this debate, by the way, in a manner that's based on the Pali Canon. Of course, many people are not happy with his interpretations – and the Pali Canon, experts agree, is known to contain stuff that's clearly post-Buddha – but does anyone doubt that his source is the Pali Canon? I would like to know.
Well, what contemporary academics think about what the Buddha did or didn't consider important is germane to debate to the extent that Batchelor makes claims in this area. Which he does over and over. I think that is a big part of the issue — it would be one thing if Batchelor was simply saying, "I relate to this aspect of Buddhism and not to this aspect." Who could argue with that? But he takes it a step further and insists that the aspects that he likes are actually what the Buddha meant to teach, and everything else is a later corruption. That's a philosophical and philological leap that he really isn't qualified to take.
Liberation from an endless cycle of rebirth isn't "clutter," it's the whole point of Buddhism. If everyone is utterly annihilated at death, why would anyone even bother with any of this? To achieve a modest reduction in suffering during the short interval before obliteration? Why bother?
Batchelor is trying to "extract" the Dharma out of the Religion called Buddhism. If Buddhism is to develop and make progress in the modern world, then it can't do so with many of the eastern cultural trappings. Already, from what I can see, western Buddhism in all its forms is very different from the eastern forms. A minor example: if I were in India, then I would be expected to offer my obeisance in front of some big Buddhist meditation master. In the US, if I met Jack Kornfield, I would probably just shake his hands and say hello!
You are being unfair to Batchelor when you say that he "insists that the aspects that he likes are actually what the Buddha meant to teach, and everything else is a later corruption." If this debate was about what someone liked or not, it would be utterly pointless. This debate is about thoroughly examining the so called "central teachings of Buddhism" (to borrow your words) and finding if they really cohere, if they are really consistent. I hardly see Batchelor making any philosophical leap.
If everyone is utterly annihilated at death, why would anyone even bother with any of this? To achieve a modest reduction in suffering during the short interval before obliteration? Why bother?
It is not my place to tell anyone what the Buddha taught. You are well-versed in the teachings. But, the above notion regarding annihilation is what the Buddha repeatedly taught to guard oneself against. If one is not very careful, then one is just one step away from advocating eternalism, the second view that the Buddha repeatedly tells us to guard against. If you examine the quote even more carefully, you will see how eerily it is similar to many Christians (not all) who say things like, "If there is no God, then what is the point of or basis to morality?" To them, the good life is inconceivable without a being called God. In your case, the "being" is somewhat more abstract: without Rebirth, why would anyone care to practice Buddhism and live the good life? To me, the question is, why not? Batchelor offers enough good reasons for how and why one could practice Buddhism in this very life. Really, there is no need to fall into the annihilation/eternalism trap.
I have no objection to someone extracting the aspects of Buddhism that he or she likes/resonates with/thinks cohere, however you want to put it. The problem starts when they attempt to position that extraction as "what the Buddha really taught" or meant intended to teach. That is a whole other kettle of fish.
Lots of people advocate "extracting the Dharma out of the Religion of Buddhism" or the "cultural trappings." There is very little agreement which part is "the Dharma" and which part is the the cultural trappings.
Personally, I believe Batchelor has fallen into the annihilationist trap, but if his Pascal's Wager approach to Buddhism works for him that's fine with me.
It is pretty evident what the Dharma is: The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path! By the way, Batchelor's interpretation of the Four Noble Truths might rile you up: Craving is the effect of suffering, not its cause. Take that, traditional dogma!
Anyway, I hope all this is not causing any misgiving between you and me. I understand that you genuinely care about the Dharma and how it is interpreted and that you would not like to see it sullied in any form. That in itself is an extremely admirable attitude. Handshake?
No misgivings at all!
And while it is easy to say the Dharma is the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, one of the eight of the eightfold path is Right View. In a number of places in the early canon the Buddha explicitly defines Wrong View as not believing in Karma and Rebirth.
Further, if we're going to reinterpret the meaning of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in ways that radical alter the meaning, then we are no closer to any consensus on what "the Dharma" actually is.
secular minded people should develop their own tradition, rather than trying to take over buddhism to their "agenda".
sorry to be blunt. but buddhism is a welcoming religion and it has been hijacked many times in its history by people with agendas.
but buddhism is a welcoming religion
It seems like you have a rosy view of the Religion ( I am not talking about the Dharma) called Buddhism. Are you not aware of what Buddhists can do with the Religion? Are you not aware that they can use that very religion to justify just about anything including killing? Just examine the history of some Asian Buddhist countries a little closely to know what I mean.
Historically "Buddhist Atheism" makes no sense just like "Buddhist Theism" makes little sense. However, Buddhism has indeed developed a spectrum of practices and interpretations, and some (especially in Vajrayana) have remarkable similarities with deep monotheistic views, while others (especially in Theravada) have a nontheistic bend (still, atheism seems an extreme position nonetheless). See Alan Wallace "Is Buddhism Really Nontheistic"
And also the chapter "Buddhist Nontheism, Polytheism, and Monotheism" from his book "Contemplative science: where Buddhism and neuroscience converge" (available for reading at Google books)
It is always amazing to see such passionate debates about………. Scholarly this, studied that, debunked when, you are right and I am right and Buddha did care and Buddha didn't care, and he believes, and I believe, and you believe, and she doesn't believe, he is offended and he is offensive, because the evidence points to…. sigh. Is anyone else exhausted from all this "thinking" and "believing"?
It's so cool to have Charles Tart commenting on Stephen Batchelor's ideas about Karma & Reincarnation.
If Mr. Tart is still looking at this blog, I would love to hear more from him about his own Buddhist practice and what it has done for how he understands meaning and purpose within the universe. If he suddenly discovered that ghosts and other paranormal phenomena were not true, how would that change his approach to meditation practice and overall buddhist teachings .
What so many Buddhist fail to grasp is that not only did the Buddha *allow* for agnosticism (for example, the Four Solaces), his own liberative teachings are not connected with superstitions or speculative views (i.e., reincarnation-and-karma) at all. We can see a clear example of this in the Maha Cattarisaka Sutta, MN 117, in which the Buddha delineated various superstitions which he felt would lead one toward ethical behavior (his reasons expanded upon in MN 60), and called them "right view *with defilements*" (sammaditthi sasava). His own liberative teachings he called "Noble Right View that is without defilements, world-transcending (referencing the idea of "loka", a phenomenological description of our perception of the world through the senses and our tendency to cling to same), a Factor of the Path".
Of course, the various superstitions the Buddha outlines here include those of reincarnation and karma, and are rooted in self-view and in speculative view and ignorance and desire for sensuality, status and ownership: that is what "asava" means in the Buddha's teachings.
The Buddha's own liberative teachings, however, the ones he called "Noble", are rooted in discernment and in empirical, rational observation of what one can see and know for oneself: the Four Noble Truths that say "there is suffering and there is a way to end suffering", the Noble Eightfold Path, and their associated teachings: Dependent Co-Arising as the Buddha taught it, in the here-and-now (an expanded explanation of the Second and Third Noble Truths), the three Characteristics, et cetera. None of these teachings are in need of a metaphysics or cosmology or ontology; they stand up just fine on their own without them. Coupled with the Buddha's ethics of reciprocity as exemplified in the oft-neglected Veludvareyya Sutta, for example, the Buddha's own liberative teachings form a very strong religion without any recourse at all to superstition.
It takes quite a set of blinkers to claim that the Copernican Revolution that is happening in Buddhism today is somehow "detrimental to Buddhism", or that it is some kind of "modernist" or "materialistic" phenomenon; the Buddha's own liberative teachings were already happily devoid of the superstitions that so-called "traditionalists" cling to — including reincarnation-and-scorekeeper-karma — from the very start.