Batchelor - Buddhism without Beliefs

The clarity and beauty of his presentation make Stephen Batchelors book a resource for people at any stage of spiritual life. This book is clearly the fruit of a rigorous and dedicated effort to make the truths of Buddhism workable. Batchelor, and the Buddha, will help you dust off the diamond of your own mind.

Kate Wheeler, author of Not Where I Started From

Concise... Batchelor makes several controversial, but thoughtfully argued, points central to his existential, therapeutic and agnostic interpretation of Buddhism: that Buddhism is not strictly a religion, since it does not adhere to a belief in God; that the Buddha did not consider himself a mystic or savior, but a healer; and that Buddhism is less a belief system than a personal course of action that naturally instills morality, compassion, and inner peace in the practitioner.

Publishers Weekly

Also by Stephen Batchelor

Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism

The Faith to Doubt: Glimpses of Buddhist Uncertainty

The Tibet Guide: Central and Western Tibet

The Awakening of the West:
The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture

Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime

TRANSLATIONS

A Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life (Shantideva)

Echoes of Voidness (Geshe Rabten)

Song of the Profound View (Geshe Rabten)

The Mind and Its Functions (Geshe Rabten)

BUDDHISM
WITHOUT
BELIEFS

A Contemporary Guide
to Awakening

STEPHEN BATCHELOR

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Some of the material in the chapters Rebirth and Imagination has appeared in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Copyright 1997 by The Buddhist Ray, Inc., and Stephen Batchelor
Cover design 1997 by Tom McKeveny

Cover painting: Gloria Ortiz Hernndez, Crossing Aided by a Pillar of Light, 1996 (detail). Courtesy Lowe Gallery, Atlanta.

Book design by Chris Welch

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Riverhead hardcover edition: April 1997

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: March 1998

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

Batchelor, Stephen.

Buddhism without beliefs: a contemporary guide to awakening / Stephen Batchelor.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66307-3

1. BuddhismDoctrinesIntroductions. I. Title.

BQ4132.B37 1997 96-44402 CIP

294.34dc21

In memory of
Osbert Moore (amoli Thera) 19051960
and Harold Musson (avra Thera) 19201965

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, What is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, Empty, without holiness. The emperor said, Who is facing me? Bodhidharma replied, I dont know.

The Blue Cliff Record

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

Marcel Proust

I HAVE TRIED to write a book on Buddhism in ordinary English that avoids the use of foreign words, technical terms, lists, and jargon. The one exception is the term dharma, for which I can find no English equivalent.

Broadly speaking, dharma refers to the teachings of the Buddha as well as to those aspects of reality and experience with which his teachings are concerned. Dharma practice refers to the way of life undertaken by someone who is inspired by such teachings.

I am grateful to Helen Tworkov and Lorraine Kisly, who persuaded me to write this book, and for Lorraines editorial guidance, which kept the aim of the task in focus and reined in my tendency to digress. I am likewise grateful to Mary South of Riverhead for her final editing of the manuscript. Thanks also to the Sharpham Trust, Devon, England, and the Buddhist Retreat Centre, Ixopo, South Africa, which provided beautiful rural settings in which to work on the text; and to my wife, Martine, who supplied unwavering support throughout.

Stephen Batchelor
Sharpham College
September 1996

Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone elses ability or with the thought The monk is our teacher. When you know in yourselves: These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness, then you should practice and abide in them....

The Buddha

Kalama Sutta

As long as my vision was not fully clear... regarding four ennobling truths, I did not claim to have realized authentic awakening....

The Buddha

L ETS GO BACK to the beginning: to the awakening of Siddhartha Gautama, aka the Tathagata, Shakyamuni, the World Honored Onethe Buddha himself. He was the one who set the wheel of dharma spinning in the first place. He was the one who pointed out the central path (the famous Middle Way). He was the trailblazer. His are the footprints we will find at the end of the track.