PODCASTThe Greater Good Podcast

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Today’s Guests:

STEPHEN BATCHELOR is a British author, teacher, and scholar, writing books and articles on Buddhist topics and leading meditation retreats throughout the world. He is a noted proponent of agnostic or secular Buddhism.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN is the host of "The Greater Good Podcast."

Transcription:

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Welcome to The Greater Good Podcast. I'm Michael Berg Eisen. Our guest today is Steven Bachelor, a leading author and teacher about Buddhism, born and raised in England. Bachelor was a Buddhist monk in India and South Korea in the 1970s and eighties. He decided to give up his monks robes in the mid 1980s, but he has continued to teach and write about Buddhism as well as broad issues of philosophy, psychology, history, and science with great elegance and power.

Among his several books about Buddhist ideas and practices is his seminal national bestseller, Buddhism Without Beliefs. He now lives in Aquita, France. Stephen, welcome to the Greater Good Podcast. 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Thank you. I'm very glad to be here. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Stephen, your new book is entitled, confession of a Buddhist Atheist. What are the core beliefs of a Buddhist atheist?

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, obviously as an atheist, a core belief is that one does not assume the existence of anything corresponding to a deity. In other words, that there exists some transcendent power or force, uh, whether you call it consciousness or whether you call it energy, or whether you call it, whether you think of it as some kind of purse.

That is somehow at the source of what we know as the universe that in some strange way directed and perhaps lead is leading it to some sort of fulfillment through, through its redemptive power. So a Buddhist atheist would be a Buddhist who, who issues any. Assumption that there is some sort of transcendent, uh, entity of that nature.

And this, of course, in some ways is not saying anything terribly remarkable because clearly the Buddha never spoke of any such thing. The Buddha therefore was atheist, and his atheism, however, was simply an absence or a lack of any need to speak in terms of a deity. He's not an atheist and nor am I an atheist who has a particular ax to grind with God.

I'm not an atheist in that. I have some objection. Or some, uh, dislike of that way of thinking. It's simply that I see no use or value of entertaining such notions. I feel that I can articulate what I believe to be at the heart of my quest for meaning, uh, as a human being without recourse to any such ideas.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: I wanted to ask you about a particular development, uh, in Buddhism's recent history, and that is that there's been a lot of interchange in the last 10 years or so between Buddhism, including, uh, the Dalai Lama and science. A lot of exchange between the two. And do you have any reactions to that, that development?

Do you think it's it's positive or negative? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, I feel that every time Buddhism has found itself in a new historical or cultural, uh, situation, for example, when it went to China about 600 years after the Buddha, and then when it subsequently went to Tibet and to Japan in each case, in order to, uh, establish itself as a viable philosophy.

It needed to inter, it needed to engage with the discourses and the interests and the needs of those new host cultures. So the dialogues that have emerged, um, in recent years with, uh, the natural sciences. And also, of course, we shouldn't forget the much longer dialogue that's been going on with psychology and psychotherapy.

That these are simply the ways in which, um, Buddhism is finding its way in a sense, or coming to terms with a new host environment. Now in terms of the natural sciences, I think what is perhaps remarkable about Buddhism is that there really is no room for dissent or disagreement between the Buddhist, the Buddhist own, uh, emphasis on, uh, on the pheno, on on, on the phenomenal world.

The Buddha does not concern himself, as we just said, with some transcendent ultimate reality called God, but lays the entirety of his attention upon a clearer understanding and engagement with the phenomenal world. The. Now what the natural sciences, um, enable us to do is have a much clearer, a much more precise understanding of what in fact that phenomenal world is.

So the sorts of investigations that are characteristic of the sciences, namely the hy making hypotheses, and then testing hypotheses and being able to repeat those tests over time. Arriving, therefore at a, a better empirical understanding of the May Asia of our world and our bodies, and perhaps ultimately also our brains.

And our consciousness is very much in tune with how the Buddha presented his approach, which likewise was one of paying close attention to the phenomenal world made on one's breath, one's body, one's feelings, one's mind, what you see here, smell, taste, touch, uh, and that therefore. Points to a common starting ground with a tradition that is usually considered to be contemplative or let's say based on first person experience, as opposed to a tradition that of the natural sciences, which, um, seeks, uh, equivalent kinds of empirical understanding, but through, uh, very different methodologies.

I suppose, um, my, if I have any concerns about this dialogue is that I'm not, uh, entirely sure of what the Buddhists are trying to get out of it. I don't really know what the agenda is of the Dalai Lama and his followers. Uh, many of those involved in this dialogue and I've not been, um, included in this, um, are I think quite traditional Buddhists with certain views and understandings say of the nature of mind that might be rather difficult to align with the findings of modern sites.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Over the last 10 or 15 years, we've seen one significant aspect of Buddhism that is mindfulness meditation practice, move outside of the monastery and the meditation hall to other contexts, uh, such as prisons and hospitals. Uh, and one example that comes to mind that's particularly prominent is John Cabot zinn's mindfulness based stress reduction techniques.

Uh, do you have any reaction to that development? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: I am very much in favor of all of this. Um, mindfulness is not an exclusive preserve of Buddhists anymore than suffering is, and anything that can be used from the Buddhist tradition that helps alleviate suffering is clearly something that should be done.

And, um, I am, I'm very, very glad that I also feel a certain sort of satisfaction that ideas and practices that I was pursuing 30 or 40 years ago, which were then considered to be extremely marginal and odd, and now finding their way into an acceptance by mainstream culture. And that to me is very affirmative of much of what I've spent my last or most of my adult life doing.

So I'm very positive about that. Um, I don't have the concern that some of my friends may have that Buddhism is going to be somehow asset stripped, that mindfulness will be lifted out. And then, um, as it were commodified and turned into, you know, the sort of psychological equivalent of haha yoga. I don't really worry too much about that.

Um, and I think it's wonderful that these things are happening. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Your books describe your own journey as a young Englishman, perhaps a little alienated who finds himself in India many years ago and then develops a powerful connection to Buddhism, only to later conclude after a significant number of years of monastic living and closed study of Buddhist doctrine.

That there are central Buddhist beliefs that he just can't quite find enough evidence for. Can you briefly describe those beliefs and why you concluded that you were unable to accept them? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: The, the primary problem, uh, I have with Orthodox Buddhism is it's emphasis and it is apparent requirement that one believe in, in rebirth or reincarnation or however you call it.

I was trained in a rather scholarly Buddhist school, the Gallup tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, in which we were encouraged to, um, not just take doc doctrines on trust, but to subject them to critical and reasoned analysis, uh, through dialectical, uh, debate and so on. And, um, I found that, uh, particularly the doctrine of reincarnation simply did not stand up even.

To the criteria we were given, uh, according to which we should judge whether something was true or false. So that led me very much to a, um, a questioning of what it meant to be a Buddhist. Uh, and I found that really what mattered to me in Buddhism was not these metaphysical. Uh, dogma, but rather the effectiveness that the meditative and the ethical practices had in, uh, the context of my everyday life.

In other words, they made a positive difference to how I experienced myself, how I understood myself, how I saw, uh, how to live in terms of a framework of value. And that really mattered to me. Whereas whether or not there is life after death or not seems to me really rather irrelevant. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: So it's the meditative practices and the ethics that emerged as most powerful for you?

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, the meditative practice, the ethics, and also a certain aspect of the of British philosophy, the worldview. Largely in which you cannot really separate ethics meditation and what the Buddhist called panya or wisdom, philosophy, um, a view of the world, an understanding of the world, a coherent sense of who the human person is, what role such a person has in this phenomenal environment, and what is it where we are called upon in our, in our deaths to respond to namely the suffering of the world.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Steven, over the last several years, there's been much written about contemplative practices, including several of those in Buddhism, changing some of our emotional and mental patterns, changing our minds, and thus changing our brains. Do you find these claims credible or persuasive? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: I find it rather surprising that, um, that the scientific community, or at least parts of the scientific community have felt that that would not be the case.

Um, for example, if you have a violinist, uh, a professional violinist, then the part of their brain that is connected with the movement of their left of their fingers will be that much, you know. Exaggerated. I find it strange to think that any kind of discipline, whether it be a discipline such such as that of a classical musician, or the discipline of training yourself in contemplative exercises over a long period of time will not have some effect on the structure of your neural pathways.

I find it odd that that would even be thought of as surprising, but on the other hand, I'm not a scientist. I don't pretend to be one, so I don't really understand the terms of the debate. The other point I think, um, one has to, uh, bring up here is that one should be careful, if not very wary, of tying Buddhism to the findings in some natural science.

In other words, I think there's a, a rather premature enthusiasm amongst certain Buddhists to feel that these admit, these very preliminary. Uh, findings are somehow, uh, just some are somehow validations of the legitimacy of meditation practice. I don't, I think that is an entirely unjustified conclusion.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: And why do you think that? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, I think for a start, because I think the ev the evidence so far is hardly, uh, wide is hardly, is not very widespread. It's the scientists themselves say these are very preliminary observations, but also to somehow, I question the fact that we should feel that a practice such as that, of meditation or ethics or philosophy should need to be validated by there being some discernible.

Neural neurological co going on in our brains. And let's just run a little thought experiment. Let's imagine that in 20 years time, and there's been huge more amounts of work being done investigating the offense of meditational people's brains, and we find at the end of the day that actually there are no significant correlations.

Let's imagine that's the case, and I don't think we can rule yet. Rule that out. Mm-hmm. Does that mean that one would just, one would stop meditating? I don't think so. The validation for meditation for me has nothing whatsoever to do with the effect. It may or may not have on the neurological pathways in my brain.

It has to do with the first person, uh, quality of life. How I experience myself and the world, the quality of wellbeing, the quality of authenticity, the quality of a a a, a deepened more, uh, open aesthetic and affect of awareness, which I doubt are qualities that can be measured. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Do you think they can ultimately be traced back to the brain or are you agnostic on that?

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, I don't know enough about neuroscience really, to be able to say, but I, it strike my, my, my gut suspicion is that this is way too reductive. I'm, I've recently read a book by a man called Alvin Noey called Out of our Heads, he's a neuroscientist. And his argument, which I think is much more, um, compelling, is that consciousness is not just a function of the brain.

Uh, that lived experience cannot be traced to certain, uh, neurological activities. The consciousness emerges out of the, the whole human organisms into reaction with a physical and a social world in an ongoing dynamic sense. That's Novi, Noah's argument. He denies that consciousness is equivalent to the brain in any sense at all.

Of course, it has a neurological. There are neurological substrates that is an element within a much bigger picture, and that is a picture that oddly resonates with what the Buddha said. Uh, the Buddha make makes it quite clear that for him, consciousness is an emergent property that happens or that occurs out of the interaction between an organism and its environment.

In other words, you have an, you have an eye organ, you have a color and a shape, and it's when the two come into contact that consciousness appears. Consciousness for the Buddha is not something that's somehow already latent within the organism, waiting for conditions to allow it to pop out, but it is actually a feature.

Of this complex interaction between organism and environment. So if you have someone like Noah who is a professional in this field who's questioning some of these assumptions that seem to be floating around in the Buddhism and neuroscience debate, then clearly there's not a consensus amongst the neuroscientists.

Clearly this is, we are tapping, we are touching on areas, um, of which people, um, admit the scientific community admits really have no clear understanding of what consciousness is at all. And for Buddhists to sort of preempt all of that by making rather unjustified claims that they know all about it and that science is one day gonna prove them to be right, I think is a very, it's a very dangerous road to go.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: In the West, there's been a fair amount of writing contending that mindfulness can affect our psychology and even transform our minds. Is that a premise that you accept and is that something that you've seen at work even in yourself? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, um, I, I think it's too simplistic to say simply that by being mindful of your mental states, that will somehow guarantee some improvements in your inner wellbeing.

I think that's very naive. Um, the Buddha clearly said, saw mindfulness as one strategy amongst others. He said mindfulness, concentration, effort, intelligence, and a certain degree of confidence. These all have to act together. Mindfulness by itself, I think would have a relatively limited. Effect. The other question, um, uh, as to whether I've observed this within myself.

Well, the problem with that question is if I'm really honest, um, I cannot say how I would've been if I had not practiced meditation. Maybe I would be a much better question. So it's very difficult as the sub, as the subjective, um, observer and experience of these practices. The extent to which, um, positive changes have been affected in my life.

Yet I suppose that since I continue to, uh, practice these things, that I continue to teach them that I valorize them. Clearly, this implies that I do believe that they have a positive effect. And, um, so for myself, I'd like to think that yes, that all of the. Many, many hours that I've put into formal meditation practice has had a positive effect on my, my, my, my way of being.

Um, I think I can probably say with some confidence that I'm a much calmer and more focused person than I used to be. I. Um, I like to think that meditation gives me a groundedness in my observation of the world. That is a, is a very powerful platform for investigation and analysis and reflection. But I wouldn't want to single out any one feature, say mindfulness, as though that was the sort of magical, uh, element that will generate some, some sudden transformation of who I am.

So I think that the purpose of religion, the purpose of of, of, of social organization, the purpose of the legal system, for example, are consequences of our self-reflexive awareness and our collective endeavor to live more, uh, positive, affirmative, empathetic, and caring lives. 

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: A final question about a key I issue in Buddhism that's always fascinated and even troubled me.

And that's this, according to the foundational doctrine in Buddhism, the four noble truths, uh, craving that is grasping to have things exactly the way we want them in a world that is impermanent, that's full of change is the cause of suffering. And a focus, perhaps the key focus of Buddhism is eliminating this cause of suffering and thereby eliminating suffering.

But we also know that love for our partners, for our children, for our parents, for our friends, is a rich, fun, fundamental, wonderful human emotion. And yet love probably leads to as much grasping and thus suffering under the Buddhist paradigm as anything else in life. How do you square these two? 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Well, first of all, I would actually challenge the, um, idea, the dogma, the craving grasping is the cause of suffering.

Um, I, I think the problem with cra, I mean obviously that is true. In some instances, I think that's undeniable, but I think to make a blanket assertion that craving is the cause of all human suffering, uh, to me doesn't make sense. It only makes sense really within the framework of a multi life model. In other words, if craving is what causes you to be reborn, that's the problem.

If you don't believe in rebirth, that argument doesn't really carry much weight and it's fairly meaningless. And I also think Buddhist have largely got this factor from. I think the problem with craving and grasping is not that it causes a suffering, but that it prevents us from entering the eight four path.

It actually is a break. It's actually a, a, a constraint on, um, what, uh, on, on how a human life can fully flourish. Now, of course, you can see al love, romantic love in many areas as being. As having a neurotic component, it can become an excessive attachment. It can become, uh, it can blinker you to wider issues.

It can become obsessive, it can become compulsive. It can lead to violence, it can lead to overprotectiveness and so forth and so on. That is undeniable. But on the other hand, these attachments. Provided they're not, uh, cultivated to excess are necessary for the cohesiveness of society and for the raising of children and for, uh, family life.

Uh, to provide environments in which people can grow up as hell, healthy, mature individuals, I don't think the board would've had, would've had any problem with that. Um, Buddhists have always had children. Uh, Buddhist societies, those I've lived in seem to valorize, uh, family life. They, there's certainly no sort of intrinsic evil perceived in falling in love or having kids, but it is true nonetheless.

But that since Buddhism has become, has been a religion that has been predominantly monastic. That it's been celibate monastics who kind of called the shots, who developed our current perceptions of what Buddhism is and what it's about. Then clearly those areas of life have not been had adequately addressed in the classical sources.

And I think one of the challenges for our times, and are not just thinking of the West here, but I think modernity in general is that we have to try to think. Uh, we have to sort of think more clearly and more carefully as to what, uh, a lay Buddhism would be. A Buddhism that does not, um, prioritize or hold monasticism as somehow ary.

Um, the holding of monasticism is exemplary, has both to do with the social and economic conditions under which Buddhism emerged in Asia. It also has to do with the fact that Buddhism has, by and large can been seen as ultimately about stopping rebirth and thereby achieving deep meditative in other states whereby you free yourself from all kinds of grasping.

But I don't frame Buddhism in that way anymore. I'm, I'm concerned to see how Buddhism, the practice of the, uh, of the dama is something that offers us a framework for living in a secular world, uh, in a world that is, uh, in, in an environment in which we are entirely concerned with the suffering on this planet instead of having concerns about a hypothetical post-mortem existence.

So if we secularize Buddhism, which I think. Actually something I very much like to do then I think we have to rethink it from the ground up. And dogma, such as craving is the cause of suffering have to be really rethought. The doctrine of the four truths has to be re-read. We can't, I feel any more simply rely upon the time honored traditions of Asia in which Buddhism was addressing a very different set of needs.

I. To those that are demanded of it by modernity and the issues that we face as a, as a race, envi environment, mental destruction, um, global warfare. Um, we are in such a different situation to how Buddhism evolved in the past that Buddhism itself has to rethink its primary assumptions as to what it's all about.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: Thank you, Steven Bachelor. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. 

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Thank you.

MICHAEL BERGEISEN: The Greater Good Podcast is a production of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California Berkeley. Jason Marsh is the producer of the Greater Good Podcast. Alton Doe is our intern. Special thanks to the University's Graduate School of Journalism and Milt Wallace for production assistance.

You can listen to more Greater Good Podcasts and find articles, videos, and other material from Greater Good Magazine at www.greatergoodscience.org. I'm Michael Bergeisen.