interview

Buddhism without Beliefs

Andrew Cohen: After reading your book, Buddhism without Beliefs, it was clear to me that you could be seen as a revolutionary in the field of contemporary Buddhism in that you seem to be trying to present the essence of what the Buddha taught free of any cultural baggage, including all forms of what could be regarded by the contemporary mind as superstitious ideas or beliefs.

Stephen Batchelor: Yes, some people might say that, I suppose.

AC: Before we begin, though, I'd like to be certain that I have as clear an understanding as possible of exactly what you mean by "Buddhism without beliefs."

SB: Yes, good. The expression "Buddhism without beliefs" is not meant to suggest that beliefs are completely dispensable in every sense of the word "belief." One still has to believe—if one is doing a practice, for example—that it has value, that it's worthwhile, that it's worth sitting on a cushion; and that is definitely one form of belief. But the way I'm mainly using the word "belief," as you've correctly understood, is to express the idea that the practice of Buddhism is somehow contingent upon buying into certain metaphysical beliefs. We may or may not think of such beliefs as superstitious, but they usually are views of the world that we are expected to accept on the basis of a kind of blind devotion or faith, without actually having any experience of our own on the basis of which to accept or reject them. So "Buddhism without dogma" would perhaps be more precise. I don't think it really matters, you see, what one's metaphysical views are, because the practice of Buddhism, as I try to make clear in the book, is to my mind a practice of freeing ourselves from certain psychological delusions.

AC: I see. And since you are advocating what you refer to as a kind of "agnostic Buddhism," and devote an entire chapter of your book to a discussion of "agnosticism," could you please define how you're using that term?

SB: Well, agnosticism I understand in two different ways. Firstly, I use the word "agnostic" in the way that it's fairly conventionally understood in the West, and I know that in that sense it is problematic because to many people "agnosticism" and "atheism" are sort of blurred together as a kind of dismissive attitude towards any kind of spiritual practice—and some people have complained that "agnostic" is therefore too confusing a word and automatically gives a negative slant. But the way in which the word "agnostic" has traditionally been used since about the nineteenth century is very much about not taking anything for granted unless it can be somehow demonstrated through experience—holding a view, in other words, in which you acknowledge a kind of unknowing, or not knowing, which I think is very parallel to the Buddhist idea of "no-mind" as it is found in Zen. It has to do with being able to accept and acknowledge within yourself primary questions about life to which you do not know the answer, and this, to me, is a far more genuine starting point than beginning a practice on the basis of something that some teacher or some religion or some tradition has told you to believe. It is a fundamental acceptance of unknowing, of not knowing.

AC: Even though it's obvious, as you said before, that in order to begin practice in earnest one would have to have some faith, for example, in the possibility of awakening.

SB: Oh, sure. I distinguish between "belief" and "faith," although that may not come out clearly in the book. "Belief" would be, as I said, a particular holding on to certain metaphysical ideas as necessarily true—and this could apply also to a practice if it was intended only to confirm the validity of those views—whereas "faith" is really nothing more than a trust in the capacity of the human being to transform itself from a deluded to a less deluded or even an awakened state, "awakening" being a metaphor for the relinquishment of delusion. As I said, there clearly has to be some kind of belief in the possibility of that kind of transformation and that opening of experience. The difference is that from an agnostic position one doesn't have any preconceived ideas as to what that transformation will lead to. Practice is too often premised on the idea that if I meditate I'll become omniscient or something, or arrive at some state of mind that has been described in some religious texts to be like A, B, C, D or E.

AC: Including a Buddhist text?

SB: Oh yes, certainly. Of course, the whole idea of a genuine awakening, at least as I understand it, is that it must necessarily be a journey into the unknown. But I tend to think that many people practice religion—Buddhism or Christianity or Hinduism or whatever—with a subconscious or perhaps even a conscious expectation of what the outcome of their practice will be, whereas if one has a genuinely agnostic starting point, a profound acceptance of "I don't know," then one has made room for the possibility of deep questioning. To really think about it, to really question—to say, "What is this? Who am I?"—is an acknowledgment, in that very moment of questioning, of not knowing. We wouldn't need to ask a question, after all, if we knew any kind of answer.

AC: Of course.

SB: So to me the spiritual quest has as its driving engine a questioning which is necessarily impregnated with a kind of unknowing. And a Buddhist text, for example, or a religious text of any tradition for that matter, can perhaps give us clues and pointers, and maybe very supportive metaphors, but a danger arises if we in any way literalize those metaphors and treat them, as it were, as if they were adequate representations of what it is that our practice is leading towards.

 

Clarity or Perplexity?

AC: Would this process of inquiry and questioning that you've so eloquently described lead to the discovery—since we're talking about enlightenment, after all—of an answer that has the potential to finally liberate? Or would it simply lead to an inner position from which one recognizes that no answer will ever be found? Is the answer that one is searching for something that could be called "enlightenment," or is "enlightenment," in your view, only the discovery of the fact that one will never know the answer?

SB: I think one would have to suspend both possibilities and begin to question without an expectation of either.

AC: Fair enough. The only reason I'm asking is because in your book you do seem at times to be implying that it wouldn't be possible to find a final or absolute answer. Is that your view?

SB: As I said, that's not a point about which I think it's particularly helpful to speculate.

AC: I understand that, but I just wanted to clarify it because it seems to be an implication of your frequent and favorable-sounding use of the term "perplexity" in your book that the "not knowing" you've been speaking about is the appropriate attitude or relationship to one's experience if one wants to awaken, if one wants to be free in relationship to one's own experience. So I'm left wondering if this perplexity, or not knowing, is supposed to be a final resting place or is just a means to an end.

SB: Okay, it's a good question. I prefer the term "response" rather than "answer." Maybe that's making a rather minor semantic distinction, but the process of questioning, the process of awakening that I'm interested in, is one that leads to a response to the matter of, let's say, birth and death. My own experience is that that perplexity is something that one not only starts out with but that actually stays with one. But that does not preclude the possibility, you see, of a very profound and authentic response to what it is that one is perplexed about. And the term "answer," to me, particularly if it's prefixed with an adjective like "absolute," introduces an element of finality that I'm uncomfortable with, because I am quite profoundly concerned about any suggestion of a kind of stasis, a fixed state or position that comes, as it were, as a final answer to that perplexity. I'm more of the mind that perplexity is in fact the key trigger for authentic responses to life, to death, to being here—to experience, to existence.

AC: But that "response," if it was the expression of an awakened mind, would not be an expression of what we understand "perplexity" to be, would it? Even though that perplexity may well have been the catalyst for it, wouldn't it rather be the expression of some kind of profound clarity, of a very clear and accurate perception?

SB: I don't see a contradiction there.

AC: Oh, good. It's just that this relationship between perplexity and a very clear response didn't seem to be very clear in your book.

SB: Okay. Well, perhaps we could say that we start with perplexity, and perplexity leads to responses to our experience, and the clarity that emerges out of such responses does not render the world less perplexing. In a strange way—and to me this is very central—that kind of clarity of mind reveals the world to be even more mysterious than we may at first have assumed it to be. And awakening, for me, is not about rendering the world unmysterious. It's about penetrating the mystery of life, not canceling it out as though it were a problem that you've somehow solved. Clarity and insight enrich and deepen our sense of the profound mystery that we are. And in terms of our rational capacities, our intellectual capacities, I think it's quite legitimate and meaningful to say that we don't arrive at some kind of answer. But that does not mean that we do not arrive at an authentic response that radically transforms our sense of being in the world and our capacity to be with ourselves, with others, with society. We do, but not in a way that is fixated on any position or stance.

AC: Would it therefore be fair to say, and please help me with this, that in your view a profound enlightenment would still be a relative matter?

SB: I think there's a certain problem with terms here.

AC: I appreciate that what we're speaking about is very subtle and delicate, and I'm aware of the inherent dangers in both directions when speaking in terms of relative and absolute, but—

SB: I'm just not happy with this distinction between absolute and relative. I find it somewhat dualistic. I know Buddhism has used that language—although it seems that in fact the Buddha himself never actually used those terms, at least in the early discourses—but, again, I'm concerned about the possibility of fixing a term like "enlightenment" in any kind of absolute position. I find it a little too simplistic, because I feel that those sorts of distinctions seem to fade away.

AC: What do you mean?

SB: I don't claim fully to understand this at all, but my intuition and experience lead me much more to a sense that the absolute/relative dichotomy is something that actually needs to be let go of, and that the awakening, as it were, is an awakening to, in a way, the letting go of precisely that dividing of reality between those two poles. And that's why I prefer this idea of response. The response to experience through, say, insight or awakening may open up to us the depth of reality, and the profound mystery of reality, but not in a way that alienates us from the contingencies and the exigencies of the relative, ambiguous world that we inhabit. But perhaps all I'm saying is that we lack any ability within the categories of conventional language to really speak coherently about what is essentially mysterious. Does that make sense?

AC: It makes sense, but in terms of this whole notion of the Absolute, or an absolute—which, as you've acknowledged, you feel very uncomfortable with—it does need to be stated that from the perspective of those who do see or perceive awakened consciousness from a perspective that is absolute, the approach you're describing would probably be construed as the relativization of an absolute perspective, and that's simply a different way of seeing it. But I still think what you've said is very clear and very intriguing, and perhaps we can move on, since basically most of my questions are concerned with this anyway.

SB: Okay. All right.

 

Relative or Absolute?

AC: In your chapter on "Awakening," you write: "Despite the Buddha's own succinct account of his awakening, it has come to be represented (even by Buddhists) as something quite different. Awakening has become a mystical experience, a moment of transcendent revelation of the Truth. Religious interpretations invariably reduce complexity to uniformity while elevating matter-of-factness to holiness. Over time, increasing emphasis has been placed on a single absolute truth such as 'the Deathless,' 'the Unconditioned,' 'the Void,' nirvana, Buddha-nature, etcetera, rather than on an interwoven complex of truths." Could you please explain what you mean?

SB: Well, I suppose what's coming through there is, in a sense, my Buddhist faith and the fact that I'm speaking from within a Buddhist tradition, but in that context trying to clarify not just the questions the Buddha himself asked but also how Buddhism as a system has responded to, and has subsequently articulated, the early Buddhist tradition. And in particular, I'm trying to make it clear that when I am speaking about the Buddha, from my point of view there are limitations inherent in that.

AC: What do you mean by "inherent limitations"?

SB: What I mean, in the book and also for the sake of this conversation—since in your magazine you try to represent many different perspectives—is that because I'm coming from a Buddhist perspective, certain questions may not be so intelligible. I'm not going to be able to talk very meaningfully about anything to do with God, for example, and I don't want to get drawn into areas that I'm not particularly concerned with myself. The whole point of what I wrote there is that questions, for example, of an "absolute," although they refer to an idea that has come into Buddhism, are not central nor even particularly pertinent, really, to what I think the Buddha was trying to get at.

AC: That could be true, I suppose, but what intrigues me, and what is, speaking for myself personally, the thrust of my whole life and investigation, is what the word "enlightenment" means, and the point of my question is that "enlightenment"—which is supposedly what Buddhism is about—does generally refer to something that is absolute. Now I understand that from your point of view, for example, that may not be true. But I think if we said that an absolute component could never be a part of what enlightenment is and means, that would take away some of the power inherent in that word.

SB: What do you mean by "absolute"? I have, actually, some difficulties in understanding what you mean.

AC: That which would be final, unequivocal—something like that.

SB: Transcendent?

AC: Transcendent, yes, but not in the sense of being separate from.

SB: Separate from the world.

AC: Correct—not in that sense at all.

SB: Right. Okay, well, let's go back, then, to the passage that you quoted. The reference there to "the Buddha's own succinct account of his awakening" is to the Dhammacakkappavatana Sutta, which means "the turning of the dharma wheel." It is supposedly the first discourse the Buddha gave, and it contains a very, very clear statement in which the Buddha declares that until he had come to a full awareness and understanding of the Four Noble Truths in three particular ways, he could not claim to have realized full awakening. In other words, this is a very basic starting point from which to begin any attempt to understand a Buddhist perspective on awakening or enlightenment; in fact, this experience of the Four Truths is the defining characteristic of what the Buddha understands by awakening.

Now what's interesting about that is that the Buddha is not laying claim to an experience of some absolute as the defining characteristic of what awakening is, but rather to an interwoven complex of truths that have to do with suffering, the origins of suffering, the ending of suffering and the path that leads to the ending of suffering. It's that whole complex that defines what it means to awaken. And what I find distinctive about that, and profoundly inspiring and resonant with my own experience, is that his concern is not with defining the answer in terms of a revelation of God or faith or an experience of an absolute—be it a transcendent or an immanent absolute—but rather a vision of the dilemma that human beings experience, which he calls dukkha, or suffering; a vision of its origins; a vision of a resolution or response to that dilemma, which he understands as the cessation of its origins—the cessation of craving, momentary or otherwise; and, finally, a vision of a way of life that is conducive to such cessation.

So if we were to use the words "final" or "definitive" in the sense that you're using them, there might be some legitimacy in applying them to the Third Truth—I agree with you there.

AC: You mean freedom from craving?

SB: Yes, I mean the freedom that the Buddha spoke of—the freedom of the heart and mind from craving—which he describes as the breaking of the ridgepole of a house that, as a result, can never be built again. There is certainly something very definitive about that.

AC: Yes.

SB: Very, very definitive—but he doesn't make that into the defining element of what he calls "awakening." Awakening is far more encompassing than that. His process of awakening is one that embraces as much the dilemma of life as it does a resolution to that dilemma. In other words, it's a holistic sense of the world, a sense of one's place within the world that includes insights and understandings that are both relative and also, as you say, somewhat more ultimate, as well as a way of life.

AC: A clear and right relationship to the world of time and space.

SB: Exactly, yes.

 

Existential or Transcendent?

AC: A little further on in the same chapter, you state: "The Buddha was not a mystic. His awakening was not a shattering insight into a transcendent truth that revealed to him the mysteries of God. He did not claim to have had an experience that granted him privileged, esoteric knowledge of how the universe ticks." Then you say, "Only as Buddhism became more and more of a religion were such grandiose claims imputed to his awakening."

SB: That's right, yes.

AC: So my question would be: Given that the experiential recognition of the Four Noble Truths is, as you've just stated, the most important element of awakening in the Buddhist path, it would have to be more than a strictly intellectual revelation—right?

SB: Yes, of course.

AC: What would be the component, then, in the revelation of the Four Noble Truths that would make it more than merely an intellectual insight or recognition?

SB: The component that would make it more than a merely intellectual recognition would be the fact that the momentum, let's say, or the driving force that propelled the Buddha to this awakening, was the question of life and death. In other words, the concerns that were resolved through his awakening were not philosophical questions, and they were not psychological or religious or spiritual questions. They were deep existential questions, which we find perhaps best illustrated through the legend of his encounter with the four visions of the corpse, the old person, the sick person and the monk. In other words, the Buddha's quest was an existential quest and, as I see it, we can only understand awakening as something that is a resolution to the primary existential dilemma that every human being faces—the fact of having been born and the fact of death. So if we understand the Buddha or any practicing Buddhist of today as setting off on this path, I feel its authenticity is registered to the extent that it is an outcome of that individual's deep, almost preconceptual response to being, to what the Chinese call "the great matter of birth and death." And in responding to such questions, the intellect can be helpful—it can give us useful ideas and so on—but fundamentally this is a matter that grips our entire body/mind and is, as it were, the basis upon which we then focus our attention through meditation or spiritual inquiry or whatever it is that we're doing. And it's the unrelenting honing in on, focusing in on, that existential sense of questioning that triggers and awakens the mind to another response to birth, sickness, aging and death, which historically, for the Buddha, was the revelation of these Four Truths.

AC: But in what we could call this heroic or, even though I know I shouldn't say it, absolute confrontation with these existential questions—which obviously few human beings actually have the courage to engage in—would there not have to be a transcendent element of the sort you refer to in your book as "the Deathless" or "the unconditioned," the discovery of which creates, shall we say, an experiential context that transcends a merely three-dimensional sense of what life is? Wouldn't it be the direct experience of this fourth dimension, which some have also referred to as "the supermundane," that would empower the discovery of these Four Noble Truths—that would give them their liberating power—and that would enable one to recognize the truly liberating power that is inherent in them? Is there not, in other words—and this is just a question—another element that empowers this profound existential inquiry?

SB: Well, I think there's a danger here of getting caught up in certain linguistic problems. Of course you start out, let's say, with a question, and the reason it's a question, or a dilemma, is because you're unable to step out of it. You're unable to see a way out of a situation to which you have no response. And clearly, if you're going to find a response that addresses that question at the depth from which it is asked, then you're going to have to discover a perspective that is not "mundane." But "mundane" simply means the condition in which we find ourselves stuck, so any kind of resolution to a question of such an order is going to require that you somehow transcend the limitation that has stuck you with that question. To that extent, one could say, yes, of course, there must be some degree of self-transcendence. But transcendence, to me, is a relative term. In other words, one can say that one has a transcendent experience only in relation to that in which one was previously trapped. To then reify that notion of transcendence into some kind of state, I think is a mistake.

AC: Again, though, in the way I'm speaking about it, the supermundane would be an experiential context that would reveal the ultimate power to liberate inherent in the Four Noble Truths. So I'm simply asking if there's not another element besides the profound or even heroic confrontation with these existential questions that you have described.

SB: I think not, actually. I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I guess that really my answer would be no.

AC: Okay, fair enough. But just to pursue this a little further, there are several passages in the Nikayas [the earliest recorded recollections of the Buddha's teachings], which you're no doubt very familiar with, in which the Buddha describes what he himself calls "the Deathless": "Where water, earth, heat and wind find no footing, there no stars gleam, no sun is made visible, there shines no moon, there the darkness is not found; and when the sage, the brahmin, himself in wisdom knows this place, he is freed from happiness and dukkha." And in another passage, he says, "Monks, there is that which is not born, not become, not made, not conditioned. Monks, if there were not that which is not born, not become, not made, not conditioned, there could be made known no escape from that which is born, become, made, conditioned here. But since, monks, there is that which is not born, not become, not made, not conditioned, therefore the escape from that which is born, become, made, conditioned is made known." Obviously, the Buddha is here very directly and clearly pointing to the profound importance and significance of the experiential discovery of a mystery which, at least in these formulations, alone makes liberation possible.

SB: I know what you're getting at, but that passage—the second one—is quoted endlessly, and the interesting thing is that it only appears once, and in a relatively minor text found in a subsection of the Khuddaka Nikaya. I therefore take such passages to be primarily inspirational in nature rather than literal.

AC: What does that mean?

SB: It means that if you read through the Buddhist sutras, of which there are so many that it's unlikely anybody's read them all, you'll find all manner of passages which appear, actually, to be at odds with many other passages. And I think it's particularly striking how Western interpreters of Buddhism have latched on to that last passage you've just quoted. It's endlessly reiterated and yet, as I said, it only occurs once in all of the canon. It's a passage that I think is attractive precisely because it lends credence to a kind of mystical absolutist interpretation of Buddhist doctrine that is actually not so widely found elsewhere in the texts. If one reads through the Majjhima Nikaya, for example, you won't find that sort of language very widespread. I'm not saying you can't find passages elsewhere that use that kind of language, but even leaving aside contemporary views on Buddhism, there have been commentators as far back as two thousand years ago who shed doubt on the legitimacy of such passages and saw them as inspirational rather than literal. In other words, for many people that kind of language inspires them to reach beyond themselves. It inspires them to believe in the possibility of something quite other than the sort of experience they feel trapped and stuck in at the present. But that those inspirational injunctions of the Buddha are meant to be taken literally, I personally find problematic.

The problem with Buddhism, you see—and I think this is not only historical but contemporary as well—is that you do not have a single consistent voice running through the tradition. What you have is a plurality of voices that articulate understandings of say, awakening, of the path, of the nature of reality and so on, which are not internally consistent. So we ultimately find "Buddhism" to be really a sort of generic term that points not to any single view but to a diversity of strategies and tactics that different followers of the Buddha throughout history have adopted, some of which are religious or devotional or inspirational in nature, and others of which are more pragmatic or, one could almost say, relativist—down to earth. And what that suggests to me is the sense of a community, a sangha, which is able to incorporate a diversity that reflects the different temperaments and dispositions of those who are inspired by the Buddha to follow their paths in ways that authentically respond to their particular language and the particular experiences that they themselves have had. I'm very resistant to the idea of trying to reduce Buddhism to one particular dominant voice, because I see it as a pluralistic culture of awakening which allows for a diversity of possibilities. Now of course that doesn't mean that we can't have debate and discussion and disagreement. In fact, it's precisely the fact that we are having this kind of conversation that is to me the positive thing.

AC: Your own feeling, though, is that you question the notion that the Buddha put any emphasis on the significance of an absolute or transcendent dimension.

SB: Yes, my own reading of the text—and I know that there are passages like the ones you mentioned—is that those are in balance fairly marginal comments that are actually at odds with the thrust of the Buddha's message that speaks to me. So while I see those passages, as I said, as having inspirational value, I personally can't take them literally because I feel that they would put Buddhism back into the context of religious experience that we find, say, in the Upanishads [esoteric Hindu scriptures], which for all its beauty is not something that I think the Buddha was endorsing.