interview

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 from any cultural baggage, including all forms of what could be regarded by the modern mind as superstitious ideas or beliefs. I'd like to begin by making certain I have a clear understanding of what exactly you mean by "Buddhism without beliefs."

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: Yes, good. The expression "Buddhism without beliefs" is not meant to suggest that beliefs are completely dispensable in every sense of the word. For example, if one is doing a practice, one still has to believe 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 address 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: 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 idea in Zen Buddhism of "no-mind." 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: But 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. "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. The difference is that from an agnostic position, one doesn't have any preconceived ideas as to what that transformation will lead to. 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.

CLARITY OR PERPLEXITY?

AC: Would this process of inquiry and questioning that you've 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 that 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. I just wanted to clarify this 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. 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: It's a good question. I prefer the term "response" rather than "answer." 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 something that actually stays with one. But that does not preclude the possibility of a very profound and authentic response to what it is that one is perplexed about. 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: 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. Awakening, for me, is 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? 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'm concerned about the possibility of fixing a term like "enlightenment" in any kind of absolute position. I don't claim fully to understand this at all, but my intuition and experience lead me much more to a sense that awakening itself is the letting go of precisely that dividing of reality between the two poles of absolute and relative. That's why I prefer the idea of response. The response to experience through, say, insight or awakening may open up to us the depth 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.

RELATIVE OR ABSOLUTE?

AC: In your chapter entitled "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. . . . 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: The whole point of what I wrote there is that these terms that point to 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 to explore 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, 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: Okay, well, let's go back 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 that 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, he could not claim to have realized full 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. He is describing, rather, an interwoven complex of truths that have to do with 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. 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. However, I do see that there might be some legitimacy in applying the words "final" or "definitive," in the sense that you're using them, to the Third Truth—I agree with you there.

AC: The Third Truth being 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.