Stephen Batchelor

[silver]

Stephen Batchelor is a former monk in the Tibetan and Zen traitions and the author of Buddhism Without Beliefs.  He lectures and conducts meditation retreats worldwide.

I feel very lucky to have come across this book of his - Living With the Devil - a Meditation on Good and Evil.  At the end of chapter one, he lays some things out in a way that even I can grasp:

When the stubborn, frozen solidity of necessary selves and things is dissolved in the perspective of emptiness, a contingent world opens up that is fluid and ambiguous, fascinating and terrifying.  Not only does this world unfold before us with awesome subtlety, complexity and majesty, one day it will swallow us up in its tumultuous wake along with everything else we cherish:  The infinitely poignant beauty of creation is inseparable from its diabolic destructiveness.  How to live in such a turbulent world with wisdom, tolerance, empathy, care, and nonviolence is what saints and philosophers have struggled over the centuries to articulate.  What is striking about the Buddhist approach is that rather than positing an immortal or transcendent self that is immune to the vicissitudes of the world, Buddha insisted that salvation lies in discarding such consoling fantasies and embracing instead the very stuff of life that will destroy you.

This book is a meditation on some of these age-old questions.  Much of it is an interpretation of Buddhist myths, doctrines, philosophy, and practice.  Yet as one who finds himself inhabiting the gaps between cultures and traditions, the Buddhist ideas are juxtaposed and interwoven with material from sources as diverse as the Bible, Baudelaire, Roland Barthes, and evolutionary biology.  Although I cite the monotheistic scriptures, I do not believe in God any more than I believe in Hamlet.  But this does not mean that either God or Hamlet has nothing of value to say.  The pages of this book are populated with mythical and historical figures from various traditions who happen to speak to my condition.  The path I trace follows the gaps between different religious and secular mythologies that help make sense of my life.  The further I proceed, the more I suspect this path to be nothing but the anarchic gaps themselves.

[silver]

I wish to share this bit from the book from chapter one, Creating a Path - subsection 15, Learning to Wait…

We hate waiting.  When a train doesn't come on time or if a friend is late, we find ourselves frustrated by a situation over which we have no control.  Rather than things happening according to plan, we are suddenly at the mercy of someone else and powerless to influence the outcome of events.  As the consoling illusion of a dependable and manageable world evaporates with each passing second, we are exposed to the anguish of life's intrinsic unreliability.  Our impatience mounts, the self's composure crumbles into resentful frustration or erupts into panic, and we are exposed as an infantile creature of Mara.

Instead of regarding it either as an affront to one's dignity or a waste of time, waiting can be seen as a cipher of nirvana.  Since life is ultimately a situation over which we have no control, waiting is a response that accords with its fleeting and unreliable nature.  The practice of waiting is to learn how to rest in the nirvanic ease of contingent things.  Yet waiting is not passive inaction any more than emptiness is nothingness.  As an alert stillness that cradles perplexity, it is the ground from which we can respond in unpredictable ways to life's unfolding and the inevitable encounter with others.

This particular segment stood out because it used a word and a phrase that I used recently, as well.

I have to tell ya, this book really clicks with me. 

[laughter]

Oct 13, 2014 16:16:00 GMT -5 silver said:

I wish to share this bit from the book from chapter one, Creating a Path - subsection 15, Learning to Wait…

We hate waiting.  When a train doesn't come on time or if a friend is late, we find ourselves frustrated by a situation over which we have no control.  Rather than things happening according to plan, we are suddenly at the mercy of someone else and powerless to influence the outcome of events.  As the consoling illusion of a dependable and manageable world evaporates with each passing second, we are exposed to the anguish of life's intrinsic unreliability.  Our impatience mounts, the self's composure crumbles into resentful frustration or erupts into panic, and we are exposed as an infantile creature of Mara.

Instead of regarding it either as an affront to one's dignity or a waste of time, waiting can be seen as a cipher of nirvana.  Since life is ultimately a situation over which we have no control, waiting is a response that accords with its fleeting and unreliable nature.  The practice of waiting is to learn how to rest in the nirvanic ease of contingent things.  Yet waiting is not passive inaction any more than emptiness is nothingness.  As an alert stillness that cradles perplexity, it is the ground from which we can respond in unpredictable ways to life's unfolding and the inevitable encounter with others.

This particular segment stood out because it used a word and a phrase that I used recently, as well.

I have to tell ya, this book really clicks with me. 

Reminds me a little of Albert Low.

He's suggesting a practice there, one that Tolle suggests as well -- but Tolle, not nearly as poetically. It's a great practice.

That's the thing 'bout Buddhism ... while it's interesting to learn about for sure, it's what they suggest that you do that can change your life.

[silver]

My interest in this stuff's become like picking my way across the creek, rock to rock.

I just placed a hold on Low's The World: A Gateway. 

[laughter]

Oct 13, 2014 17:43:49 GMT -5 silver said:

My interest in this stuff's become like picking my way across the creek, rock to rock.

I just placed a hold on Low's The World: A Gateway. 

Slipping on a rock into the rapids and knowing that there aint nutin that can ever harm what you really are is the best part.

[silver]

More from chapter two, subsection Fear and Trembling:

For Tsong-kha-pa, writing in Tibet at the end of the fourteenth century, fear is one of the causes that brings one to the path opened up by Buddha.  This fear too is not one of Mara's "troops."  It is fear of Mara himself.  This longing not to be hurt by the armies of Mara is the beginning of faith: a yearning to transcend one's limitations and embark on a path.  Lacking this wider perspective, we try to ward off fear by desperately avoiding or destroying whatever seems to pose a threat to our well-being.  We are unlikely to notice that the strategy itself may be flawed.  For no matter how many heads you cut off this Hydra-like Mara, another will grow in its place.  Only by stepping back to contemplate this broader picture do you start to realize what is truly frightening:  being trapped in a cycle of fearful reactivity.

...But as long as one is subject to compulsive reactivity, one avoids such fears by fleeing to consoling thoughts and images that spin out of control into irresistible fantasies of oneself as a character in a trite drama that compels repetition.  Each retelling provides an entranced respite from fear and anxiety, and allows you to extract ever keener frissons of pleasure from the story's detail.  These fantasies are isolated episodes of a larger story that cannot be told.  Whether it be a tale of sex or revenge, it culminates at a point of intense satisfaction--then starts again.  You do not go on to imagine how the following day you will face the person you have just seduced or humiliated.

The fantasy is a solipsistic act without consequence.  It is both an anxious flight from contingency and a fixation on something that promises permanent satisfaction and security.  Flight and fixation are two aspects of a single process.  They reflect the simultaneous turbulence and frigidity of the demonic.  Fixation is a compulsion that is driven and sustained by flight from the intolerable contingency of things.  By holding on tight to an idea, object, or person, I feel momentarily safe and unafraid.  But in the very act of grasping something, fixation distorts it.  Tightening attention around what is desired severs it from the matrix of relationships whence it springs, making it appear necessary rather than contingent.  And thus do I find myself viscerally trapped in Mara's most insidious snare.

[silver]

and this...

Lacking this wider perspective, we try to ward off fear by desperately avoiding or destroying whatever seems to pose a threat to our well-being. We are unlikely to notice that the strategy itself may be flawed. For no matter how many heads you cut off this Hydra-like Mara, another will grow in its place. Only by stepping back to contemplate this broader picture do you start to realize what is truly frightening: being trapped in a cycle of fearful reactivity.

That bit struck me as what it felt like that night I 'imagined myself IN 'the' void...telescopic sort of...

[silver]

Sharing with you an excerpt from chapter three, subsection entitled The Anarchy of the Gaps:

Care is that which cherishes and cultivates virtues while also relinquishing compulsive behavior.  As an awareness of one's values and a diligent commitment to realize them, it deprives Mara of a foothold, thereby guarding one against his attacks.

Such a path of vigilant care is not an exclusively Buddhist concern.  Whatever sheds light on impermanence, suffering, contingency, and emptiness can contribute to a path that inclines toward nirvana, even if it originates in a secular tradition that is skeptical of religion, or in a religion that denies the validity of Buddhism.  In recognizing the existence of "solitary buddhas" (paccekabuddha), who gain insight into the nature of contingency independently of a teacher or Buddhist community, Buddhism affirms that the attainment of nirvana can occur outside of a Buddhist context.  Job and Jesus, Pascal and Montaigne, evolutionary biology and neuroscience, Roland Barthes and William Blake offer glimpses of self and world that illuminate the path opened up by Buddha.

Although a devout Buddhist, Shantideva aspires "always to be a student of everyone, respectfully accepting unsolicited words which are of help, openly rejoicing in whatever is well said."  To enclose oneself in the confines of a tradition and community where one feels at home and unthreatened cuts one off from the myriad sources of awakening that are everywhere present, were one only prepared to reach out and embrace them.  "There is nothing whatsoever," affirms Shantideva, "that is not to be learned by one who aspires to awaken."

In such encounters between traditions are the seeds of a contemporary culture of awakening likely to germinate.  This culture might already be fermenting in the dialogues and exchanges between declared Buddhists and "solitary buddhas" who, unbeknown to themselves, are gouging pathways to nirvana.  It can embrace both secular and religious elements while in itself being neither secular nor religious.  Yet a culture of awakening does not rest on the universalist assumption that all "spiritual" paths ultimately lead to the same destination: some may be vicious circles that go nowhere, while others may be in thrall to longings for eternity.  As a middle way, such a culture would be rooted in a vigilant care that is constantly on guard against the lures of both the demonic and divine.

At a time when the all-embracing certainties of closed societies and belief systems no longer convince or reassure us, more and more do we find ourselves in that perplexing middle ground between communities and ideas.  Having embraced this homelessness, we are at liberty to weave our way between Buddhism and monotheism, the religious and the secular, science and art, literature and myth.  In exploring the fertile spaces between traditions, we open up a path that may be rooted in a specific tradition but has branched out into the no-man's-land between them all.

In an open society saturated with information, the gaps between traditions serve as a refreshing but unsettling wilderness.  By dwelling in their emptiness, we are able o return to those questions for which each tradition claims to have the answers.  The anarchy of the gaps makes it impossible for any ideology or religion to take hold. 

[silver]

Oct 14, 2014 17:07:54 GMT -5 silver said:

and this...

Lacking this wider perspective, we try to ward off fear by desperately avoiding or destroying whatever seems to pose a threat to our well-being. We are unlikely to notice that the strategy itself may be flawed. For no matter how many heads you cut off this Hydra-like Mara, another will grow in its place. Only by stepping back to contemplate this broader picture do you start to realize what is truly frightening: being trapped in a cycle of fearful reactivity.

That bit struck me as what it felt like that night I 'imagined myself IN 'the' void...telescopic sort of...

Once one fully awakens to, and realizes that they ARe trapped in a cycle of fearful reactivity, it can then begin to stop all on its own, just from realizing it.......Last night, I came to realize the distinct possibility - probability, that my son was caught up, and couldn't find his way out.

As sad as that is/was, well, I guess that's what they call 'closure' -- but well it doesn't close ever, losing a loved one -- but it adds at least some sanity and explanation as to what happened and what happens when people go off the deep end, in any fashion. 

[silver]

The library happened to have his popular book, Buddhism without Beliefs...I just started to read it earlier today.
Might I suggest to a lot of you folks to read this fellow's books - and other books on Buddhism that you may find interesting.

[Deleted]

Oct 22, 2014 2:40:48 GMT -5 silver said:

The library happened to have his popular book, Buddhism without Beliefs...I just started to read it earlier today.
Might I suggest to a lot of you folks to read this fellow's books - and other books on Buddhism that you may find interesting.

I read that. My faint recollection is that it spoke well to my agnostic perspective. There's a whole subculture of secular Buddhists. He's in there.

[silver]

Oct 22, 2014 9:32:38 GMT -5 maxdprophet said:

Oct 22, 2014 2:40:48 GMT -5 silver said:

The library happened to have his popular book, Buddhism without Beliefs...I just started to read it earlier today.
Might I suggest to a lot of you folks to read this fellow's books - and other books on Buddhism that you may find interesting.

I read that. My faint recollection is that it spoke well to my agnostic perspective. There's a whole subculture of secular Buddhists. He's in there.

I'm working on the one Laughter mentioned, well, the author Albert Low: The world:  a Gateway..., plus another book I spied on the way my out of the library by Sri Surath Chakravarta "Samadhi & Beyond. 

I started a thread on the other forum, SF, asking the difference between Buddhism and Hinduism, and got a lot of interesting responses, it really helps to know what one is talking about, unless it doesn't, ha ha!

[silver]

Sharing a segment from Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism without Beliefs:

When the restless mind is stilled, we begin to encounter what is unfolding before us.  This is both familiar and mysterious at the same time.

In one sense, we already know this world: in rare moments with nature, a lover, a work of art.  Yet it also comes without warning: when strolling down a busy street, staring at a sheet of paper on a desk, forming a pot on a wheel.  This sense of the world vanishes as suddenly as it appears.  It is something we can neither manage nor control.

When we stop fleeing birth and death, the grip of anguish is loosened and existence reveals itself as a question.  When Siddhartha encountered a person disfigured by disease, one crippled by age, a corpse, and a wandering monk,  he was not only struck by the tragedy of anguish but thrown into questioning.  Yet the questions he asked were not the sort he could stand back from, reflect on, and arrive at a rational answer to.  He realized that he himself was subject to disease, aging, and death.  The questioner was nothing other than the question itself.  The pivotal moment of human consciousness:  it becomes a question for itself.

Such a question is a mystery, not a problem.  It cannot be "solved" by meditation techniques, through the authority of a text, upon submission to the will of a guru.  Such strategies merely replace the question with beliefs in an answer. 

As this kind of question becomes clearer it becomes more puzzling too.  The understanding it generates does not provide consoling facts about the nature of life.  This questioning probes ever deeper into what is still unknown.

This guy just makes everything so clear for me. 

[stardustpilgrim]

Thanks for the recommendation of the new Stephen Batchelor book, I'll look for it. Here's an example of what I was talking about on the ATA thread, from the chapter Awareness:

I open the refrigerator to discover that I have no milk and decide to go down to the store to get some. I shut the door behind me, turn left into the street, follow the sidewalk for two blocks, turn left and left again, enter the store, snatch a carton of milk from the shelf, pay for it at the checkout, leave the store, turn right and then right again, go back along the sidewalk for two blocks, turn right, unlock the door, and go back into the kitchen.

The only evidence I have that any of this has happened is the cold carton of milk now clutched rather too firmly in my hand. As I try to reconstruct those ten vanished minutes, I recall being engrossed in memory of something S said to me yesterday that I have been shrugging off ever since. It irked me and has become lodged as a stab of disquiet somewhere in the upper part of my stomach. I can remember that as I walked along, I was absorbed in what I should have said when the remark was made and what I should say were it repeated. The exact words of my response escape me. But I recall feeling gratified by their sharp blend of insouciance and cruelty, confirmed, in my imagination, by the look of fear on S's face as he is pinned to a rough wooden floor.

As for the first chill hint of winter in the gust of the wind that sent the last withered leaves scratching along the sidewalk before me as I pulled my warn collar tight against the skin of my neck, I have no recollection. And although I was staring intently in S's direction, I failed to notice the waving arm of my friend perched on his bicycle across the street, his call and whistle, his smile as he rode off when the light turned green.

Much of our time is spent like this. As we become aware of it we begin to suspect that we are not entirely in control of our lives. ..............One of the most difficult things to remember is to remember to remember. Awareness begins with remembering what we tend to forget. .........Not only do we forget to remember, we forget that we live in a body with senses and feelings and thoughts and emotions and ideas. ..........To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is one way of snapping out of (such) fixations. It is also a reasonable definition of meditation. pages 57,58,59

Buddhism Without Beliefs, A Contemporary Guide to Awakening by Stephen Batchelor, 1998

In this example Batchelor had "blinked off" from being present as he walked along, he had disappeared into his thoughts and was virtually oblivious to his surroundings. Out of habit, he had walked this normal route, his attention in his head.

You've found some good stuff........

sdp

[silver]

That was a good share, sdp. I'm making my way through his Buddhism without Beliefs like I said, and want to share a tidbit from it!

From the chapter called Resolve:

Dharma practice starts not with belief in a transcendent reality but through embracing the anguish experienced in an uncertain world.

...Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is.  In the face of a changing world, such craving seeks consolation in something permanent and reliable, in a self that is in control of things, in a God who is in charge of destiny.  The irony of this strategy is that it turns out to be the cause of what it seeks to dispel.  In yearning for anguish to be assuaged in such ways, we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving for life to be other than it is.  We find ourselves spinning in a vicious cycle.  The more acute the anguish, the more we want to be rid of it, but the more we want to be rid of it, the more acute it gets. 

Such behavior is not just a silly mistake we can shrug off.  It is an ingrained habit, an addiction.  It persists even when we are aware of its self-destructive nature.  To counter it requires resolve of equivalent force to live in another way...what changes is resolve.

Dharma practice is founded on resolve.  This is not an emotional conversion, a devastating realization of the error of our ways, a desperate urge to be good, but an ongoing, heartfelt reflection on priorities, values, and purpose.  We need to keep taking stock of our life in an unsentimental, uncompromising way.

So far, everything I've read of his speaks to something that's being discussed somewhere here on the forum, and for me, he makes it so much clearer...I can't say it enough.  I love this guy.