Secular Dharma

[Kaishin]

More from Stephen Batchelor on "Secular Dharma" on the latest Secular Buddhist podcast:

http://secularbuddhism.org/2017/03/05/episode-270-stephen-batchelor-secular-buddhism-imagining-the-dharma-in-an-uncertain-world/

See also:

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?13900-Secular-Buddhist-Podcast-Jundo-Religious-Secular-Buddhism-The-Best-of-All-Worlds

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?14852-Our-Next-Book-Selection-A-New-Buddhist-Path-by-David-Loy

(I looked/searched and hadn't seen this posted yet. My apologies if someone already did.)

-satToday

[Risho]

ah cool - thanks Kaishin!

Gassho,

Risho
-sattoday

[Jundo]

I just listened. Thank you, Kaishin.

I will say that I am (and remain) a big fan of many of his views (e.g., I am also a skeptic of overly literal and detailed models of "rebirth"), but I also consider that he has recently thrown the baby out with the bath in some important ways.

- His effort to determine the essential "what the Buddha originally taught" by stripping away any doctrine that happens to be shared with Brahmanism and the like, a bit like trying to find the true "human being" by amputating any part we happen generally to share with a cat.

- His desire to turn Buddhism primarily into a system of ethics, leaving out many more transcendent elements that are quite valuable and defensible.

(David Loy's book does not make these mistakes, by the way).

Also, although he was both a Tibetan and a Korean Zen monk for a time, he practiced a very intense form of Korean Rinzai Zen that seems to have left him with a particularly narrow view of what "Zen" is sometimes.

Otherwise, he is to be celebrated as someone who has done so much to bring this Path out of superstition and the dark ages in many ways, if you ask me.

If anyone would like to hear more of my pontificating on Mr. Batchelor, here is my review of his recent book before this one.

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?14082-Stephen-Batchelor-s-After-Buddhism&p=174093&viewfull=1#post174093

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Washin]

Timely thread... (finishing his 'After Buddhism' these days)
Thank you, Kaishin and Jundo for the links and comment

Gassho
Washin
sattoday

[Laurent]

I don't really buy the Secular Buddhist concept because Buddhism cannot be cut into pieces independently of one another. Someone said that Buddhism is a philosophy, Buddhism is a religion, and Buddhism is a science of mind (ok it's the Dalai Lama, he's not a zen follower but I agree with him on this^^). The point in here is that Buddhism = philosophy + religion + science of mind, and not Buddhism = philosophy or religion or science of mind. Everything is intertwined.

I also find it a bit too easy to think that we can remove all the cultural content/system of beliefs without adding our own cultural content/system of beliefs. It starts from a point of view assuming that they were "superstitious" and we're not, but why our mind would work differently than theirs? Why to assume that science isn't a system of beliefs but the rest is, and therefore by replacing an old cultural content by a "rational scientific" point of view we are secularizing something? In the end, why holding to a dualistic point of view?

Of course it's only an opinion on the concept of Secular Buddhism, I haven't investigated all the content, and I don't think he's wrong on everything . Moreover I really agree to the DT Suzuki point of view that Buddhism needs adaptation each time it enters a new culture in the same way it changed along the way from Northern India to Japan.

[Jishin]

IMG_0008.JPGIMG_0009.JPG

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[RichardH]

It might be a bit iffy commenting on Stephen Batchelor because it has been a long time since reading his books, and he may have since changed. The clear sense I got at the time, and about "secular" Buddhism in general, was that, it seemed, his practice had not gone deeper than his view. You could say he was once a monk, so surely it was deep, but that is not necessarily true. Thoughts are subtle, and views are like a subtle warpfield bending the light. In practice, if views truly cease, you still have them when they reappear, and you may be very passionate about them, but there is also an ineffable realization beyond birth and death that has no view preceeding it, and no ground beneath it.

My sense from Batchelor's writings was that his "no view" track along the "middle" was resting on top of materialist assumptions/views that were hidden "behind the eye" so to speak. If he has gone on to throw the baby out with the bath water it would not be surprising.

But again I have not read a lot of "secular Buddhism" for a while... and may be missing something.

I grew up in home that was both "Jewish" and "Christian" but that had no actual religious sensibility. The real religion was the all-pervading view that was, literally, the world I knew. It involved a rejection of religious myth and make-belief, coupled with an unconscious assumption that the "real" was the atomistic, clockwork, materialism, somehow unchanged since the time of Newton, that did not see "subject" truth and "object" truth as two sides of one (coinless) coin, but simply reduced the former to the latter. It was the bleak materialism that had the taste of being exiled from a home you never had. Does that taste sound familiar ? My guess is that is the feeling tone of many bewildered lives. That view, which in recent decades has tried to "rise" to a perception transcendent union through loose interpretations of modern field physics and the broader implications of relativity, is the background of the secular Buddhist movement. That is how it looks to these eyes at any rate. The current conflict between "science" and "religion" is a bleak choice between Make Believe and baseless Materialist Realism, and It seems that many in the secular Buddhist movement have simply picked sides.

Gasho
Daizan

Sat today

Please do take my view with a grain of salt.

[Bokusei]

Personally I find his non religious interpretation of the dharma engaging. To someone who has an ingrained aversion to the trappings of orthodox faith (blame several years in a catholic school for that one) his secular approach is liberating.

It was through Batchelor's writing that I was able to overcome my prejudices and move beyond reading about Buddhism and trying to practice it instead. It was the key that unlocked the door.

I am not an academic of Buddhism, nor am I a practitioner with decades of experience. Perhaps with the insight either of these attributes might afford I would feel differently. But as a fairly ignorant lay person, stumbling along the path, I am grateful for the secularised interpretation of the dharma. After all, it was this that lead me here, to this wonderful sangha.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk