The
critiques of Bhikkhu Punnadhammo, Bhikkhu Bodhi, and Sangharakshita provide
three different perspectives of Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs.
All three men are Western Dharma teachers, yet whereas Punnadhammo and
Bodhi are part of the Theravadin tradition, Sangharakshita is the founder of a
non-sectarian Western Buddhist Order. All
three feel that Batchelor has discarded too much tradition, yet the Bhikkhus
express more discomfort with this, perhaps due to their orthodox practice.
I have chosen these three critiques because they are the strongest voices
of opposition to Buddhism Without Beliefs.
Despite the fact that they are directed specifically towards only one
text of Batchelor’s, they also apply to Alone with Others and The
Faith to Doubt, as it is in these books that the seeds of Buddhism
Without Beliefs are found.
Bhikkhu Punnadhammo is the resident monk of the Arrow River Community
Centre, a Theravadin Buddhist monastery and meditation centre located in
Northern Ontario, Canada. He has
been a practicing Buddhist since 1979 and was ordained in 1990 into the forest
tradition of Ajahn Chah. He lived
in Thailand between 1990 and 1995, at which time he returned to Canada to assume
responsibilities at the Arrow River Centre.
The primary point of contention directed by Punnadhammo against Buddhism
Without Beliefs is that Batchelor places Buddhism into a post-Enlightenment,
scientific, Western framework. Punnadhammo concedes that it is necessary to confront the
tensions that exist between pre-modern Asian and contemporary Western values,
yet he takes issue with Batchelor’s approach to this challenge.
Punnadhammo claims that Batchelor is very much a product of the
Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and the scientific revolutions, and
that he “takes this complex of values as primary.”
Yet according to Punnadhammo it is Western values, not Buddhism, which
should be questioned and modified throughout the process of cultural exchange
and integration. Punnadhammo
expresses shock and dismay that “a Buddhist writer can so readily dismiss the
ancient wisdom of tradition and so decisively claim the superiority of modern
materialist philosophy.”
Punnadhammo labels Batchelor a scientific materialist.
Although he does not explicitly define this term, he implies that a
scientific materialist is one who believes only in the concrete, material world,
and rejects the possibility of supernatural or metaphysical phenomena.
As well, according to Punnadhammo, “any doctrine of materialism must
have an implied self-view.”
In this respect, he claims that scientific materialism is fundamentally
incompatible with the Buddhist doctrine of not-self, and thus it violates and
denigrates the Dharma. Punnadhammo
also equates agnosticism with materialism since it refuses to accept the
validity of doctrine that is beyond rational or scientific explanation or
demonstration. Thus, because Batchelor is a self-proclaimed agnostic who
questions doctrines of karma, rebirth, and enlightenment, Punnadhammo considers
him to be a scientific materialist.
According to Punnadhammo, Batchelor’s agnostic and scientific
materialist stance has caused him to fundamentally misinterpret the Dharma.
Firstly, Punnadhammo claims, “when we set our own reason upon a
pedestal and denigrate the enlightenment of the Buddha with our skepticism, we
can create our own false Dharma in service to the desires.”
In other words, humans are pedestalized when only the material world is
validated and all things non-scientific questioned.
The self becomes of primary importance and all other things are then
evaluated only in terms of how useful they are to the self.
Punnadhammo claims that too much faith and confidence is placed in human
exploration and explanation. Human
reason is elevated to an ultimate status at the expense of supernatural forces
or imaginings.
Punnadhammo asserts that
Batchelor’s perspective on rebirth illustrates this pedestalization of the
self and denigration of the Dharma. In
stating that the Buddha’s teaching of rebirth was simply a product of the
Indian worldview during the time in which he lived, Punnadhammo claims that
Batchelor asserts “the modern materialist worldview is superior to the
metaphysical understanding of ancient India.”
According to Punnadhammo, this is a trivialization and a dismissal of
both the importance of the doctrine of rebirth and the intelligence of the
Buddha. Other aspects of the Indian
worldview, such as the caste system and the belief in atman, were challenged by
the Buddha; thus, there is no reason to believe that he did not give serious
thought to the issue of rebirth. According
to Punnadhammo, to claim that he did not take seriously the doctrine of rebirth
is “a trivialization of the Buddha’s enlightenment.”
To be a Buddhist means to have faith in the intelligence and the powers
of the Buddha and the teachings that he espoused.
Another consequence of the rejection of rebirth, according to Punnadhammo,
is that it entails a partial rejection of Buddhist ethics.
The Buddha taught the doctrines of karma and rebirth largely so that our
actions would have consequences within and beyond this world and thus create
incentive for ethical action. If,
like Batchelor, “one bases one’s view on materialist assumptions of
annihilation after death, where is the motivation to wrestle with the
profoundest issues?”
According to Batchelor’s model, says Punnadhammo, not only does ethical
action become irrelevant, so does general Dharma practice.
Nirvana, the ceasing of the rounds of rebirth and the goal of Buddhist
practice, becomes irrelevant. Not
only are doctrines of karma and rebirth being dismissed, but so is
enlightenment, the very crux of Buddhist practice.
According to Punnadhammo, “what is most unfortunate about the
materialist view is that it precludes any possibility of enlightenment.”
By negating the mystical powers of the Buddha, Punnadhammo feels that
Batchelor has degraded enlightenment into something “mundane” and
this-worldly.
It is clear that Punnadhammo is alarmed by the prospect of the Dharma
being re-interpreted to the point of obliteration.
Punnadhammo claims, “while it is true that the Buddha exhorted us not
to cling to any views, including those of his teaching, and to investigate
reality for ourselves, these directives are not by any means the whole of his
teaching.”
Punnadhammo feels that although Batchelor is trying to make the Dharma
relevant to modern Westerners, the entire endeavor can quickly becomes
irrelevant if re-interpreted to the point of obscurity.
It would be tragic if this were to happen, says Punnadhammo, for “it is
precisely the ancient wisdom of Buddhism that is missing from the Western
world”.
These ancient teachings must be respected, rather than corrupted by the
“arrogant pride of modern times.”
Instead of one-sidedly critiquing only Buddhism, says Punnadhammo,
Batchelor should devote some of his energies to examining and critiquing the
Western tradition from which he emerged.
Like Bhikkhu Punnadhammo, Bhikkhu Bodhi is also a spiritual leader in the
Theravadin community. Born in New
York in 1944, Bodhi received a B.A. in philosophy from Brooklyn College and a
Ph.D. in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School.
He was ordained in Sri Lanka in 1972.
He is the author, editor and translator of many books on Theravada
Buddhism, his most recent two being The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha
(1995) and The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (2000).
Perhaps because he comes from the same school of Buddhism as Bhikkhu
Punnadhammo, Bhikkhu Bodhi directs similar criticisms at Buddhism Without
Beliefs. Like Punnadhammo,
Bodhi feels that Batchelor is compromising the Dharma for the sake of upholding
Western secular values. While Bodhi
states that Batchelor’s book is an “eloquent attempt to articulate the
premise of the emerging secular Buddhism”,
he feels that Batchelor has discarded too much tradition in his attempt to
“make the Dharma viable in our present sceptical age.”
Bodhi admits that he approaches Batchelor’s book from an orthodox
perspective. In discussing
Batchelor’s view that mindfulness practice initiates a radical questioning of
all aspects of life, Bodhi states: “For one like myself, nurtured on the Pali
texts, this seems a bizarre conception of ‘Dharma practice’.”
According to Bodhi, the Buddha taught that “insight meditation leads to
direct knowledge of the true nature of things”,
rather than to incessant questioning and doubt. Bodhi also takes issue with Batchelor’s obvious bias
against Buddhist orthodoxy. While
Bodhi concedes that “orthodoxy and creativity have had an uneasy
relationship” he claims that “[Batchelor is] viewing Buddhist orthodoxy as a
mirror image of Western faiths”.
Orthodoxy, according to Bodhi, is not incompatible with creativity and
contemplation, and it has done much to encourage, rather than to suppress, the
Dharma. According to Bodhi, “when the secular presuppositions of
modernity clash with the basic principles of Right Understanding stressed by the
Buddha, there is no question which of the two must be abandoned.”
He feels that Batchelor chooses in favor of secular values, and the
result of such concessions is that Buddhism is deteriorating into
“psychologically oriented humanism”
rather than strengthening its position as an ancient tradition with beliefs and
rituals.
As well as finding fault with Batchelor’s disregard of tradition, Bodhi
is also critical of Batchelor’s rejection of belief. Whereas Batchelor asserts that the Four Noble Truths are not
statements to believe in but injunctions to act upon, Bodhi claims, “in order
to act upon the truths, one has to believe them.”
While this argument could be made regarding any set of actions, Bodhi
feels they hold particular truth for the Four Noble Truths because “the tasks
imposed by the truths acquire their meaning from a specific context, namely, the
quest for liberation and the vicious rounds of rebirth.”
In other words, Bodhi claims that if one denies both the samsara of
rebirth as well as the nirvana of enlightenment then the Four Noble Truths bear
no meaning. What is the point of
acting upon something that is meaningless?
In order for our actions to effect change either within oneself or in the
world, they must possess meaning that is gained only from context and belief.
According to Bodhi, “dukkha
really means the suffering of repeated becoming in the round of rebirths; thus,
once one dismisses the idea of rebirth, the Four Noble Truths lose their depth
and scope.”
Bodhi directs a similar criticism towards Batchelor’s agnosticism.
He states, “to subject [Buddhist doctrine] to an insistent agnostic
questioning, as Batchelor proposes, is to derail one’s practice from the
start.”
Bodhi explains that the Buddha taught an Eightfold Path that begins with
right view and ends with right meditation.
Only once these stages have been passed through are they no longer
useful. Their inherent emptiness,
while perhaps understood intellectually from the start, cannot be used as an
excuse to remain on the shore.
Bodhi asserts that beginning the path with an attitude of questioning,
and as such disregarding the principles that make up the path, is to abandon the
raft before one has even set foot in the water.
Both shores appear similar yet there is a whole ocean separating the
perspectives of one who is beginning and one who is completing the path.
One cannot simply remain on the comfort of the first shore and claim to
have reached the other side. There
must be movement, and a path to lead one through that movement.
Bodhi claims that Batchelor, with his call for the incessant questioning
of Buddhist principles, is doing a disservice to practitioners who wish to make
progress on the path to enlightenment. Moreover,
he claims that Batchelor’s agnosticism dismisses entirely the possibility of
enlightenment, and “nullifies its lacerative power.”
As such, the possibility of overcoming the confusion and suffering that
is so prevalent in contemporary Western societies is jeopardized.
Bodhi claims, “today a vast cloud of moral and spiritual confusion
hangs over humankind, and Batchelor’s agnostic Dharma practice seems to me a
very weak antidote indeed.”
As well as dismissing
enlightenment, Bodhi also claims that Batchelor’s agnosticism dismisses
ethics. Bodhi states, “Batchelor
makes no mention of any code of moral rules, not even the Five Precepts”
and although he discusses moral integrity “it remains questionable to me
whether this alone, without concrete guidelines, is a sufficient basis for
ethics.”
In other words, Bodhi feels that Batchelor’s emphasis on existentialism
and personal responsibility is not as effective as concrete ethical rules.
According to him, moral behavior does not simply arise spontaneously; a
society that desires order and peace requires guidelines
2.3) Urgyen
Sangharakshita
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