[Buddha-l] Shamatha book--clarification

[Timothy Smith]

Well said, Franz.  I have found Batchelor to be a valued companion on  
my own path.  Not being a good 'believer' myself, I find
growth sustaining teachings that lean toward the agnostic more  
palatable than those that insist on a 'way'.  It also helps that
I don't believe there is a 'there' there, but rather, as a buddhist  
image of the lotus suggests, a continued unfolding.  The courage
to strive on without belief seems the greatest of all to me.

T
Timothy Smith
Wheelwright Associates
www.wheelwrightassoc.com

On May 24, 2007, at 10:21 AM, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> Curt et al.,
>
> Curt wrote,
>
>> There is nothing "courageous" about Batchelor's agnosticism.
>
> It mystifies me how you could consider that powerful, clear, and  
> unflinching passage you quote from Batchelor as not courageous.  
> Batchelor is admitting the possibility--painful and arduous as it  
> is--of growing and changing as we age. And that means he's  
> challenging himself to continue that journey. He's calling his  
> years as monk an act of "dressing up." Can you imagine how hard  
> that is? And, in this act, in this process, he's not naively  
> denying those phases, he's not splitting. Indeed, he invokes Freud  
> himself as support for the depth and nuance of this hard growth.  
> (But then I suppose you don't consider Freud courageous, either.)  
> And now he's not merely facing the fact that what he reviled is, in  
> fact, deep and vital; he's actually *using* it to critically better  
> himself and the culture he sprung from.
>
> If you don't think all this takes courage, I can't imagine what you  
> think does.
>
> Thank you for the beautiful excerpt. You may not have liked it, but  
> I certainly did. We never know just how we're going to spread the  
> dharma.
>
> Franz
>
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