[Buddha-l] FW: Stephen Batchelor --video--seminars on Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Apr 23, 2010, at 2:37 PM, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> Does anyone know why Batchelor broke with Goenka?

This question is approximately like asking about someone who has taken a one-week vacation in Canada why they broke with Canada. As you noted, Batchelor attended only one Goenka retreat, which hardly constitutes enough of a relationship to warrant calling the end of that relationship a break. Thousands of people go on only one Goenka retreat and yet continue to do that practice for the rest of their lives. Would you say of all of them that they broke with Goenka?

If you want a full account, of course, the best thing to do is to read Batchelor's latest book, in which he talks about the period of his life in which he attended a Goenka retreat. If I recall properly, he was still a monk in the Dge-lugs order at the time and was growing disenchanted with the dogmatism of scholastic Buddhism. He had found that Tibetan meditative practices did not speak to his condition, partly because he could not buy into the premises on which the meditative exercises were founded. He heard about Goenka and went to a retreat and found the practices taught there very effective. That experience led eventually to his leaving the Dge-lugs order, after which he became attracted to the practices taught by Kusan Sunim, whose style of meditation had a lot in common with the vipassanā as taught by Goenka.

> It seems strange that Batchelor never actually 
> studied seriously with the one "Buddhist" (if you consider Goenka 
> Buddhist) teacher whose teaching he actually approves of.

It is not so strange when you consider that he found a Buddhist monastic setting in Korea that satisfied him in all the ways the Goenka setting had satisfied him. He still has very high regard for Kusan Sunim (so it is not quite true to say that Goenka is the one Buddhist whose teaching he approves of, since it ignores the enormous esteem he has for the Buddha himself, Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti, Śāntideva and Kusan). Batchelor says he would have stayed with Kusan Sunim. Unfortunately, Sunim died, and at that time it was impossible to find another Korean Son master who was willing to work with non-Korean-speaking disciples.

What Batchelor liked about both the Korean Son setting and the Goenka retreat he attended was the lack of dogmatism and the strong focus on being mindful of one's own body and mind. While eschewing those Buddhist dogmas that have no real basis in reason or experience, Batchelor has always felt indebted to Buddhism and thinks it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that the teachings (specifically, the four noble truths, dependent origination and the precepts) of the Buddha have been the sole focus of his adult life. When one has literally spent every day of one's life studying and teaching and practicing Buddhism, what on earth else could he possibly call himself but a Buddhist?

Joanna Kirkpatrick has commented before on Western people who have trained in Buddhist settings and who later claim that they feel uncomfortable applying the label "Buddhist" to themselves. (Toni Packer is one such person who comes to mind, and there are no doubt several others whose names are perhaps better known.) Batchelor is a refreshing departure from that trend. He is someone who has taken the bait without swallowing it hook, line and sinker. (Those with delicate constitutions will, I hope, forgive me for the barbarous fishing metaphor.)

Richard