[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 16-05-10 02:54, Zelders.YH schreef:
> Joanna wrote :
>
>    
>> So has anyone here read Batchelor's latest book yet--I read it and
>> hope for a discussion.
>> Anyone? Herman?
>> Joanna
>>      
> OK.  First, I like Batchelor, and I find his 'Confession of a
> Buddhist Atheist' quite interesting. I read it a couple of weeks ago
> and this is the gist of what I got from it.
> The book contains an autobiographical sketch with some new facts, a
> virtual biography (nice !) of the Buddha in which B. presents some
> little known data from the commentarial literature, and an attempt at
> a construction of what might be called a critical buddhist
> existentialism, in which the notion of causality is crucial.
> There is of course causally conditioned existence, analyzed by the
> Buddha as the pratityasamutpada, then there are the Four Noble Truths
> that together form a causal chain in themselves, and there is the
> Noble Eightfold Path, again a causal chain acc. to B. . There seems
> to be nothing outside of conditioned existence in B.'s thinking. The
> notion of the 'Unconditioned'  as a possible escape from conditioned
> existence is done away with.
> Awakening, liberation, or what shall we call it, is a kind of
> paradoxical freedom found within conditioned existence by using
> causality - (against itself I nearly wrote) - in a more intelligent
> way, following the Buddha's core teaching.  B. suggests that this
> reading comes close to the Buddha's original intentions. All this
> without ideas like karma and reincarnation. Certain spontaneous
> enlightening experiences (let's not call them mystical) may
> strenghten one's sense of direction. "Transcendence" - for lack of a
> better word -  is found in raw amazement ; why is there something and
> not nothing. 'Emptiness' is nothing but an empty abstraction and a
> notion like 'Original Mind' is a confusing phantasy.
>
Hi Herman,
do I detect a trace of naive realism in SB or is it just analytical 
philosophy? Causality has a very bad press in existential and 
phenomenological circles, even in Stoic ones for that matter.

erik