Buddhism Beyond The Dalai Lama

Posted by TK Kenyon Nov 30, 2006

The Dalai Lama has written some fantastic books the last couple of years that are meant to appeal to a general, non-Buddhist audience. Among these, Ethics for the New Millennium and The Art of Happiness are some of my personal favorites. Researchers have recently found supporting evidence that several of the techniques espoused by the Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness do indeed increase satisfaction with life and general over-all happiness. I was pleased, but not surprised, to see this.

If you enjoy reading the Dalai Lama’s books intended for a lay audience, I suggest that you pick up a copy of Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephan Batchelor. It’s slim volume, less than 130 pages long, including notes. Batchelor was a Buddhist monk in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. In this book, he details a nondenominational, agnostic path to the Buddhist ideals of morality, inner peace, and compassion. He sees the essential truth of Buddhism as less of a religion that demands unreasoning beliefs than a path that anyone can follow. This is not a primer on Buddhism. Batchelor does, however, compare and contrast his philosophy with that of mainstream Buddhism.

More on Buddhism and Taoism can be found at Buddhism/Taoism at Suite 101.

Batchelor’s philosophy can be summarized in the quote by the Buddha that is the epigram for the first chapter: “Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighting evidence of with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone else’s ability of with the thought ‘The monk is our teacher.’” The point of the quote is that one should internalize teachings and understand them, not accept them because someone told you to or because you learned them by rote. Batchelor then guides the reader through his understanding of what the Buddha meant in his teachings, without demanding religious belief or suspension of disbelief.

I found one of the most interesting chapters to be the brief essay on the matter of reincarnation, In it, Batchelor discusses that all world religions are not united by a belief in God (or a god, or the gods,) but in a belief in life after death. In the Indian tradition, the goal of religion is to be liberated from the anguished compulsive cycle of death and rebirth. Many Indians consider it odd that Westerners find the concept of reincarnation to be consoling and beneficial. Batchelor places reincarnation in historical and cultural context and offers the reader the idea that belief in reincarnation is not mandatory to follow Buddhist teachings.

TK Kenyon