I suppose that with a name like Dookie I should steer clear of making a bit of fun about pen names, assumed names and suchlike. To a certain extent Buddhism had monastic origins and it seems the done thing in monasteries to give new names to people when they joined up. Out with the old and in with the new, or something like that.
Whatever, way back I picked up a rather thick book "A Survey of Buddhism" and it was by a guy called Sangarakshita. Here was the real McCoy I thought, the Dharma straight from the horses mouth so to speak. About half way through the book I found out that Sangarakshita was in fact Dennis Lingwood from Romford. Which was a bit of a bummer at the time - nothing against Romford of course, it has a fine market, but the idea of "eastern promise" and authenticity tended to fade just a bit.
It did not end there. I found that Nyanaponika Thera was Sigmund Feniger, Wei Wu Wei was Terence Gray and virtually all of the Kenshu's, Red Pines etc were in fact various Toms, Dicks and Harrys who had perhaps never been further east than Watford.
One exception to all this is Stephen Batchelor, who just happens to be one of my favorite writers on the Dharma.
He would be well entitled to such nom de plumes as Padmasambhāva or Milarepa, having been educated in part in the east, after being born in Dundee in Scotland. But no, he insists that he is just plain old Stephen Batchelor. He writes much on so called "agnostic" or secular Buddhism, and he comes in for a lot of stick on some Buddhist forums for his agnostic attitude towards such Buddhist teachings as karma and rebirth. Me, I think it is just fine. Reading his many books he actually often links his way of seeing things to the fundamental, core Theravada texts.
Anyway, a few tasters from Stephen Batchelor:-
Dharma (Buddhist) practice requires the courage to confront what it means to be human. All the pictures we entertain of heaven and hell or cycles of rebirth serve to replace the unknown with an image of what is already known. To cling to the idea of rebirth can deaden questioning.
Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.
I think this is well put.......especially an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.
More:-
The purpose of the Buddha’s teaching is not to resolve doubts about the nature of “reality” by providing answers to various conundrums but to offer a practice that will remove the “arrow” of reactivity, thereby restoring practitioners’ health and enabling them to flourish here on earth.
In another of his books, "Buddhism Without Beliefs" he points to the possibility of genuine freedom of mind. After speaking of a pseudo integrity that responds to a moral dilemma only by repeating the gestures and words of a parent, an authority figure or a religious text, he writes:-
( we sometimes act ).... in a way that startles us. A friend asks our advice about a tricky moral choice. Yet instead of offering him consoling platitudes or the wisdom of someone else, we say something that we did not know we knew. Such gestures and words spring from body and tongue with shocking spontaneity. We cannot call them "mine" but neither have we copied them from others. Compassion has dissolved the stranglehold of self. And we taste, for a few exhilarating seconds, the creative freedom of awakening.
I think we can often look to Religion for comfort, for answers, yet Stephen Bachelor actually links his entire approach to Suttas found in the oldest texts of thecTheravada tradition. Such as......
So you should you train yourself: “in the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed, only the sensed; in that of which I am conscious, only that of which I am conscious.” This is how you should train."
(UDĀNA)
But most want more. Will always want more. Will seek to justify whatever more they use to justify themselves by the descent into wars and inquisitions; greed, hatred and ignorance.
Stephen Batchelor begins his book "After Buddhism" with reference to one of the earliest records of the Buddha's own method of discourse:-
A well-known story recounts that Gotama — the Buddha — was once staying in Jeta’s Grove, his main center near the city of Sāvatthi, capital of the kingdom of Kosala. Many priests, wanderers, and ascetics were living nearby. They are described as people “of various beliefs and opinions, who supported themselves by promoting their different views.” The text enumerates the kinds of opinions they taught:
The world is eternal.
The world is not eternal.
The world is finite.
The world is not finite.
Body and soul are identical.
Body and soul are different.
The Buddha exists after death.
The Buddha does not exist after death.
The Buddha both exists and does not exist after death.
The Buddha neither exists nor does not exist after death.
They took these opinions seriously. “Only this is true,” they would insist. “Every other view is false!” As a result, they fell into endless arguments, “wounding each other with verbal darts, saying ‘The dharma is like this!’ ‘The dharma is not like that!’”
The Buddha commented that such people were blind. “They do not know what is of benefit and what is of harm,” he explained. “They do not understand what is and what is not the dharma.” He had no interest at all in their propositions. Unconcerned whether such views were true or false, he sought neither to affirm nor to reject them. “A proponent of the dharma,” he once observed, “does not dispute with anyone in the world.” Whenever a metaphysical claim of this kind was made, Gotama did not react by getting drawn in and taking sides. He remained keenly alert to the complexity of the whole picture without opting for one position over another.
As I see it Stephen Bachelor points truly towards the Middle Way, which is not a position between two extremes (Annihilationism and Eternalism for instance ) but more a "no-position" that supercedes all positions, a living truth that can only be lived, not thought. A life where our past does not dictate our present, or our future. We remain open to the unfolding of Reality around us, a constant advance into novelty.
All this relates for me with my own Pure Land path, where Faith (shinjin) is salvation. Faith as the opposite of belief.
Well, a good helping of waffle today. It is my Oxfam afternoon and I have a burger as well as a coffee in McDonalds beforehand. A bit more time.
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