After Buddhism

Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

By: Stephen Batchelor

Narrated by: Stephen Batchelor

Some 25 centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha's teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent, ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age.

After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha's inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose perpetual survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today's globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha's vision of human flourishing.

©2015 Stephen Batchelor (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

must listen for all traditions

Excellent review of the historical Buddha. In addition, this book is invaluable for a deeper, or new, understanding of layordination and/or the western practice of Buddhism in general.

Spirituality sans the dogma

Great representation of the Buddha's teachings without leaning to heavily on the dogmatic/religious side of Buddhism. Provides a path to spiritual understanding that leaves out the ritual.

great history lesson and insightful

loved the historical analysis. a lot of detail and logical in it's presentation. Nirvana inspiring!

informative... but, slow and complicated...

although it is difficult to fully grasp in one listen, this book is very informative.

Fascinating dive into Buddhism and it's history

The author did a very thorough study of what is in the original Buddhist writings and how it may have come about. The intertwining of teaching and political strife of the day was a heavy doze of realism that I feel we badly lack when it comes to talking and thinking about anything religious.

He also explains very well what Buddhist practice is from a rational and secular perspective. As a practitioner I found a lot of the book helpful to my own spirituality. Listening to it added good fuel to how I approach it.

At the same time I believe that some of the book was based on not much more than speculation. Bachelor is obviously trying to build a foundation for his world view, which is liberal, secular and purely rational, devoid of any mystery or the Divine. He constructs multiple arguments for why the passages in the ancient texts that do not fit that worldview are to be neglected or interpreted differently than they appear. In that sense the book functions as apologetics.

Great synopsis

This is a great summary of early Buddhism during the time of the Buddha. Very insightful

Such a deep and thorough explanation

This is the kind of book that clarifies the subject. You learn things You didn’t know you didn’t know. There were questions about Buddhism I never thought to ask.
This book answered those questions. Questions about the early disciples and information about the evolution of the practice. Stephen batchelor covers all of it.

You won't think of Buddhism the same afterward

Secular "Buddhism" is the future. The culmination of painstaking research, critical analysis, and compelling reorientation of a contemporary culture rooted in an ancient past, here Batchelor refines and elucidates the principles taught by the historical Buddha, separating them from the religious hierarchy that ensued and pointing out where Indian Brahmin culture crept in - forging the largely erroneous modern understanding of Buddhism as received in the West during the 19th and 20th centuries. The author crystallizes some of the ideas in his previous work, Buddhism Without Belief, and ensures the listener understands that the real-life historical Buddha was a human being with no special claim to some hidden realm of 'truth,' but rather a man who saw himself as a healer, akin to a medical doctor. That man in ancient India chose to share a way of seeing life that could ease suffering and build the foundation for individual happiness, yes, but also a vibrant society or community, right here and now - not in some afterlife or reincarnation. By examining the lives of the Buddha's immediate acquaintances and contemporaries, replete with political ambitions, ethical challenges, and social pressures, Batchelor reveals a man who lived into his eighties in a particular geographic and social context, but whose teachings today challenge the now-ossified religious orthodoxies which have developed through the centuries and have become conflated with those teachings. The author manages to be respectful of these traditions while pointing out where they diverge from what is known in the ancient available texts and translations. The result is a new opportunity for modern Western civilizations to embrace a non-religious and truly secular path to improvement which Batchelor convincingly contends was,and is, the genuine set of insights offered by the historical Buddha.

A practical approach to history's prime pragmatist

Thank you for breathing life into the teaching, Mr Batchelor. I truly appreciate your work and it's contribution to my practice. May you be troubled only by the anxieties inherent in having a body and being in the world and be free of all other anxieties. I will return to this work again in the future.

A contextual view of the Buddha.

A bit long and occasionally prone to idiosyncratic interpretations of the Dhamma, I recommend this presentation of the principles and practices of these teachings.