I really appreciate this interview, as well as all of the great comments on it. Thanks so much. Questions of reincarnation aside, I also appreciated Batchelor's discussion of the historical Buddha in Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. I have never felt comfortable with the mythic biography of the Buddha. placing the Buddha in historical and social, and even class context, does so much to bring him and his life closer to me, to my understanding of his teachings as a very human and grounded experience.
JV

Thanks for this article. It is sad to realize that those boys are already each in their own special place of hell. Only compassion (both from others toward them, and from them toward others and themselves) will get them out of it.