Ah, a very subtle point/observation. Thanks for sharing!

but I think gentleness makes all the difference in the world.

How true! I like your use of the word "gentle." Being gentle to oneself, being easy on oneself makes the investigation a lot smoother. On the other hand, in the absence of gentleness, one is prone to all kinds of affliction - "Why can't I get this right?", "I have been practicing for quite sometime; so, why is this hard so often?"

Terrific article! I love this:

I could not mitigate or make my experience paramount by comparing it to the experience of others. More importantly, I was applying no true antidote via this practice. It was more like sending myself a daily greeting card that said ‘You’re life might suck, but somebody else would love to be you!’

Time and again, we distract ourselves so much with so many things/thoughts because anxiety is just too painful to investigate. But, once the investigation begins, slowly but surely one experiences great relief - an "unloading", if you will.

It is pretty evident what the Dharma is: The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path! By the way, Batchelor's interpretation of the Four Noble Truths might rile you up: Craving is the effect of suffering, not its cause. Take that, traditional dogma! :-)

Anyway, I hope all this is not causing any misgiving between you and me. I understand that you genuinely care about the Dharma and how it is interpreted and that you would not like to see it sullied in any form. That in itself is an extremely admirable attitude. Handshake? :-)

but buddhism is a welcoming religion

It seems like you have a rosy view of the Religion ( I am not talking about the Dharma) called Buddhism. Are you not aware of what Buddhists can do with the Religion? Are you not aware that they can use that very religion to justify just about anything including killing? Just examine the history of some Asian Buddhist countries a little closely to know what I mean.

Batchelor is trying to "extract" the Dharma out of the Religion called Buddhism. If Buddhism is to develop and make progress in the modern world, then it can't do so with many of the eastern cultural trappings. Already, from what I can see, western Buddhism in all its forms is very different from the eastern forms. A minor example: if I were in India, then I would be expected to offer my obeisance in front of some big Buddhist meditation master. In the US, if I met Jack Kornfield, I would probably just shake his hands and say hello!

You are being unfair to Batchelor when you say that he "insists that the aspects that he likes are actually what the Buddha meant to teach, and everything else is a later corruption." If this debate was about what someone liked or not, it would be utterly pointless. This debate is about thoroughly examining the so called "central teachings of Buddhism" (to borrow your words) and finding if they really cohere, if they are really consistent. I hardly see Batchelor making any philosophical leap.

If everyone is utterly annihilated at death, why would anyone even bother with any of this? To achieve a modest reduction in suffering during the short interval before obliteration? Why bother?

It is not my place to tell anyone what the Buddha taught. You are well-versed in the teachings. But, the above notion regarding annihilation is what the Buddha repeatedly taught to guard oneself against. If one is not very careful, then one is just one step away from advocating eternalism, the second view that the Buddha repeatedly tells us to guard against. If you examine the quote even more carefully, you will see how eerily it is similar to many Christians (not all) who say things like, "If there is no God, then what is the point of or basis to morality?" To them, the good life is inconceivable without a being called God. In your case, the "being" is somewhat more abstract: without Rebirth, why would anyone care to practice Buddhism and live the good life? To me, the question is, why not? Batchelor offers enough good reasons for how and why one could practice Buddhism in this very life. Really, there is no need to fall into the annihilation/eternalism trap.

Since Vince will be locking this thread tonight, I am not sure if we can have an extended debate on this one. Nevertheless, I must point out some of the misrepresentations that a few people seem to be harboring about Batchelor's "thesis." In fact, Batchelor is offering us two variants of his thesis. The strong version, if you will, basically states that the theory of reincarnation - and let us be clear that no one has any clue whatsoever on what a theory of reincarnation is supposed to incorporate except that some out-of-body experiences and apparent recollection of past lives are offered as support - is not consistent with the doctrine of no-self; the former contradicts the latter! The milder version of Batchelor's thesis states that one can talk meaningfully about and practice Buddhism without taking recourse to the theory of reincarnation, which merely, plays a secondary and supporting role to the theory of karma. Such a position has several obvious practical (and metaphysical) benefits that I won't go into, for Batchelor does a good job of explicating them. I, for one, think that it is possible to practice Buddhism while believing in reincarnation, but it just isn't healthy metaphysics. When we can get rid of "clutter", why not do it? Occam's Razor, anyone?

Anyway, what contemporary academics think are the central teachings of Buddhism is not germane to this debate. What's important is how all the supposed central teachings cohere with each other. In other words, appeal to "authority" is not what we would like to inject into this debate. Rather, we must weigh all the arguments on our own using the best possible science we have today.

Batchelor has framed this debate, by the way, in a manner that's based on the Pali Canon. Of course, many people are not happy with his interpretations - and the Pali Canon, experts agree, is known to contain stuff that's clearly post-Buddha - but does anyone doubt that his source is the Pali Canon? I would like to know.

Vince, thanks for having Stephen Batchelor on BG! It is always nice to hear someone talk about Buddha and Buddhism from a rational perspective that's actually coherent. I was born into a Buddhist/Hindu family in India but could never find myself to believe in many of the metaphysical trappings/doctrines of the religion. I rediscovered Buddhism only in the West and that too after a prolonged immersion in the western rational (analytic) tradition. Had I come across Batchelor's talks even earlier, such a rediscovery would surely have been expedited! What I find astounding and hard to believe is the fact that so many Westerners seem to be so heavily invested in the doctrine of reincarnation that without it Buddhism, to them, seems almost inconceivable! The theory of Karma in conjunction with the doctrine of reincarnation and that of no-self, in the past, created so many metaphysical problems that a good part of the Madhyamaka tradition spent considerable effort in reconciling all three of those tenets, only to create even bigger metaphysical problems. Many people evidently, due to a clear lack of an understanding of the historical development of various Buddhist ideas, seem unable to appreciate what Batchelor is really trying to communicate. Seems like all practice and no historical understanding skews the mind as much as all knowledge and very little practice does!

Vidarshana, the consensus amongst contemporary Buddhist scholars is that the Buddha probably taught in Magadhi but no one knows definitively which language really. Pali came much later, and in fact, we do know that the Pali Canon was compiled at least a couple of hundred years after the Buddha's death. There is also evidence (for instance, through morphological analyses of the literature in the Canon) to suggest that not everything in the Pali Canon contains the Buddha's original words. What is more, there is a lot of "propaganda" material contained in the Canon that was useful for spreading the religion in its early days. So, when talking about the historical Buddha and his teachings, we must tread the ground cautiously.

Batchelor's interpretation of Buddhism (that is derived from the Pali Canon, by the way) is one that is based on non-theism (not atheism, mind you!) There is certainly a clear break that the Buddha took from the previous Indian approaches to religion during his time. For a fuller and more coherent account of agnostic Buddhism, as he calls it, here is a link to Batchelor's Dharma Talks at DharmaSeed. He does a fine job, in my opinion, of extricating the Dharma from Buddhism (considered as Religion) by doing away with all the mythical elements. In short, he demonstrates, quite successfully, that the Dharma is really the core of Buddhism, and that it in a Western setting, which advocates a much more egalitarian vision of society based on rationality, it is the Dharma that needs to be put forward and spread and not the Religion. I fully agree with Batchelor's reasoning.