After Buddhism

GOOD. Good. Actually, kind of a slog in the beginning. The first 50% of the book was a slog for me - I really struggled, ho jeez. 1-star start. But a 4-star end, really. I think I needed time to get into this: this is a DENSE book, it requires deep engagement, and that can be hard when you're trying to audiobook this on 2x speed while commuting to work and your USB-C cable keeps futzing out.

So, first recommendation: don't do this on audiobook, READ this instead.

Second recommendation: convert to Buddhism!

Third (and last) recommendation: But screw Buddhism, eh! Kill the Buddha! This was a very nice, it was deeply Buddhist in its meta (Stephen Batchelor spends the whole book dismantling common Buddhist interpretations from first principles/direct Pali sources, and criticizing established Buddhist authorities for their snobbery towards, e.g., mindfulness apps) and, of course, in its ultimate messages. (Just like Star Wars went from Zen Yoda in ESB to Shambhala-style “BURN IT DOWN!” Luke in The Last Jedi. GOOD!

So this dense book is an ambitious attempt by Stephen Batchelor to reinterpret Buddhism by going back to the earliest Pali texts about Prince Siddhartha. (If you don't know Siddhartha's life story - and the foundations of Buddhism - already, I recommend Keanu's interpretation (unironically!!!) for an easy, canonical, and fun (!) telling.) He focuses, specifically, on five “characters”/historical figures who surrounded Siddhartha, and he tries to parse out - using contextual clues and some historiography - what the true values of Siddhartha (and therefore Buddhism) would have been. Along the way, he addresses some of the bits of Buddhism that are most challenging to Westerners: reincarnation, institutional sexism, etc.

So I'm generally down with a dismantling and reconstruction of Buddhism for a modern (secular) age, since that does seem in keeping with the general spirit of Buddhism - especially irreverent and now-obsessed Zen! I liked the retelling of the “four noble truths” as more like pirate guidelines focused on contextual/relativist ethical pragmatism. Try not to be a slave to your knee-jerk reptile brain, basically!

That said, I ALSO think Batchelor may have been a little too optimistic about his reinterpretations - I recall his litmus test for “probably what Siddhartha actually said” as being anything that was NOT a cultural norm of the time. Sure, maybe? But maybe Siddhartha also agreed with some contextual goings-on.

(Side note but I loved the discussion of the catty competitiveness between Mahaveera (the founder of Jainism) and the early Buddhist community.)

The most interesting bits, actually, were about Buddhism finding its early legs during and immediately after the death of Siddhartha: there was an immediate split between conservative (who Batchelor says “won” and determined a lot of the Buddhist dogma that survives today) and liberal factions (who, Batchelor argues, reflected better the true spirit of Siddhartha's teachings). I thought this was interesting for MANY reasons:
- It mirrors the similar split in early Christianity, and its kidnapping by the charismatic dogmas of Paul versus the more mystical, squishy teachings of Jesus. (Side note: why did western Christianity never develop a mystical tradition? This was asked by Karen Armstrong and, indeed, why!)
- Batchelor's acknowledgment that maybe the conservative movement worked better at preserving Buddhism through tumultuous historical stuff rang true: e.g. behavioral economics/psych research talks a lot about how hard boundaries (“never eat meat”) are much easier to enforce than soft ones (“do what you think is right”). Siddhartha specifically said, on his death, to discard the “small rules” the monks had taken on during his life - “no big deal” was his basic vibe. But the conservatives insisted on hard lines - and Batchelor notes (and I can understand!) the comfort that there is there. A hard line is easy to enforce, easy to see, easy to use. Everything else is so damn relativist and squishy! How do you know what's what?!

I liked Batchelor's VERY interesting hinting of Mara (normally a personification of evil/temptation/worldly stuff) as our limbic system, and the evolutionary importance of our limbic system (i.e. jealousy/hatred/etc are evolutionarily important). Very interesting! I liked that! The idea that we had certain tools (e.g. being an asshole; punching people) that were useful during certain times (e.g. ye olde hunter/gatherer times), but we outgrow them - and we can choose to consciously move forward. Very nice! This removes a lot of the (Judeo-Christian) guilt we're meant to feel for NOT being already enlightened super-beings, the guilt that's meant to come pre-baked in (imperfect/fallible/crappy) human nature; it ALSO jibes with my recent theorizing about how mindfulness is about putting the brakes on our reptilian-brain tendency to find patterns everywhere. Where patterns -> useful for survival in primordial human times, but now patterns + structural injustice = a bunch of racist shit and people using their evolutioned-pattern-finding-machine (i.e. their brain) to obviously immoral ends. (And now the next step forward, of algorithms and AI - which are just dumber pattern recognition machines - perpetuating these systemic injustices. If we're all getting racist training data, our pattern-finders (brains/neural nets) are gonna lead to effed up results!)

HAAAANYWAY. This got me, as dharma always does, PUMPED about more dharma stuff. Specifically, I got all tender feelings about one of my olde favorite Favorite All-Time Books, Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light - which was a zany, far future take on a type of humanistic/secular Buddhism. And I must re-read!! And you must read!

Recommended if you're already kinda into Buddhism/have practiced for a while/NOT a good beginner's book cuz you'll be like “wtf who is Bimbisara etc i give up” honestly.