Stephen Batchelor
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20
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Search complete. 20 mentions across 13 episodes found for "Stephen Batchelor".
Sep 19, 2026
Sarah BenderGUEST
Some of you, she's written some books about Zen.
Sarah BenderGUEST
She's a Roshi married to Stephen Batchelor, and some of you will have read his work, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama just saying, oh, isn't this wonderful? Very Dalai Lama-esque.
Sarah BenderGUEST
And so I learned really interesting, to me, stuff.
Sarah BenderGUEST
And I'm going to lay some of it on you.
KevinHOST
He goes on to say, these four primary facts of life, that we suffer, that reactivity arises, and yet also ceases, and that in its ceasing, a path can unfold, underpin the four paths and tasks that constitute the logic and practice of awakening itself.
KevinHOST
That was from Stephen Batchelor, wrote that last part of it.
KevinHOST
So what he's saying is that when we start to recognize this, we start to create a new path.
KevinHOST
And even in neuroscience, we know today that we can create new neurological pathways in the mind.
Trudy GoodmanGUEST
Remember, she said that the Buddha was trying to help the king lose weight and Leela thought it hadn't been successful, but it was, and I have the quote for you.
Trudy GoodmanGUEST
It's from Stephen Batchelor's wonderful book, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist.
Trudy GoodmanGUEST
And, well, I can tell you what happened was that the king, who actually didn't listen so well to many of the Buddha's teachings, because being a king, he didn't want to give up his power and he would have people executed.
Trudy GoodmanGUEST
I mean, the Buddha didn't really change some of the fundamental ways that he governed.
Stephen BatchelorSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
For man knows no greater riches.
Jonah PrimoHOST
So to set the scene, the impetus for this episode is the various outpouring of emails I've had since I interviewed Stephen Batchelor.
Jonah PrimoHOST
Feel free to pause this and listen to that whole episode.
Jonah PrimoHOST
But otherwise, let me pull up the audio from the moment that got everyone riled up.
Jonah PrimoHOST
I mean, you just end up saying to yourself, yeah, I kind of get the gist of what they're saying, and they seem really smart, so it must be right.
Jonah PrimoHOST
But at the same time, it can have no real value in one's day-to-day life.
Jonah PrimoHOST
And the core of what Scott and perhaps many others who like that Stephen Batchelor kernel are pointing to is the same issue that a grumpy young Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, the dilf of existentialism, I can't believe I just said that, had in the mid-1800s.
Jonah PrimoHOST
Which is essentially, you can explain the entire system and not have digested a single bit of it existentially.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
I was talking to a friend, and she's been into Tibetan Buddhism for a long time, and she's struggling.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
She's like, I just want to join Stephen Batchelor's secular Buddhist group.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
And they don't have all this fantastical stuff.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
It's just common sense human.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
That's great.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
I love Stephen Batchelor.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
But I call Buddhism a culture of awakening.
Jodo Cliff ClusinHOST
And cultures have literature.
GlennGUEST
And if it leads to the diminishing of suffering, we embrace that action.
GlennGUEST
Regardless of where that impetus for the action came from I know one of the one of the issues that I had early on with Stephen Batchelor one of the leaders of secular Buddhism is that I felt he was throwing the baby out with the bathwater saying oh we need to get rid of all of these old beliefs and moved to a totally secular.
GlennGUEST
And that led many followers of him and of secular Buddhism to expand that to other religions.
GlennGUEST
Oh, well, no, this program has a Christian emphasis, so we're not going to get involved in it.
Todd FinkGUEST
But that's where I think maturity comes in, which is like, okay, you need to be, you know, you need to be able to acknowledge this and you need to know what your dark side is.
Jonah PrimoHOST
Going off your point, you know, it's not just abuse, but I was talking to Stephen Batchelor the other week and he sat as a monk for 10 years and then in Tibet and then did Zen stuff after that in South Korea.
Jonah PrimoHOST
And he was saying that he just was a little disenchanted by how comfortably a lot of the monks he was hanging out with were living.
Jonah PrimoHOST
Like they were, he came from a middle-class family and they were just found a way to have so much donations and- you know, material pleasures.
Joan HalifaxHOST
[laughs] I felt kind-- Thought, "No, I hope nobody sees that," but I just told you about it.
Joan HalifaxHOST
[laughs] To let you know that, you know, part of the practice is to be complete and thorough and both Jimona and I have talked quite a bit about apamada, this beautiful term that, um, Stephen Batchelor, uh, um, has translated as care.
Joan HalifaxHOST
And that I, I also use the word conscientiousness, of living in a naturally conscientious way with things.
Joan HalifaxHOST
And what's wonderful about conscientiousness, it has the word conscience in it [laughs].
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
That's just one example.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
Stephen Batchelor, who is an important representative of this line of thinking, wrote what I think is still a brilliant book called Alone with Others, which he subtitled An Existential Approach to Buddhism.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
And he just sort of, he was willing to let go the metaphysics, but talk about still very basic Buddhist ideas about emptiness.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
And he used, borrowed terms from Gabriel Marcel, the French existentialist philosopher, being alone and being with, to talk about our relation to our own self.
15 MINS LATER
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
mean, this is a sort of pragmatic argument in a way that I do cite at one point.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
And not only did the Buddha himself, or at least as the Buddha himself said to have made such an argument, but a very well-known and highly respected modern Tibetan Lama made very much the same argument in a conversation with a scholar.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
Yeah, I guess, I mean, the thing I was going to cite, and I would urge your listeners to check this out online, because I think they can easily come up with it online, is a fascinating debate that Tricycle magazine, Tricycle is in Buddhist Quarterly, hosted, you know, it's over a quarter century ago now, I think, between, again, the late Robert Thurman and Stephen Batchelor, both of whom I've mentioned.
Roger R. JacksonGUEST
I mentioned Thurman as kind of a neo-traditionalist, Batchelor as, well, he's been many things, but at the very least a modernist and perhaps a secularist at this point.
JamesMODERATOR
My name is James.
JamesMODERATOR
Stephen Batchelor kind of jumped in with describing what kind of creature, what kind of being this is, this expansion that is human and this need for purpose, how we achieve it with language and imagery.
JamesMODERATOR
He also used some language to describe this resolve, what he-- to help give an image in our mind using, uh, descriptives like aspiration, this, uh, almost physical need to move forward with this process, appreciation, understanding that, uh, this process is going to be, uh, helpful, and conviction, trust or, or knowledge that this, uh, that this path was gonna lead to this purpose.
JamesMODERATOR
He then jumped in or, or brought it back to basics, something that I appreciate about, appreciate about, uh, Batchelor's writing and also about our order.
3 more episodes mention Stephen Batchelor.
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