After Buddhism - An Interview with Stephen Batchelor

Stephen Batchelor talks about his latest book.

How possible is it to do that when we are, as you say, so distanced from it in time? I realize that this is a difficult, even presumptuous undertaking. A very easy criticism of this book will sound something like this: “Well, this is just what Batchelor likes about Buddhism, and so he finds these pieces and then claims them to be original.” That would be a perfectly valid objection if I were simply highlighting my preferences. But I do actually have a hermeneutic strategy.

Which is? When you read a text in the Pali canon or other comparable sources, if something said there by the Buddha could just as well have been said by a Jain or Brahmin priest, then you put that aside as simply part of the broadly accepted worldview of that period. It’s not something unique to the Buddha’s dharma. By pursuing this process of subtraction, you can start to separate out the generic cosmology and metaphysics of the time. What remains left over can then be considered as what made the Buddha’s teaching so distinctive. And that would be my starting point.

Full story.