Can you be an atheist and a Buddhist?
From what I’ve read, I can tell you that seeking an answer to this question will surface two groups of people – those who’ll tell you that it’s possible and those who’ll tell you that it’s not.
Among the former is Stephen Batchelor, the author of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. As the title of the book suggests, it’s exactly what you need to read if you’re seeking an atheist path to Buddhism.
Stephen Batchelor writes:
My encounter with traditional forms of Buddhism led me to ask with increasing urgency: Who was this man Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha? What was distinctive and original in his teaching? I began to realize that much of what was presented to me in good faith as “Buddhism” were doctrines and practices that had evolved many centuries after the Buddha’s death, under very different circumstances from those in which he lived. Throughout its history Buddhism has displayed a remarkable ability to adapt to novel situations and reinvent itself in forms appropriate to the needs of its new adherents. Yet this very ability to present itself in another guise has also served to obscure the origins of the tradition and the figure of its founder. In many schools of Buddhism today, the discourses of Siddhartha Gotama are rarely studied, while the man himself is often elevated to the status of a God.
In his attempt to discover the common thread among many forms of Buddhism, Batchelor, who was a monk for ten years, turns to the ancient scriptures of Theravada Buddhism called the Pali Canon:
My quest to trace the origins of Buddhism led me to the study of the Pali Canon: the body of teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gotama in the ancient Pali language. While these texts are not verbatim transcripts of what the Buddha said, they preserve the earliest elements of his teaching and provide glimpses into the fraught social and political milieu of his world. This quest also took me back to India to visit those places mentioned in the Pali Canon where the Buddha lived and taught nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. These studies and field trips … have enabled me to reconstruct an account of the Buddha’s life that is embedded in his relations with his benefactors, family, and disciples and formed by the political and social tensions of his time.
Then he explains what his book is all about:
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is written from the perspective of a committed layperson who seeks to lead a life that embodies Buddhist values within the context of secularism and modernity. I have no interest in preserving the dogmas and institutions of traditional Asian forms of Buddhism as though they possessed an intrinsic value independent of the conditions under which they arose. For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to meet the challenge of understanding, interacting with, and adapting to an environment that is strikingly different from those in which it has evolved.
Batchelor concludes with this quote attributed to the Buddha:
There are not only one hundred, or five hundred, but far more men and women lay followers, my disciples, clothed in white, enjoying sensual pleasures, who carry out my instruction, respond to my advice, have gone beyond doubt, become free from perplexity, gained intrepidity and become independent of others in my teaching. – Siddhartha Gotama
In the rest of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist you’ll discover a diary of disillusionment and discovery: disillusionment with “traditional Asian forms of Buddhism” and discovery of “a life that embodies Buddhist values within the context of secularism and modernity.” Complement with our articles on the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the four reasons why the Buddha started his spiritual journey.
I’m a freelance writer and mindfulness advocate behind this blog. What you see here is the combination of my three favorite things: reading, writing, and mindfulness. While you’re here, subscribe to my blog updates and gain access to free mindfulness resources for stress relief.
