Here’s a book I want to look into soon. I’ve seen it around for some time, waiting for me to read it. The other night a member of my meditation group mentioned this book to someone who was a Buddhist but not ready to accept certain ideas on faith, like rebirth. He might just as well have been talking to me, since I’m not ready either. Actually I sense a little bit of a difference, inasmuch as I find I don’t care too much.
There’s some great material in the Pali Canon that has a bearing on this issue, and is quoted in chapter 3 of Bhikku Bodhi’s “In The Buddha’s Words” — which is a book which waited a very short time indeed for me to read it. This is a wonderful book, that makes me want to stuff the whole Pali Canon into my head. Where’s my shoe horn?
I believe one can see Bikkhu Bodhi is wrestling with some of Batchelor’s concerns in some of his own prefaces to the Pali Canon material. But you don’t have to buy the book to see him grapple with it head on, since you can check out Bodhi’s review of Batchelor’s book. Since my last philosophical destination prior to Buddhism was atheism, I am very sympathetic to what I know about Batchelor’s position while at the same time being fairly untroubled about the whole issue.
I think some times those of us who are agnostic or atheistic in our beliefs fight a primarily social battle, in which we long to be accepted by our fellows, who may have some elements of a lifestyle we wish to pursue, but who have no compunctions about faithful leaps they’re supposed to be making in their tradition. I’m sympathetic to Batchelor, but I think at the same time I’d already fought this fight so well in another context that I don’t see much need for it in Buddhism. It helps to be a newcomer in some respects.
