Stephen Batchelor is a contemporary Buddhist teacher and author known for his secular approach to Buddhism. Trained as a monk in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, his book Buddhism Without Beliefs has sat on my desk for years. The first time I entered a Buddhist center was in 1999, after moving to England for university. Having left the religiously dogmatic, post-conflict N.Ireland, I had no intention of taking up another religion. It was confusing to be in a Buddhist center. What were these people doing, prostrating themselves to the Buddha? That wasn’t for me.
Yet, something in the teachings, together with the practices, caught me. This short book helped me navigate my way. I understood there was a difference between early Buddhist teaching and the belief system that evolved later. Early Buddhists were not believers; they were scientists. In one text, Sariputta, a student of the Buddha and a particularly capable meditator, meditated for two weeks, discerning each discrete moment of sensory experience arising and passing without grasping. Such clarity requires focus and stillness. 2,500 years later, neuroscience has demonstrated the same understanding with the firing of nerve impulses.
I wanted to follow up on my previous post on the use of the word "enlightenment" with Stephen Batchelor’s take. According to Batchelor, following a talk by the Buddha, his students would tally the number of people who became enlightened.
Enlightenment was not a rarefied occurrence; rather, it was accessible and dependent upon understanding the most important Buddhist teaching, the Four Noble Truths. According to Batchelor's reading of the texts, understanding the Four Noble Truths would be considered enlightened, but the question then became the depth of the awakening, which could be cultivated through practice.
The teaching of the Four Noble Truths was the Buddha’s first teaching at age 35. The insight that led to this teaching was his eureka moment, where he understood the cause of suffering as craving. The Four Noble Truths are logical and easy to comprehend; anyone reading this post is capable of understanding this teaching. The hard part is realizing it in our lives.
