Tricycle Blogs 2006 by Stephen Batchelor

1. Buddhism and Agnosticism

Many years ago I realized I could not accept the Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth. These two ideas provide the indispensable mythic foundation for traditional Buddhism. By questioning them one threatens to undermine not only the entire edifice of Buddhist ethics, doctrine and practice, but the authority of Buddha himself. For without believing in some kind of consciousness that survives physical death to be propelled by the force of its acts through a vicious cycle of rebirths, the raison d'être for embarking on the liberating path taught by Siddhattha Gotama and generations of his enlightened followers is lost. For orthodox Buddhists, this multi-life perspective is what endows the Dharma with its redemptive grandeur.

To resolve this dilemma, I opted for an agnostic position, which was outlined in my book Buddhism Without Beliefs (Riverhead, 1997). It seemed to provide an appropriately "middle way" solution to the problem. As an agnostic, I did not have to accept or reject the doctrines of karma and rebirth. In affirming that I did not know (a-gnosis) whether or not they were true, I was able to leave them open as questions to be pondered rather than dogmas to be believed or disbelieved. That I was not alone in finding this position attractive was attested to by the considerable popularity of the book. But (naively in retrospect) I was unprepared for the ensuing backlash from various quarters of the Buddhist establishment. I was accused of severely weakening the thrust of Buddha's teaching, of subordinating the Dharma to nihilistic Western views, of rendering a revered and ancient tradition banal.

I have now come to see more clearly the limitations of this agnostic approach. While agnosticism can offer a refreshingly open-minded contrast to the closed certainties of dogmatism, as a consistent position of principle it is both too broad and too non-committal. All believers, by definition, must be agnostics. The moment you declare that you believe in God or the law of karma, you are acknowledging that you do not know whether they exist or not. For if you did know, you would have no need to believe. Only fools, fanatics and omniscient beings would claim to know such things. To not know, to be agnostic, is nothing more than an honest acceptance of the limited human condition.

The strengths of agnosticism -- tolerance and openness, on-going enquiry, acceptance of uncertainty -- turn out to be its weaknesses. For human beings cannot afford the luxury of remaining forever ambivalent. We are repeatedly confronted by challenges, which force us to take a stand, make commitments, defend what we value. We have to cast aside lingering doubts and decide to act in one way or another. We must be willing to take any number of leaps in the dark.

Self-conscious life has somehow come to flourish in the biosphere enveloping this planet. That is all I know about it with certainty. Human beings like us may never have evolved before and may never evolve again in this or any other universe. As far as anyone knows, we are alone in an inconceivably vast cosmos that has no interest at all in our fate. I do not believe that I existed in any meaningful sense before my birth or will exist again after my death either here on earth, in a heaven, a hell or any other realm. All that will survive from my brief spell here as a rational animal will be the traces I leave behind in this world and the impact I have through my words and deeds on the lives of others.

This might strike you as a depressingly bleak picture that excludes any possibility of hope or redemption. I disagree. Such spiritual shudders of distaste are a reflex of that primal human longing for there to be more to life than just this. But this, I would argue, is where the religious quest not only begins but ends. God, the devil, heaven, hell, rebirth, karma are human inventions that we have projected beyond ourselves and invested with a separate reality of their own. The view of reality disclosed through the natural sciences evokes for me feelings of awe incomparably greater than anything religious or mystical writings of any tradition can inspire. Far from being just dumb, inert stuff, matter is wondrously, abundantly, profusely alive. The more we understand it, the less there appears any need for a divine spark or immaterial consciousness to animate it.

Let me repeat. I do not know if this is true; I just believe it is. Among all the accounts of the origin and nature of life currently on offer, that of modern science is by far the most convincing and compelling. Therein also lies its danger. One can be as inflexibly dogmatic about a scientific worldview as a religious one. Today's understanding will probably turn out to be partial and provisional. We can no more anticipate what Copernican revolutions future millennia hold in store than our forebears could imagine the ground beneath their feet to be the surface of a globe rotating in space around the sun. How we picture the universe now may represent only a few scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that we cannot possibly conceive.

By abandoning religious cosmologies and metaphysics, one is able to see more clearly the transformative role spiritual practices can play in this life. Long before embracing agnosticism, my doubts around karma and rebirth were resolved when it dawned on me that even were they not true, that would not affect the commitment to a Buddhist practice. To live according to Buddhism's ethical precepts, to apply its instructions on meditation, and to engage with its philosophical ideas seemed sufficiently self-validating and worthwhile in themselves. None of these activities needed to be justified or motivated by arcane theories of multiple lives and karmic causation.

Practices such as generosity, tolerance, compassion, non-violence, detachment, mindfulness, concentration and enquiry into the nature of emptiness and contingency were not only compatible with my post-Christian, secular humanism and its scientific worldview, but appeared to enrich and enhance them. In its unique configuration of these values Buddhism introduced an entirely new perspective on life and the world. It suggested the possibility of a culture of awakening. And, crucially, it provided a systematic body of practices whereby that perspective and culture could be embodied and realized. In the unfamiliar soil of a Western value system and cultural outlook, however, these practices began to yield unorthodox results. Meditation on impermanence, suffering and no-self, for example, did not -- as Buddha insisted it would -- lead me to disenchantment, dispassion and a resolve not to be born again, but to an ever deepening awareness of life's infinitely poignant beauty.
12 April, 2006