A Conversation between Stephen Batchelor and Bhikkhu Santi

good afternoon my name is Dr Tai camp and I am the assistant director of the Frankie program in science and the humanities here at Yale I serve under the leadership of our program's director professor priia nadarajan she's a luminary in astrophysics you've probably heard of her and she's also chair of Yale's Department of astronomy it's on her behalf that I welcome you here today to this our last event of the Academic Year the magnanimity of our Ben benefactors Mr Richard and Barbara FR Frankie has enabled us to produce events and fund academic inquiry that bridge The Divide between the sciences and the humanities how fortunate we are to benefit from Mr Frankie's exemplary commitment to interdisciplinary study with his signature investment he's cultivated a space at Yale where Scholars of all variety step out of their silos and expand the conversation across the disciplines enriching their own research and that of others to a transformative extent as we're photographing and videotaping this event I'm compelled to state that there's a possibility you may be included in these visuals so by being present during these activities you consent to the use of your appearance your likeness and your voice by Yale University for standard nonprofit educational news related promotional Andor editorial purposes in addition the opinions and statements expressed by event moderators today and participants are their own personal views and do not represent the views of the University so with those perfunctory disclaimers aside I wish to acknowledge our co-sponsors who help bring today's event to fruition the pointer Fellowship in journalism Yale Buddhist Life The Good Life Center at Yale tricycle the the Buddhist review and the secular Buddhist Network as well as the Buddhist uh student Community here so now I'd like to turn the floor over to Reverend Sumi London Kim the Buddhist chaplain at Yale and also as soon to be Yale parent Sumi congratulations sui she's the author of four books on Buddhism focusing on young people and family life and since 2018 she has served as the Buddhist chaplain at Yale welcome well good afternoon I feel some uh compulsion to explain these reserved seats in the front which have been inquired about it's not that we're actually expecting anyone more important than our guests but that we needed a line of sight for the camera so just to explain that uh what a joy it is to welcome all of you here to this wonderful event uh on behalf of the chaplain's office at Yale University just to give you a sense of how we'll spend our time together in a moment I'll lead us in a very short meditation and then I'll introduce our guests um they'll be in conversation until 5: and then we'll have about a half hour for Q&A and then everyone is invited to a small reception with light Refreshments at 5:30 and three of step's books uh with uh published by Yale University press will be available for purchase as well so just looking out at this audience and judging by your radiant Serene smiling faces I can tell that there's an abundance of meditative experience already in this Auditorium so let's enjoy each other's company for a few quiet minutes I invite you to lower your gaze or close your eyes settle into your seat and relax if you wish we can uh begin with a gentle breath in through the nose filling our belly first and then up through the ribs into the top of the throat and then controlling the exhalation breathing slowly through the nose exhaling slowly slowly seeing if you can extend the exhalation so it's longer than your inhalation and then at your own pace another nice deep breath in draw drawing in through your nose filling your abdominal area up through the chest to the top of the throat controlling the exhalation slow slow exhalation softening the body relaxing when you get to the end of the exhalation just let your belly relax and draw the next breath in naturally allow your breath to reregulate itself letting your body breathe naturally feeling the breath in the body feeling your whole body breathing bringing awareness to the felt presence of your whole body from head to toe front to back inside and out softening releasing relaxing the body and including an awareness of the Sounds in the environment nearby in the mid distance and farther away bringing awareness to the felt presence of people nearby and all of us here in this space together and when you're ready I invite you to draw a gentle breath in gently exhaling feel free to open your eyes and lift your gaze and come back to here thank you that was lovely I suspect we could do that for quite a bit longer but we are here for a purpose so let me Begin by introducing our interviewer were pikus Santi is a monk in the uh Thai Forest tradition which is a meditation centered lineage in the in terraa Buddhism he teaches and writes at the intersection of Buddhism modernity personal life and other spiritual themes and has recent essays in tricycle the Buddhist Journal he is also a Yale College alumnist class of 1998 and he lives on the Free Will offerings with no fixed Abode buikus Santi will be in conversation with of course Steven Bachelor himself a former monk in both the Tibetan and the Zen Traditions he's most well known for his breakthrough book Buddhism without beliefs which came out in 1997 and apparently he had a lot more to say in the following 23 years because he went on to publish no less than living with the devil Confessions of a Buddhist atheist The Awakening of the West after Buddhism secular Buddhism and the Art of solitude and just in case you've run out of Steven Bachelor books to read despair not Stephen is working on a book provisionally titled Buddha Socrates and us notes for an ethics of uncertainty which serves as a Wellspring for this afternoon's conversation now with that publishing history and I didn't even list the other Publications and translations that he's done you would think that writing books is all he does but no he is also a contributing Editor to tricycle magazine co-founder and core faculty of Bodhi college and gives lectures and conducts meditation Retreats worldwide and in his spare time does he have spare time he's a been a collage artist since 1995 and in the world of Music He collaborated with Sher Woods who I believe is here with us this afternoon on a labretto for an opera on Good and Evil titled Mara he lives in Southwest France with his wife Martine who is also here with us this evening and uh that's a pretty good good bio right there my goodness what an honor it is to have such a prolific writer and renowned teacher with us here this afternoon would you please join me in welcoming Stephen Bachelor thank you it's a great pleasure to be here with you today thank you for the introduction sui and thank you to the organizers of this event it's really a privilege to be here I'd like to introduce myself a little further in a very narrow way namely as a a fan and um and friend of Steven Bachelor as you see I'm a terraa monk the uh the second part of our conversation today uh after we have a a full nice discussion of U Buddha Socrates and us will be about uh Buddhist gastic Dharma what it can mean in the modern world and that's going to be later in our conversation during this first part we are going to uh hopefully dive deep into Steven's current uh work in progress um which I believe is going to be coming out next year is that the is that the hope uh well um I spoke to my editor the other day and um do we need with the mic minute I'm surprised that the Buddha in all his wisdom did not foresee the Advent of clipon microphones may have um the book be my karma it could be um the uh the book is scheduled tentatively to be published in the fall of 2025 next year very good we uh look forward to that I have had the privilege well I'll I'll start the story at the beginning uh well if you want to start the story away at the beginning I have to thank sui for giving me an extra 10 years I was actually class of 88 not 98 but thank you so before I became a monk uh before I really turned to the Dharma the path of the Buddhist teachings I encountered Steven's work a little book maybe some of you have read called Buddhism without beliefs I read it shortly after my first uh Meditation Retreat which had really kind of turned my life around changed my direction in life and it was just what I needed for for my intellect to to join fully in that turn uh it was just what I needed to to embrace this the the the the kind of imperative that that first retreat had imposed on me to really look seriously into the Dharma uh and it really helped me to get started on my own kind of my own kind of exploration of the Buddhist teachings and and uh and the path that it indicates uh I'm delighted to have a chance to share a little bit of that today um but first I'm going to finish the story of my being a bachelor fan I read that book I read several others of Stevens during my my uh my years as a Buddhist lay practitioner then I went to the monastery and I I stopped reading very much at all for quite a few years um five years later when I popped out of the monastery I wrote Steven a fan letter uh I had never of course met him I was just a reader uh but when I popped out of the monastery I had the freedom to pick up keyboard once again and uh I just thought why not you know this guy had a really powerful influence on me and I've now had this powerful 5year experience in a monastery maybe there could be some dialogue there and he uh he responded with u remarkable generosity for a extremely you know well-known wellestablished voice in in Buddhist circles and actually quite a bit beyond now uh wrote back quite generously um a dear friend sponsored me for a course that we was that that stepen was offering called after Buddhism and Beyond uh based on rooted in his book after Buddhism which I I recommend and is going to be on sale in the lobby afterwards and during the course of that program we got to know each other a little bit more and since then we've we've just been in in touch Stephen has uh generously continued uh to you know to to engage me in dialogue and we've been able to uh you know to talk across um across what you might perceive to be a divide uh and I hope we will reveal not to be such a one between uh the secular and monastic Buddhism so probably Steph's book will take us there before we get to the later part of the conversation but why don't we Dive Right In let's talk about Steven's work in progress Buddha Socrates and us so the figure of the Buddha is probably an important part the lives of of many people here I'm suspecting uh Socrates maybe less so um but who knows we're on the campus of uh you know a very representative Elite Western liberal arts institution maybe there's some socrati STS Among Us let's start with uh with the perspective of people who are coming from the Buddha actually let's start with both Stephen how would you describe the central problem or issue that each of these representative figures the Buddha Socrates separately or together addressed in their storied careers okay um I think the perhaps the place to begin which is the literary conceit that underpins the book is the recent uh scholarship particularly the work of Professor gri in in Oxford uh has revised the dating of the Buddha brought it 80 years closer to our time in contrast to what traditionally has been believed and in doing so has made his dates identical to those of Socrates they both lived in the fifth century BC the Buddha was thought to have lived in the 6th and they were born roughly 10 years apart and they died pretty much around the same time and so they were contemporaries they were on Earth at the same time more or less and I think they were in a way not only you know physically contemporaneous but they both dealt with a somewhat similar world a world that had moved out of um of an agrarian type rural societies they were both inhabitants of a world in which city were dominant it was the emergence of Kings in India and both of them in terms of what they were teaching was to put the emphasis very much on ethics ethics in the broadest sense not just simple morality and following precepts and rules but ethics uh understood as a um a cultivation of the whole person uh what it means to lead a good life on this Earth for Socrates this is very clearly a break with the kind of philosophy that had preceded which was largely an early natural philosophy trying to understand the nature of the world the nature of reality and the Buddha likewise lived in a world in which people were in a very ulent time which is the same as Athens in the 5ifth century BC and rather than seek some ultimate truths about the nature of the world and so forth and so on uh the Buddha likewise uh emphasized the importance of um of of how we think how we speak how we live in the world with others in other words putting the focus on ethics um the Buddha is famous for having refused refused to answer stand the standard metaphysical questions of the day and kept turning his teaching back to the challenge all of us face which is to um is is to recognize uh what it is that prevents us from leading a full and flourishing life and his meditations his teachings are all about in his words removing the arrow of craving ignorance reactive ity in order that we can uh lead a life unimpeded or less impeded by these negative patterns of thought and behavior some of them psychological some of them social and cultural that prevent us from leading of full life so that I think is what brings them together is the the is is the uh emphasis and centrality of Ethics although in both cases starting already with Plato in his dialogue there is a shift away from ethics towards ontology the nature of being Plato's theory of ideas and so on which are are put in socrates's mouth but are not really uh compatible with how Socrates is presented in the earlier dialogues and likewise in Buddhism too gam is very pragmatic and ethical Focus quite quickly became taken or not so much taken up but in a sense actually got a little bit l lost I think and Buddhism started too to develop theories like in the Abid and then the early Buddhist philosophical schools and so the ethical focus is what I really wanted to concentrate on in this book so you're so both Socrates and the Buddha were focusing us on how to live a good life on how to live an ethical life more so than on how to understand the universe how to how to explain things you mentioned Richard grid I quite like his idea of the the problem situation he uh he he borrowed from I think it was poer he was quoting or he he got that concept from uh who uh encouraged us to to look at the sort of social historical context of figures like these to to understand where they're coming from maybe uh diving a little bit into Socrates uh I think it's really an interesting move in your book that rather than digging into the minutia of the platonic dialogues you you spend quite a lot of time on on Greek tragedy on the playwrights uh and set forth the context of of uh what Socrates has to teach us in that context maybe you'd like to share a little bit about that context with well one of another literary conceit that I employ in this book is to imagine um what had there been a follower of the Buddha a Buddhist an early Buddhist uh in Athens in the fifth century BC who had witnessed the the flourishing of of philosophy of theater of the Arts and so on and so forth um how would they have seen that what would that have meant to them and it is it is theoretically possible that such a person did do that but extremely unlikely but it's a possibility and I think a Buddhist would have been in Athens at that time would have wanted to know how did these Greeks deal with the question of suffering of dukka which is really the starting point of the Buddha's concern you know we suffer um we're born we die all kinds of things happen that we would rather didn't happen and we have to come to terms with that and that is very Central to the Buddhist ethical understanding of human life but if you look in Plato's dialogues if you look into the index and look look of the word suffering it only occurs once uh it's not a topic that was picked up by Greek thinkers or philosophers uh and the one time it does occur in a platonic dialogue is in a dialogue that Scholars now believe was written about 300 years later so it clearly wasn't a main theme so how did the Greeks in Socrates time come to terms with the incredible suffering they were undergoing which was created by the pelian war and in diogenes leus who was a third Century uh philosopher who wrote a famous book which is translated into English English the lives of the great philosophers I'm sure some of you are familiar with it uh it's a incredibly important book for our knowledge of the ancient Greek world when he gives his potted biography of Socrates having mentioned socrates's parents names the first thing he says is that Socrates was known to have collaborated with ureides the tragedian uh who was an exact contemporary more or less um and then they give several he gives he quotes several classical sources that say exactly the same thing he said they say Socrates and ureides were bound together they were bonded together now curiously that's not a theme that has been picked up or developed by any if you buy a book on Socrates or they it's very unlikely that will even be mentioned the only Western thinker uh who who who who who who in a sense becomes very interested in that point is nich in his book The Birth of tragedy and he sees the influence of Socrates on ureides as a negative one how it um uh in a sense compromised the heroic nature of tragedy the great Heroes of the homeric past and so on and reduced tragedy to the ordinary suffering of everyday people uh Nisha says that euripides brought the spectator onto the stage and uid and tragedy um is one that doesn't dwell on the heroic past so much as focus on the actual suffering that people are undergoing in the world now in in the world of his time and many of his plays uh we can see quite clearly are actually um ways of presenting the audience with tragic circumstances that were going on in that time of Athenian history so for him tragedy was not um heroic in that sense it was something that was right at the heart of what it means to be human and the influence of Socrates I think was to bring his Primacy of ethical thought uh onto the stage and to allow the theater uid and tragedy particularly um to be a kind of Civic therapy that the people watching these plays for the first time were being spoken to very directly concerning the suffering that they were undergoing and the plays Were Somehow allowing them to process that experience to understand it and to find appropriate ways of actually coming to terms with the crisis of their of their time so um by doing that I'm not just looking at Socrates and the Buddha I'm looking at Socrates as set against the backdrop of his moral world uh which I think was best exemplified uh through these festivals that occurred the dionan festival in Athens but also other places likewise in gree of that time and I think the theater became very much the the the the moral arena in which uh socrates's ethical philosophy was somehow performed and dis played in a public environment thank you yeah that I think that really directly uh answers my question and I think you'll find in in reading the book that um Steven's evocation of of U what was happening on on those stages gives a really concrete sense of the problem situation of the times of how the suffering in the lives of of Athenians was unfolding in in the in The Strife that was tearing apart their society uh really over not that long a period of time the the the span of socrates's life um traversed the whole Arc of Athenian democracy um so that was what Socrates was addressing let's turn to how he addressed it and in particular how Socrates taught how did he how did he Tau how did he teach and what did he teach what would you like to share with us about that well if you read the apology which is the defense speech Socrates made um against the charges set against him of corrupting the young and introducing New Gods and so on into Athens um in the in the course of that uh Speech he says I don't I'm not a teacher I don't have students I don't teach anybody anything uh which has got a kind of a Zen ring to it I think but um what it points to is that he saw his role not as someone who had greater wisdom than everybody else and he delivered this uh to the people who passively accepted it Socrates saw himself as a gadfly uh and in his own words he says that he feels that he's been somehow destined uh to be a gadfly on the slumbering body politic of Athens to wake people up now that of course is a very Buddhist notion the word Enlightenment or Bodi means to wake up I think likewise the Buddha was interested in waking people up and the way that Socrates did this was spending all day in the marketplace the Agora of Athens and literally ACC costing people it sounds sometimes in such a way that he would challenge them you know to to to you know to try find out what they knew to try to question and their received opinions and the habitual thoughts and ideas that they just sort of uncritically carried with them and really probing them uh to try to get them to think for themselves to become more autonomous in their in their thinking life in their reflective life and in this regard um his teaching method was actually a method that in included endless critical inquiry with an actual interlocutor people from all strata Society not just the people like alabes and these Aristocrats but also blacksmiths and people of all walks of life he didn't see this as an elite activity philosophy was about how to live well not to become a an academic or something that or be a professor at Yale or something um so his methodology was he never wrote anything and that's another parallel with the Buddha the Buddha never wrote anything their teaching was very much focused into the actual situations of people's lives at that time it was it was immediate it was therapeutic in that sense it was to heal it was to wake up it was to cure it was to enliven it was to get people uh you know to live you know more authentically more truly well you've already uh begun to answer the question that your Reflections prompt so maybe you can make the connections a little more explicit uh how would you how might someone who is interested in or even a follower of the Buddha then regard Socrates what does Socrates have to offer someone who comes from the perspective of a follower of the Buddha and of you started to dra some of those connections already in a way that I can already start to answer the question for myself but you might also share um some of your maybe in summary your critique of Orthodoxy in Buddhism well my sense is that um in the early Buddhist uh sutas particular I think of something like the sutan nipata which is one of the earlier layers of the parley Canon um you get a very similar kind of ethos I feel that the Buddha is not so much or who whoever is the speaker in these earliest texts is not so much concerned with uh uh you know presenting what we would Now understand as the standard Buddhist doctrines the oldest layer of the Pary texts curiously does not talk about the four noble truths or the 12 Links of dependent origination or these well-known Buddhist lists that you know even a cursory look at a book on Buddhism today would immediately introduce you to but there seems to be much more a kind of skepticism at work um I would argue that the Buddha was in fact a skeptical ethicist or an ethical skeptic in some ways um he was concerned with how to live well but he didn't feel that that required that you hold certain metaphysical or or or or or dogmatic views about the nature of yourself or the nature of reality uh but rather he sought to um engage them in a process of inquiry I think that's a very a very important point of comparison of course there were differences as well I mean there Socrates for example served as a hoplight as a foot soldier in the Athenian Army and uh he was involved in some very very horrible battles and uh that was not a problem for him at all he felt that was his duty to uh to defend his City uh to to protect the world in which you know he he valued uh the Buddha was committed to a principle of nonviolence you can't imagine the Buddha taking up a sword and going off and fighting it would completely inconceivable so there are significant differences in the way that these two men lived but I think underlying those differences there is a core a common core of this question of how do I Live Well I think of the two of them as fraternal twins in other words they are they're born at the same time which is true and they um uh come from the same womb as it were of that period uh but they're also they don't look the same they they're not identical twins they're fraternal twins so that's I think a useful image to perhaps portray that relationship so the parallels that you're drawing uh are starting to emerge we're getting a picture of these two figures in ways that we we can um find useful in our own kind of reflection on on on how to live but as as representations of of actual people people who walk the earth there's 's a a huge amount of interpretation that has to go into creating these portrayals uh I think I shared with you once the quip I came across by Paul Valerie who said uh ancient Greece is the most beautiful invention of the Modern Age Stevens articulated for us a a Socrates and a Buddha but of course there are competing images of each of these figures uh they representative figures West Western Civilization has its classical age which was embraced quite critically until fairly recent quite uncritically until pretty recent times of course uh Buddhist culture has its classical age the time of the Buddha uh you have uh very importantly I think um as a philologist you've you've challenged some of the conventional understandings of who the Buddha was I wonder if you talk a little bit more about good Buddha and the bad Buddha like the the Buddha that you uh point us towards as a source of inspiration as a source of um as a teacher for our Spiritual Development uh and the representations of the Buddha that you feel lead us lead us astray well I think before going onto that exact point we have to one of the big differences we have with Socrates and the Buddha is that from in the Buddhist tradition we only really have one portrayal of the Buddha broadly speaking um with Socrates we have at least two different texts or writers really um Plato and the Socrates I've been speaking of up to now is basically Plato's Socrates we also have the Memoir of xenophon who was also a student of Socrates a contemporary of Plato who gives us a very different picture and if you're used to the platonic version of Socrates it comes as a bit of a shock to read xenophon's Memoir of Socrates where Socrates comes across as a much more traditional kind of teacher you even get the sense that he recruits students and he gives uh you know you know lectures on you know what to do under these circumstances and that circumstance you even have one dialogue in in xenophon where Socrates is talking to an estate manager and and uh and explaining to him how best to run their business I mean you won't find that you will find that with the Buddha but the point is you get two very different pictures in other words what we have of Plato we can see it PL sorry we can see Socrates from PL point of view from xenophon's point of view and that creates a more three-dimensional picture of who this man was it also rather disquietingly uh explodes the idea that there is just one correct represent representation of this person it's a little bit unnerving to deal with that um in the case of the Buddha you what we essentially have is the Buddha as remembered by his monastic followers uh there are hints in the sutas of a different kind of person and it's those hints that I've also explored in some of my other books to try to portray uh a much more human Buddha what happened I think quite quickly in Buddhist tradition is the Buddha became increasingly elevated to the status of a kind of God really someone who is completely perfect omniscient U without any flaws any mind or in what he said that there's something approaching perfection in the notion of the Buddha and yet you do still find if you look carefully um stories episodes of not that perfect figure but of a human person one might say it's comparable to the quest in Christianity for the historical Jesus as opposed to the figure of Christ and so in in that regard I feel that um uh both Traditions um evolved uh images of who their Founders were and in doing so I think lot whoops sorry in in both cases I think uh uh lost touch with the humanity of those Founders and turned them into rather iconic uh symbolic representatives of a certain ideal of humanity which brings us to secular Buddhism I would say uh would you like to um for those who have not checked in with Steven's writings in recent years uh share with us your idea of the Buddha that we stand best to learn from and maybe what some of the core uh principles might be I'm thinking in particular of uh you know your formulation of the four tasks just what the basic uh the basic gist of how uh you suggest we approach his teachings um well very much in line of what we've been saying particularly how both the Buddha and Socrates appear to have been people who sought to question the status quo who were very suspicious of you metaphysical truth claims and religious and philosophical dogmas um um both of them emphasized the priority of of of of action over belief and in that sense I feel that um uh what the Buddha is really trying to get us to do is to change the way we behave to change the way we we think about things to change to be aware of and to be more aware of the consequences of what we say and what we do and and so in this regard rather than basing Buddhism on the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths which is broadly accepted by most Buddhist Traditions as the kind of underpinning doctrine that makes the whole thing intelligible to think of not so much in terms of truths but in terms of tasks that um rather than thinking that craving or ignorance is the cause of suffering which is the second noal truth to think of that more in terms of how do I deal with craving let's say or you know grasping or anger or whatever it is it's not so much that you have a belief that it causes suffering but it sets you it challenges you to respond to craving and anger and these sometimes destructive mental habits that uh uh you know that preoccupy so much and there we find I think a core practice which is the practice of just letting that be not getting sucked into its imperative that is speaking to us so loudly in our minds but being aware of that being mindful of that and then just letting that be not suppressing it not denying it but letting it be and this of course I feel is the very heart of all of the mindfulness into ventions we find that are so widespread today mind the mindfulness movement has stripped it stripped all these ideas of Buddhist belief or religion but has landed on something that I think is very much at the core of what the Buddha taught mindfulness is not just some marginal practice done in some traditions but it lies right at the very heart of the Dharma and this is for people in this world today who practice mindfulness they're not interested whether craving is the cause of suffering or not they want to know how to deal with their own Cravings in a way that doesn't keep them stuck and blocked but allows them a freedom to respond to the world in a way that's not determined by uh the habits of of of of their culture or their own psychology but allows them a certain uh Freedom so I don't really want to say more than that about this but I would actually like at this point to turn our conversation to this theme of secularity and particularly in terms of uh your practice as uh a Buddhist monk I I think for many people um uh a monk whether it's Christian or Buddhist or whatever is in a sense the Incarnation of a particular kind of religiosity it's very difficult to think of a non-religious monk why would you bother you know didn't have some religious beliefs and uh Santi sent me just the other day actually a text he's written called selfs sayings of a sometimes secular Monk and this brings us to the theme of our discussion really which is you know secular Buddhism and the Timeless which is a very which is not to do with the particular features of our secular world but to acknowledge those more eternal Timeless constants in human life that we find speaking are being addressed in the Buddha and socres and other spiritual and religious Traditions um so what do you mean by being sometimes a secular monk um and how do you relate to the concept of religion do you see secularity as somehow opposed to religion or not I do not see secularity as the opposite of religiosity uh everyone has a religion everyone has a religion you might be part of an organized religion or you might reject organized religion and that's part of your religion we we all have to quote David Foster Wallace the American writer we have something we bow down to we have some some system of beliefs that we regard as the true ones the ones that aren't just beliefs but the ones that are actually true well that's that's your religion for me the forms of uh of monastic Buddhism are not articles of Faith they're not signals of some set of beliefs one of the things that especially attracted me to monastic Buddhism is that there is no requirement of Faith there is no requirement of belief it's a very different form of monasticism from uh from Christian monasticism although I admire many Christian monastics deeply the idea is the idea for me as a as a sometimes secular uh monk sometimes secular religious uh Buddhist practitioner is to find a way to bring my own personal inquiry into the nature of things what we call the Dharma uh to find a way to reconcile that with um with what I understand as a modern person a person um whose Psychology was shaped by all the factors of mity that have that have shaped all of our understandings uh a commitment to to science a commitment to many of the small L liberal values um my questioning of of hierarchy my my uh my commitments to various forms of you know various human rights and um forms of human Association um when I went to the monastery I encountered a lot of um a lot of Orthodoxy uh the the the of the of the kinds that Steven objects to in his writing and and rightly so and I was willing for some years to kind of uh to to just Overlook that I was I was deeply into my personal meditation practice and I was willing to in some senses check my my values at the door of with regard to those um time-based secular commitments but as I developed that became less tenable and I took advantage of the of the um emphasis in on the Buddhist path of developing Independence in the practice we have this very strict structured training but it aims at making us independent uh of Any teacher um religious Buddhist take Refugee that's the basic concept we take refuge in the teachings of the Buddha we take refuge and our understanding of of the nature of things and maybe we can say a little more about that uh that actually connects directly with Steph's question about the sometimes um and we take refuge in the in the institution of of Buddhism of the the S as a a kind kind of vehicle of the teaching but instrumental to answer your question uh essential to the Buddhist path is the recognition that we actually aren't all one thing or all another thing uh I notic in myself especially early on in in in my kind of personal uh Liberation from from the the more Orthodox aspects of monastic practice a kind of um firness that came in when I thought about my principles and my values it took a real kind of summoning of self to to uh oh well I was muming hearing you anymore oh well it's because I really have to put it up here use the mic we're too deep that's fine I'll do my best I had to get I had to get kind of doctrinaire about my own ideas my own interpretation in order to in order to to free myself from the sort of entrained uh subservient attitude that was expected at early on in my monastic training but as I moved on from that I realized that you know that too was a kind of attachment and in fact most people aren't really aren't really living on the philosophical plane most people aren't um wrestling with the with deep questions and deep issues and day-to-day basis and and at the same time many people are doing just fine uh many people are are are quite able to to square themselves with the world and uh live meaningful full um purposeful lives without you know without having to take strong stands on on on this set of values or that set of of ethical commitments so I eased off a little bit and uh and and I only uh I only assert my secularity sometimes sometimes I like to just kind of hang out and be easy but I mean I I lived as a monk for about 10 years also and um one of the things that I found challenging particularly when I came away from an Asian Monastery where every there's no problem at all when you come to the West maybe this was different 40 years ago but um when you walk down the street with a shaven head and robes you're actually making a very powerful statement you're not in in Asia you just become another another anonymous monk uh here in in in the west you are actually standing out and for many people you are basically affirming a kind of religious identity you're visibly a Buddhist uh you're visibly to those who know a Buddhist of a particular order or particular school um and I found that uh when I was a Tibetan Buddhist Mark walking through Switzerland for example where I lived um that I found that that got in the way of my interactions with people they related to me very much as how they perceived monks to be as how they perceived Buddhists to be and I found that that made and sometime some sometimes that meant they they shied away from me they didn't like the monks for example example at other times I became a screen on which they could project all of their you know their idealistic fantasies about spirituality and Enlightenment and so on um how do you deal with that well I I've experienced both of those absolutely and frequently do and it is challenging uh I work at being a monk but I'm a person it's difficult to have one's it's difficult to have those uh assumptions made that put constraints on your ability to relate to people in different ways but there's one more function of presenting to the world as a monk that I think still is alive in the world I know it is because it it worked on me uh when I encountered monks early in my Buddhist practice after I became a meditator and it's called the uh the sign of the Su the sign of the renunciant probably the defining feature of monastic practice in contrast to lay practice is the emphasis on renunciation so renunciation is an important idea for all Buddhist practitioners but it's more of an attitude and an idea in the lay world oh I don't know if I'd even say that we're all renunciant right we all exercise restraint in making our choices in life we all forego what we want often moment to moment we'll for we we'll we be resisting impulses to do things that aren't good for us that's a kind of renunciation not having that third drink or you know not getting behind the wheel that's a that's an important renunciation that's kind of what makes the world work if you think about it in terms of most people being decent good people uh that's renunciation and action in the lay world but for a month we we undertake unnecessary renunciations renunciations that go beyond basic delayed gratification and impulse control we take on renunciations that that further our project of turning against What's called the stream of the world the the the the force of samsara the Turning of the wheel of Desire we we take on renunciations like like all dressing the same so that were not so attractive to people um you know you know from one look at at at me I'm not looking for a date it's very clear so in foregoing our most basic desires we greatly heighten our ability to see them and by seeing them to do the work of freeing ourselves freeing ourselves from them to which doesn't mean eliminating them or never enjoying things it means giving ourselves the level of awareness that lets us choose that's what freedom is ultimately and um you know as a monk we commit ourselves to doing that full time to making that the central project of our lives and I think for many people that idea that renunciatory ideal is alive in the figure of the monk there are eras and times in the world where it's corrupted where monks behave really really badly you read about the fleets of R royces and you you you think the whole thing is corrupt or it becomes extremely aifi and bound by Orthodoxy and it stops making any sense and then that image is tarnished but throughout Buddhist history there have been renewals after renewals it's actually that's kind of blaz at the origins of of of most or all of the the Buddhist orders and sects is that kind of renewal m so I yeah I I believe that the the sign of the suina is something to that that's valuable to bring into the world I often have people stop me and we have really beautiful if Limited in some way ways conversations uh and I uh I I think that's worth pursuing well we've come more or less to the end of our conversation and we need to open this up for questions but just a sort of concluding remark it reminds me of the four sites and I think that's what you're referring to that in in the legend of the Buddha's renunciation he's he goes out of his privileged Palace existence and he sees a sick person he sees an old person he sees a corpse and he sees a fourth site which is a Wandering monk a saloner I guess and uh this has always struck me because it somehow raises uh the sense that the monk or symbol is something which has equivalent existential gravitas to birth sickness aging and death it points to how we could take our lives much more seriously how a monk in a way symbolizes a a radical change in our heart in our minds as to how we should live uh on this Earth together but perhaps we should make maybe pause here and open up the uh space for your um questions um we don't have a moderator so Shanti and I Santi and I are going to uh point we'll take turns in in in signaling who Dr Camp's offer to bring the microphone around okay there is a roing mic which was important this gentleman here was first so maybe and then the fellow in front could you pass that down and it's on and you can direct the question at Santi or at me um as you wish or to both of us thank you both so much for being here um I have a question about the if you could say uh Stephen a few words about the intersection like in places like Gandara you know where Greek culture and Buddhist culture were intersecting and meeting in ancient times not quite at the time of the birth of these people but some of the earliest is there anything interesting to point out about that I'm curious to know there's a it's very interesting um the we know that when Alexander the Great went to uh conquer the Persian Empire and ended up in fact in this place you called Gandara Gandara was the easternmost extent of the Persian Empire it's equivalent to Modern Pakistan in other words it's the Western most part Northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and in Greek records namely in fact in diogenes leus the text I cited um he says quite explicitly that Piro who is one of the philosophers who traveled with Alexander studied with gimos in other words naked sages which is a generic Greek term for monks and sardus and so on who didn't have many clothes and um so there you actually have a clear example and Dianes leus also says that uh through his studies with Indian teachers who were probably Buddhists we don't actually know um that introduced to his philosophy the idea of non-judgment not taking a position on things which is a very basic early Buddhist idea uh to have a kind of equanimous non-judgmental State of Mind a bit like a mindfulness state of mind and that non-judgmental then became um a central feature of what we now know as skepticism airo was the founder of the school of skepticism in Greece when he returned home there's also uh even prior to that diyes leus speaks of the philosopher democratus uh who was the first thinker to introduce the idea of the of a totally materialistic view of the world uh the an atomic theory everything was just atoms and void and democracies too according to Greek s forces uh is said to have gone to India to study so it's not just some new AG sort of Pop philosophy but this is grounded in early texts so you do have and and democratus lived at the time of the Buddha in fact they were again contemporaries uh so it goes back even before then we have this idea um and then as as Greek thought developed um you find the stoics the the epicurian uh the Skeptics of course and those schools have weird Buddhist flavors to them in fact I mentioned Richard gomri his father was a man called Sir Ernst gomri great figure in history of Art and so and uh Richard told me once he said when I when when his father said well what's all this Buddhism about and Richard explained it to him and he said well that's stoicism uh and I think that's that's not that that is a a sound judgment so what what I'm beginning to realize is that there existed for many hundreds of years what we might call uh a a a heleno Buddhist cultural sphere which extended all the way from Athens across the Silk Road all the way to China right down into Central India we know from donative inscriptions on some of the earliest rock carved temples in India that go back to like the time of Christ uh that there were Greek sponsors for these temples we know that the first European to become a Buddhist monk like him was a man called dharak a Greek uh and that was in the 3DD Century BC the time of Ashoka um so the extent as you described when Alexander came in to the Indian area um he carved the Persian Empire basically became a helenistic cultural sphere and that overlapped in Gandara particularly with Afghanistan Pakistan with centers of Buddhism these two groups interacted and the extent to which they influenced each other is still a matter of scholarly debate I don't want to get into that but clearly there was a commonality a broad commonality of um of ideas of practices of disciplines of philosophy uh that they both shared and they coexisted quite happily one of the other things that unites Buddhism and Greek philosophy is that they both came to an end because of the rise of um of uh abrahamic monotheism all of the countries that previously where Greek philosophy flourished as a practice became Christian the Christians violently stamped out these schools and a similar thing happened a few hundred years later um with the Islamic invasions of uh of India across the Silk Road in fact most of the countries that all of the places in India and the central Asia that were Buddhist then became uh Islamic so they were both as it were elements of what are Loosely called called the Pagan world and so what's interesting in our time nowadays is that both of these tra Traditions are beginning to resurface not just at the Renaissance but right up now you have practical you have stoic groups you have Buddhist groups you have mindfulness and I think it's all as it were the return of a world that was suppressed by the uh Christian and Islamic movements that replaced it all of this is in the book by the way the gentleman in front of you Mike please Master Fred will bring it over [Music] okay so so not to waste time I'll quickly apologize for being uh seriously resistant to early discussion um as and uh I do have a a Buddhist background um and I and I find that uh scholarliness thinking is um interferes with uh maybe uh being a person uh in the present moment mindfulness let's say seems like that's brand new and there's not many thoughts that go with it when it's happening um I was wondering though like again because uh this is in reflection of a resistance to scholar like what's the final point of Buddhism like you know I want the whole thing like why like it's one thing to say you know like you could eat a meal and satiate your hunger um kind of get something to do while you're w but um could you say something about uh like a guy like me always kind of wondered well like why are you teaching this you know or or why are you demonstrating renunciation what's good about that well I think we should both have a shot at answering this question it's a it's a good question um I would say to summarize um that this this is a this practice of Dharma I agree with you scholarship can definitely get in the way it can be a digression it can be a way of somehow not dealing with the real issues of life but actually of spending more time just thinking about things uh to me it boils down to a way of life a practice that is essentially ethical that has to do in the first instance with embracing the situation we find ourselves in with an open non-reactive mind being aware of what Rises up our reactive patterns letting that be not get entangled within that not suppressing it learning how to see those reactive patterns fade away or stop or simply noticing in mindfulness how mindfulness is already non-reactive you can be aware of this stuff and that then affords us a capacity to find within ourselves a space of non-reactive Freedom that can become the basis for then responding to life situations rather than just habitually reacting to them thank you Stephen and thanks for that great question uh that's a real question I hear coming from a deep response to what you're engaging here and U I don't think you're the only one uh to to to have that reaction at least sometimes to uh how did you put it scholarly that's a polite way to put it scholarly back and forth intellectualizing for me a fundamental principle uh of not just of practice but of life is that anything almost anything maybe anything can be can be handled in a way that's skillful and beneficial or unskillful and detrimental Steven's articulated beautifully for us in some of his books how even Buddhism can can be used to Corral people and manipulate people and control people um a knife can cut or it can be used you know to perform surgery it could be used to kill somebody it could be used to save somebody's life the same is true of intellectualizing I mentioned before impression that you know we have a variety of temperament some people are more inclined to figuring things out intellectually some people are more inclined to figuring things out at the feeling level through the heart through uh intuition um some you know we slang at the monasteries there are faiy types and there are thinky types these ideas for many of us are are alive they're really important can get lost in them we can spend our whole lives wandering around in them without Ever Getting to what what you skillfully they can point us towards right we can just read the recipe study the recipe understand the recipe but never cook the dish and taste the food um and yet there's a lot to be gained by like studying and understanding the recipe we can learn to make the dish thank oh I did want to I did want to point to to to one thing that you mentioned which I I think Bears mention for for many modern Buddhist practitioners which is the widespread idea that all you have to do is be present all you need is mindfulness and all your problems are solved uh I'm not trying to say that that's what you were saying but something like that is a misconception I think of what the Buddha was actually teaching as as I understand it um maybe I don't know if you have more to say about that Stephen but um mindfulness is a resource it's a faculty that we have along with many other of our human capacities like like thinking and feeling and uh being patient being kind mindfulness might enhance our positive faculties it might steer us towards them but we need to use those other faculties too uh yeah mindfulness alone is not enough thank you okay um that was a quote by the way okay this gentleman here [Music] please thank you so we're all aware of the big demographic shift away from institutionalized traditional forms of religion especially for people under 30 and it seems like buddhismspiritual to connect to or influence that growing group is there a particular challenge that you see facing this or particular Pitfall uh that needs to be avoided for these core doctrines uh to become more influential on modern society I think we can both have a go that one do you want to start or okay um I've struggled with this question I I I I really I engage I've been engaging with that question for a long time and my basic answer is I don't know and also I think to some extent uh the way in which something as complex as Buddhism um when that engages with something as complex as the modern world it's going to play out in all kinds of iterations and if we look at the history of Buddhism it usually takes at least couple of centuries before uh it the Dharma Buddhism finds another configuration to that is well adapted to the particular circumstances in which it finds itself so Buddhism goes to China for example in about the first century ad it's not really until about the fifth century that you get something that you could begin to recognize as Chinese Buddhism same in Tibet same in in Burma and so on so in other words we're talking about processes that are intergen generational and I think we have to to be careful not to privilege our particular present as somehow you know rather you know we've got much better access to information um and so forth and so on um I think that Buddhism like probably all other religions has to be thought of as more comparable to an organic like like a tree or a uh something that grows over time and takes new shapes and forms over periods of of centuries rather than within a time that we as individuals might be living so I don't really know and I think all that we can do is our best to to speak from our heart to seek to actually understand the conflicts and the suffering of uh the world we're in and to try to draw from Buddhism in in my case or santi's case um you know practices philosophies that might help to address address these crisis in ways that people can better respond to them and I think that's all we can do what that then leads to in let's say the next hundred years I haven't got a clue um but I guess I do feel that as the Dharma finds itself in modernity it perhaps may become more individuated in the sense that it won't be so much of a a mass movement where everybody kind of thinks the same and you have have a elite body of priests or theologians who tell people what's what but I think it is perhaps becoming more a movement that uh can Empower um individual men and women specific groups and communities um uh to to develop in ways that are distinctive and true to their own history and their own conditions and yet are somehow also informed by Buddhist uh principles and values and and um I think the one lesson we might learn from the history of Buddhism is that once you get a religious institution that reaches a certain mass and achieves a certain degree of of power political power Social Power it tends to aify it tends to freeze in some way and I think perhaps therefore the question is is there some way we can communicate these values in a way that has a kind of a a self-destruct mechanism built in that once it gets to a certain size uh we we can see the the warning signs of not getting trapped in another body but that just might be the way that human culture evolves it goes through periods of creativity it goes through periods of stasis it goes through per areas of Decline and that may be something we simply have to live with I think that answer is quite sufficient all right beautiful um next question yes this G oh okay this gentleman here and then there's another hand up there can you help me a microphone please can you help me understand the subtitle of your book please the ethics of uncertainty I got the ethics part I wanted to understand the uncertainty part a little bit better okay um that might take a little bit too long to cover adequately here um the title as sui read it out and it's a working it may not actually end up as that um but it's called um what do I call it notes for an ethics of uncertainty and notes again is something provisional the danger would be to set up an ethics of uncertainty about which I have complete certainty that would somehow undermine the whole idea but what I'm trying to flag with this expression and ethics of uncertainty is to um to honor and to accept the uncertainty that lies at the heart of probably all major ethical choices we make in some senses I'm stating the obvious but I'm bringing it to the surface when I'm faced with a real difficult moral dilemma that is it's it's a dilemma because I don't know what to do and we have I think a deep seated mental Habit to always want to be right when you're having a argument with a friend it boils down to I'm right you're wrong and we try to sort of talk The person out of their error so we can replace their error with our rightness so we have to be careful that we are That We crave certainty because we think certainty will give us security certainty will give us something sound to base upon um I think both the Buddha and Socrates are very suspicious of that kind of metaphysical certainty that we can find some ground of reality we call it God we call it emptiness we call it budha nature it doesn't really matter but I think that can get in the way of actually responding ing to specific dilemas of a moral or ethical nature in our world in which we need to honor the fact that we cannot know in advance what uh is the right thing to do at the same time we very often find ourselves in circumstances where we cannot not respond we're called upon to say something to do something because of a deep need or necessity to to not just let the suffering go on but to actually intervene but to recognize that we cannot foresee the outcome of what that intervention might be it could be that we have the best motivation in the world uh we've got a good understanding of the situation and we make things worse this happens all the time so it's to try to in the idea is to bring uncertainty into our Reflections upon the nature of what it means to be ethical and not to sort of try to pretend that we have a certainty about things which we don't so it in that sense it's an ethics of risk and it's an ethics of humility and it's an ethics of care I would say that becomes primary rather than uh we act ethically because we've got all the right answers I think we might have time for one more question okay this lady here let's have the lady here uh you put your and then if we have time with you yes uh microphone please 27 H just pointing out the time oh okay so first of all thank you for your presentations and Stephen I love uh your description of Buddhism as being geared towards clear seeeing and action my wondering is every person who's asked a question today has been a man you guys are men what's happened to women's religions why do you think they have not lasted and are they coming to more of a an awareness with compassion Etc just a wondering I last Tuesday I was in New York and I attended a presentation at the Asia Society with Helen twov who is the was the founder of tricycle magazine a woman and P and Pico Aya the travel writer and Pico asked Helen you know what what do you see as the main difference of Buddhism in modernity or the West as opposed to asan the first thing she said was women that we I mean we're not maybe representative here in this particular room but I feel and I see this and I've seen this emerging very powerfully in my last you all of the time I've being involved in Buddhism that women's voices are certainly becoming more prominent there is a a strong emphasis in most of the Traditions that have established themselves in the west to create uh opportunities and uh for women teachers um at the same time also to acknowledge greater diversity with within our communities to uh you know affirmatively uh encourage uh women people of color uh gay people and so on uh to become you know more vocal and more prominent in the kind of Buddhism that is emerging in our culture um I don't know whether your question was about historical forms of of religion or not but again one thing that perhaps is remarkable about the Buddhist tradition is that it's the first tradition that actually has amongst its canonical texts a text written by women for women called the the the the terata the verses of the senior nuns if you like so there are precursors there but as you rightly said um the the nuns order died out uh in India I think it never really made it into Tibet it's only really uh flourished in East Asia in China particularly in Korea Taiwan where you do find very powerful Buddhist uh communities of women and there's about as many nuns as there are monks although probably in the hierarchy the monks are still on top but I think we have an opportunity in this in our present culture uh to you know to overcome the paternalistic bias that I think has infected all religions and uh and I think that is acknowledged more and more and more in the Buddhist world and I very much hope that we level out and no longer sort of play out the paternalistic patriarchal models of uh that that were dominant in Asia if I could add to that as well I think it is important to acknowledge the particularly rough uh difficult road that uh women have had in the monastic World throughout Buddhist history uh the dying out of the women's monastic order in terraa Buddhism was you know was not a peaceful dying it's not a peaceful death it was uh you know a matter of of repression and uh in many Buddhist cultures uh women monastics are treated very unequally um despite the equality of numbers you know in many in many cases women monastics will spend their entire lives in a kind of subservient role uh literally like cooking for the male monastics that has started to change with the incursions of modernity into the the the majority Buddhist countries um where State Buddhism is or deao state Buddhism is you know is the order of the day uh there's been you know very little progress but in some cultures in Sri Lanka there are I believe it's over 10,000 fully ordained uh bonis women fully ordained monastics um that's you know a really important sign of progress in the terava world and women have continued to be ordained in in the uh the Mahayana world I think that's really important for monastics of course for women to have the opportunity to to to devote their lives to to renunciation full time I think it's important for the lay world as well uh to to provide that possibility as something to think about as something to as an example that that that that shows it's possible to live a different way uh for men as well as for women and uh I think as a male monastic it's important to to say that because you can assume well you're you're all trying to look alike and you're very you know conforming to to telling the same story that that's actually not the case there's a lot of support for full ordination for women uh in monastic communities and it seems like it's a inevitable okay I think we have to close there it's uh F perfect time thank you for that last question thank you for all the questions a few final notes before reception as this is the final Frankie program Gathering until September I just want to take a few moments to recognize some colleagues who've made our events possible this year uh the staff of the Whitney Humanities Center ment especially Diane Brown Ashley Cohen Sandra Mel and Bs they lend us tremendous support do all of their jobs wonderfully uh Tony sudol whose technical expertise makes our events possible and his colleague Ty Claxton in the back Ty thank you for all of your help today and always uh Rick Leon and his colleagues at Yale broadcast especially guy Ora who record our events and turn them into wonderful videos that rece received scores of views on Yale's YouTube channel covering for them today is Bruce Becker uh in the back with geomatrix Productions thank you Bruce we're known for our receptions and you'll soon see why Matthew Jacob and the staff at cor mandelle who cover all of them so we're very grateful to have them here with us again today uh David sasi with Gerald's Flores they ensure that the Frankie program really does have the best Floral Arrangements uh anywhere at Yale and that is really saying something when you go to the bines events and see what they have uh Tanisha Le and the custodial staff for their support and professionalism and finally uh you probably don't know that we have a famous YouTube star with us today he's rather undercover as uh the unremunerated microphone lad my son Frederick um I have to say he has devoted countless hours over many Frankie events in the last year and a half um he cheerfully accepts every menial task I throw at him without complaint and he's just for Fred on YouTube I told him I would Nam drop him and thank him so he deserves our gratitude and and our and our likes to speak his language so now we'll repare to the lobby uh for the reception the book signing um with Dr bachelor's books and and continued conversation so please join us thank you

Channel: Secular Buddhist Network

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Length: 90min 3sec (5403 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024