Ep. 95 The art of solitude, creativity, and secular Buddhism with Stephen Batchelor

[Music] hi nice to meet you nice to meet you Diana nice to meet you you were recommended to me by shantam Seth I asked him I asked him what book would you recommend that I read next and he said Stephen Bachelor that he's the he's the one to go to and um you know when I emailed you about what we could talk about I said Buddhism without beliefs because that's what you're well known you know really well known for you said it's that was 25 years old you've done some other things since then uh yes yes Buddhism without beliefs was in a way that I think in if this was the entertainment industry you call it my breakout book it's the book from which I by which I became known outside my Niche audience of Buddhists and uh from that point on really uh my writing career as it were took off as a writing career rather than uh just something I did to record translate Buddhist text and speak to basically my own community so that's right well there's something really appealing about it I think for folks that are interested in Buddhism but maybe not wanting to call themselves a Buddhist or necessarily believe in reincarnation and my son has a piano teacher that wears a big cross around his neck and he came home the other day and he was like what are we mom you know I think my piano teacher is Christian and it was during uh yon kapor and they were celebrating that in different ways of you know we had the day off from school and he said what are we and I and I talked to him about what it means to be atheist or agnostic and it did none of it really hit the mark for us of like I don't know if we're agnostic because we we believe in things you know we believe in the you know the mystery of Nature and and I liked your term agnostic Buddhist seemed like like a good yes maybe a good combination but uh yeah what are you are you Buddhist are you agnostic are you skeptic hi I'm Dr Di Hill thank you so much for joining me with your life in process and if you want more if you're interested in applying these processes to your daily life join me at my membership more life in process at more life in process you will get meditations for you to practice at home you'll get extra bits from the episode that maybe got recorded after the fact you're going to get PDFs and handouts things that you can use to apply your daily practice to your life and I can't wait to see you there $5 a month $50 for the year you can go to your life inprocess tocom to sign up and probably all three actually to be quite honest um I was rather hoping actually now you mentioned this that um the term agnostic Buddhism or Buddhist agnosticism might somehow take off yeah it's good uh people might find that a convenient label by which to somehow identify with in other words I'm a Buddhist but I don't believe all the weird stuff um or I'm agnostic but I've also got a spiritual side that resonates quite well with Buddhist values or something like that but actually over time uh it didn't take off there is no agnostic Buddhist movement as far as I'm aware and um so I kind of moved on too I kind of realized that I agnostic um in a sense actually doesn't mean a great deal it basically means that you know you don't actually know everything and to that extent a Believer a person of faith is also agnostic they have faith they believe but they don't know that God exists for example they believe that God exists and so they are technically agnostics so agnostic is a kind of a a generic word for the fact that as human beings we're basically ignorant of most of the things that really matter so in a way it ceases to sort of really have such a a good big Ser doesn't serve so well as a handle as it were so what I've done in my more recent writing um is really to explore the idea of a secular Buddhism and that term has taken off and um in in my book confession of a Budd Buddhist atheist and then later in my following book after Buddhism which are rather thicker books um there I developed the idea of a secular Buddhism and secular meaning um to do with this world the Latin seculum means this age this time so secular Buddhism is in a way of Buddhism that's not concerned with what happens after death it's not really concerned with whether there are other Realms of existence or Karma or stuff like that it's concerned with how to live a good life in this world through a set of Buddhist values and practices and philosophy uh that help us somehow get better to terms with our own inner life our own psychology our own states of mind uh to to work with that through meditation and other disciplines to sort of stabilize and focus our attention and then to really put our questions you know focus them on what is actually going on in our society in our on our planet I think particularly today in other words to bring Buddhist values to bear on secular rather than religious concerns and now we have quite a number of online um communities secular Buddhist Network and others uh that really seem to be growing it's a small movement but it's I think uh a label that more and more people find happy to identify with yeah so I so I brought your book Buddhism without beliefs uh with me to France and so a lot of walking around the countryside of Bordeaux listening to Buddhism I brought two books I brought that book and then I brought why Buddhism is true which has sort of uh more kind of like a a science angle to Buddhism and they're they're actually a nice pairing to listen to together one is way heavy the why Buddhism is true and then we listen to yours and there's actually more there's more soul in your book which is interesting in terms of talking about secular Buddhism uh and one of the things that you have us do and this could be part of secular Buddhism is is to ask ourselves some questions uh as part of maybe a meditation practice but I just took it as a running practice when I'd go on runs and uh one of the some of the questions were things like uh why am I here what is this um who am I and these could be questions you could just Ponder in meditation but I I like pondering on them in in the you know running in the countryside of France so then I came back and I said I want to interview this guy and I I I email you and you say well I'm in Bordeaux exactly like all the other Brits so here's the other thing about this area all these Brits and Bordeaux what are you all doing there well it's not so much um in Bordeaux itself in no no no the countryside yeah yeah the countryside it's the countryside around particularly once you get up the dooro valley yes but where I am although we're we're about half an hour bordeau um we're not within what is sometimes called the the Weetabix belt where where the British people live um there very few British people in our village only one other actually okay we're too close to the city the property is too expensive We inherited Ours from my wife's family that's why BR well well tell us a little bit about these questions because it seems like you're you're asking more questions than answering them these days yes uh I think that's what is seriously needed in our world at the moment is to people to put aside their certainties whether they be religious certainties or political certainties or some other certainties they have opinions basically and open ourselves to the fact that that life itself is fundamentally questionable we don't know what it is ultimately at all and we can formalize that practice in meditation as you suggested you know we would sit down and in Zen you'd ask you know what is this but the reason you do that sort of meditation is to accustom yourself to looking at yourself in the world with a more questioning attitude to not just immediately say oh this person said that that's bad but to Simply notice for example that something's running through your mind oh that's interesting now why am I having that thought where's that coming from what's that telling me to try to sort of shift from always having an opinion about something to always having a question about something to holding things more tentatively and I think Buddhist philosophy is somehow embedded really in a sense of the world that is much more tentative than we tend to think things are impermanent for example things are contingent conditional things are empty even and there's pain in the world it's to by focusing one's attention more on those kinds of existential qualities really being aware of One's Own Death more for example and thereby asking the question what is this life War if you don't really have a an engagement with your impermanence your mortality it's difficult to really get much traction on some of these questions they lack any urgency so I would Advocate um a Buddhism not only without beliefs but actually with lots of questions and doubts and astonishments and Curiosities and wonder and all and all those things which tend to not get spoken about much well they're spoken about more in Psychology now it's become quite the topic of research awe is a is a there's a whole field of um Dr keltner's work around awe I mean we want to we want to take awe and then we want to distill it down into you know what it is in terms of our psychology but yeah I think that's very good I mean I I I mean what's interesting when we look at Psychology today Psychotherapy we find that it's sharing ideas we also find in in in Buddhist groups in meditation groups in certain kinds of philosophy and so on and uh I think there's an emerging culture happening at the moment that is spread across a lot of these domains and I think a lot of these terms are coming more and more to the surface I think a sense of awe and wonder I've I keep coming across that um and the question one ask of course is why you know why are these terms terms now somehow gaining people's attention and I think probably because we find ourselves more and more in the world that's lost a sense of wonder lost a sense of awe our life has become routinized it's just to do the same thing day after day after day we don't seem to have the ability to just stop and and be and just look and listen so I think these different spiritual Traditions like Buddhism and others uh give us tools and give us a language in which we can somehow you know experience these things and at least think about them and value them in a way we haven't before uh and I feel that's important I think particularly with our great you know existential crisis of climate change particularly I think we really do have to sort of stop and ask ourselves what the hell are we doing on this Earth not just individually but as a community as families as as members of churches as Democrats whatever it is I mean what are we really doing on this Earth and I feel it is time to stop and really just sort of get in touch with that question not just in the head but in my zen training when you practice this questioning in a in a monastery you put the question in your belly not you you you don't let it stay in your head your head is actually a rather poor place to place such a quest it needs a visceral quality to and that's something that you know takes time to develop but one can through through training and daily practice and so on start to in a way um reconfigure yourself reconfigure your interiority in such a way that certain values become more prominent and others perhaps fade away well it's an interesting Paradox because there's a there's a little navl staring that people get concerned about right if I'm just staring at my Naval and considering awe and wonder we're not going to get anywhere and some of your more recent writings have a lot to do actually with ethics to get us somewhere uh I was thinking about awe and wonder and how it actually can motivate us to be um agents of change in terms of the choices we make on our planet a couple of weekends ago we were there's like a beach cleanup that happens you know families go with their schools and they clean up the beach and my um we were walking along the beach my son and I and we were behind a lot of other families so we thought that all the trash had been picked up there was no trash bags anywhere there was no bags of chips or things like that but then when we got really close to the sand and we picked up the sand and looked at it really closely there was Tiny bits of Styrofoam like quarter of an inch big pieces of Styrofoam that that were everywhere in the sand like you could spend an hour on it pulling out styrofoam and maybe get a handful and I took a picture we we brought it back my other son was sick we took it we took it back to him to show him one of these is a shell the rest is styrofoam which one is it and that motivates right that that motivates that that sort of awe it's sort of a unpleasant awe sometimes awe can be oh a you know sometimes it can be Wonder in a beautiful way aesthetically beautiful uh so so we're out styrofoam that may motivate us when we make a choice around where we're going to buy our food next and in your your book The Art of solitude so I I came home and asked you about this interview you said that's not current so I'm like what's what what is your what's his most current but we'll talk about what's your most current it's not even out yet but the the the one that's out the art of solitude you write about collage making and this is a sort of a creative arts practice that you're doing and I I'm I'm curious about that's another word a Wonder creativity how this how creativity plays in all of this for you um just to go back to what you said at the very beginning that if you just sit in meditation and feel a sense of awe that's not really going to get you anywhere I agree you could become just sort of self-absorbed cut off sort of just locked into your own little spiritual bubble the point of meditation really is precisely as you also suggested that we create a foundation in ourselves or open up a space within ourselves in which we can live better and one of the ways ways I think in which we fail to live well is because we're so overcrowded inside with opinions and Views and attachments and fears and desires and all these things so you need inner work to kind of just sort of open up the space it doesn't mean suppressing or denying any of these feelings or ideas or thoughts but just giving yourself more freedom and flexibility so that when you do encounter a situation like the one you described looking more carefully at a handful of sand let's say on the beach and I'm sure if you brought a magnifying glass or a microscope you'd probably see many many many more tiny little plastic particles as well and um you do need an openness of mind you could go oh this is terrible we should do something about it but you could also just sit there and just acknowledge and accept and say yes this is the world we are creating and allow yourself to sit with that and to sort of feel where you start to respond to that on a more gut level rather than just a sense of sort of you know sort of dislike or anger or rage or something and um that's where the ethics come up comes in because it's very easy to you know in a sense you know feel that sense of of Rage perhaps companies are able to you know waste put all their waste products in the ocean but the real challenge is uh to then uh you know confront the question well what do I do now how how do I responsible it's it's easy for us to say they should have strips of laws against this that or the other but how do I deal with that not just just as an individual but also as someone who has responsibility for say children I mean you just mentioned your children I mean these people will be on this planet probably long after we're gone and this is the world we're creating for them so yes I agree with you I think it's uh we need to find more and more moments in the day where we can just stop and look um tigad Han who you have mentioned he has lots of practices like when you hear the phone ring you let it ring three times before you pick it up instead of just grabbing it which is our you know our sort of instinct just phone rings you grab it he says pause breathe in three times out three times then pick up the fun and it's a very very simple little you could almost say a trick we are we we're tricking our habits basically and we're we're intervening we're interrupting those patterns those habit patterns uh to create the space where we can respond to what's happening rather than just react to it which is I think one of the big issues of our time is we live in a culture of reactivity and what's curious about reactivity is that it is a it is a what's the word an anagram of the word creativity oh really strange yeah it's exactly it's strange it's exactly the same letter it's not fun it is odd and it works very well in this case because uh we need to move from a life of reactivity to a life of creativity and creativity is being able to create something that hasn't quite been thought of in that way before and we don't have to reduce creativity to producing great paintings and this which it tends to get the idea of creativity tends to get monopolized by artists and so they're the creative people and they call themselves now nowadays you know I'm a creative it's words like that I think we need to discover that creativity is something we can in this actualize in in all parts of our lives in all the activities we uh it's about you once again it's about asking the question why am I not creative and I think one of the reasons we're not creative is because we're so reactive we keep just doing the same things again and again and again same habits same patterns or same likes same dislikes we're stuck in a kind of hamster wheel of repetition as it were so creativity is incredibly important but strangely Buddhism and I think very other no religions really seem to speak about it much it's not valued as such and um I was actually listening to something the other day on the on the radio no I was listening to a talk of a painter actually a a painter and um he was saying the reason the word creativity has not been in use very long in the west is because creation was considered to be the so Preserve of God so to to claim creativity is to claim something Divine in a theistic world in a Christian uh world at least traditionally um so it's we need to find a place for creativity uh in our in our contemplative life in our ethical life um in our life in our families wherever it might be to somehow free ourselves from what holds us back from you know having that spontaneity that joy to respond perhaps to get it completely wrong but at least to then learn from one's mistakes rather than just doing the safe thing again and again and again and again well creativity I could see the the link between um you know last me and not wanting to but but I actually think what makes people shy away from creativity is that it sets you it's you stand out in some way if you're being creative you're not just going with the flow of all the you know that you're you're you're going a different direction and that is uncomfortable for for us right so uh you know you're an example of that saying that you are a secular Buddhist there's a creativity in that that means some people won't like it some people will say what are you doing you know the how can you you know talk about Buddhism without talking about all these other things and it it puts you at risk yeah so so we we aren't creative because it's often more comfortable to just do what everyone else is doing but what if what everyone else is doing is hi it in the wrong direction and uh when when we we look at things like this uh with h technology so uh my son doesn't have a phone yet he's 14 and he's really the only person in his in his class that doesn't have a phone and I asked him well when when is it most challenging for you to not have a have a phone and he said that it's when they're waiting like when the kids are waiting to get picked up from school or they're downtown and they're waiting for me to come drive and pick him up it's when they're waiting because when they're waiting everyone's on their phone and he's the only one that doesn't have a phone to turn to so he's waiting alone while everyone's in their world and actually that that window of waiting is is a window that we've lost and also is a window of potential creativity because it's in those waiting moments especially for children where something creative some you know they they' come up with some creative game or conversation or look at something they haven't noticed before but when you're on your phone you you don't see that so there is this element of um maybe we've lost creativity because we want to we don't want to be uncomfortable and be different but also there's a there's a a loss in the the space we've lost the spaces to be creative yeah there's not as much space for waiting or boredom and the creativity that emerges out of boredom I think that's completely I think that's that's absolutely right and yeah you do take a risk when you choose to do something that is different and to be creative basically means to give birth to something in a way and something that is born is new a new possibility is realized that hadn't perhaps been quite realized in that way before and we know how upset uh PE fundamentalist religious people can some some sometimes be that if you make a slight deviation from Orthodoxy um and I found this certainly in terms of the reception of my own work in my Buddhist Community is that people become very very uncomfortable uh and you are basically very quickly become a sort of Pari you're someone that is suspect now you don't really you know hold the true Faith anymore and um what's also odd I found in being a bit in being non-orthodox in My Views um is that uh you can also start losing people who you thought were your fans you know it's uh friendships are held together very often by you know consolidation having partners in the same belief system it makes you feel good makes you feel safe so I think it is creativity is a big ask because it's asking you to take risks it's asking you to do something that might be disapproved of but it's also asking you to be true to yourself it's asking you to respond authentically and appropriately to the actual conditions in the world and um you know and I do think this business with the cell phones that you just described with your son I mean I think particularly with young people it's not ex I mean adults everybody does it they're locked in their phones and um I think it is a taking over of our attention in a way it's it's a it's a colonizing our minds with the demands and the attractions and the seductions of what's flickering on the screen and so here again I think you see the space that can be opened up for example for some people with yoga with with others with with meditation or maybe philosophy or whatever it might be and I think these spaces are becoming increasingly endangered in our world our society's not moving in that direction and the term you used going against the stream is a term the Buddha used he says my teaching goes against the stream it's not going along with the stream in other words with just the well oiled Wheels of of the world that just trundle along and everybody just follows but it's actually saying no I'm going to I'm going to go go the other way I'm going to move against the stream and if you think of the metaphor of going against the stream if you're in a river which which has a stream let's say you're swimming Downstream to go against the stream it's suddenly harder work swing swimming Upstream you're also being constantly pushed back you have to put much more effort in it's more uncomfortable you can't just let yourself Glide or float so what this all points to I think is if you want to lead a creative life an ethical life a contemplative life you all you do really need to somehow get to grips with the Inner Space you might call it to somehow gain some ability uh to be Freer within your innermost thoughts and choices and and that I think then is to serve as a foundation for then you how you relate to the world how you speak to others how you work how you deal with your kids or whatever it is and it's the constant grounding of that quality of attention uh that that we need to create more and more moments for such kinds of awareness you don't have to formally meditate you might as you mentioned find you get into that space when you're walking or jogging or swimming doesn't really matter the important thing is the quality of the that sort of free flow open spacious um alive sense of being who you are um that's what really matters you can call it many things but it's uh it's very much about that in my humble opinion so part of that is the well-being that comes from uh being alone with ourselves and uh I interviewed a researcher in Westgate a while back and I didn't even interview her about this topic but she's well known for the seminal study where she put people in a room for 15 minutes of thinking time alone and in the room was also a machine where they could self administer shocks just a mild shock nothing really painful and two-thirds of the men rather than sitting alone with their thoughts shocked themselves and one quarter of the women shocked themselves rather than sit alone in a room with their thoughts there's an interesting gender difference that again I didn't ask her about this I should go back and ask her why why is it men are shocking themselves more than women I don't know but but there's this you know being alone uh with our thoughts for many of us is is quite aversive and yet you wrote a whole book on the art of solitude and and why actually being able to be alone with ourselves whether we're alone with ourselves in that moment whenever when else is on their phone and we're not on our phone or uh we're alone with ourselves my have such a fond early memory of coming home from my school and my mom cooking dinner and she would tell me to go to the garden and get the tomatoes and just that afternoon time of going I'd be in the garden for like 45 minutes right it doesn't take that long to pick a tomato but just the the the time of being alone with myself after school after a busy day and how beneficial that that was it's actually a practice that I do with my kids now is I I send them to take out the compost or I send them down to the Garden not because I really need them to because I want them to go out into a space by themselves and and take their time so this there's a bit of a paradox there we don't want to be alone with ourselves it's uncomfortable being in there we'd rather shock ourselves and be alone with ourselves or go on our phone and yet this may be uh a very important thing to cultivate Sal well that's exactly it I mean what I was sort of struggling to say before in took of an open a space within ourselves essentially that's Sol that that's our Solitude that's our inner Solitude and um we're not as a society uh brought up to to be comfortable in that in a Solitude um you know we we're suspicious of people who uh who seem to spend all their time just alone there must be something wrong with them with think don't you need some company and sometimes perhaps there is a problem I mean low loneliness is also a dimension of solitude and uh in in French and in German for example it's very you can't really distinguish in the language between Solitude and loneliness it's the same word La Solitude in French means Lon for most people it mean usually it means lonely it's unpleasant and we're fortunate in a way in English to have a word like Solitude which is somehow kind of emotionally neutral it doesn't have to be good doesn't have to be bad but it's certainly not immediately associated with loneliness which is of course painful and it's a it's some again it's something that many people suffer from in our modern world as well particularly elderly people so um I feel which once again this comes back to the idea of learning how to be friends with ourselves in some ways learning how to be comfortable just me alone but what's also we discover strangely when you do you spend sustained periods of time alone in silence for example example is you realize that you're never really alone because you're always with yourself you're always Tau you are you get to be more intimate with yourself that you are a dialogical person and we spend a lot of our time and we notice this as soon as we start meditating that there this voice constantly sort of running a a monologue in our heads and it's running a monologue because it's we're always talking to an implied other that uh we speak because we're listening to what's being said it's a very odd thing when you look at that dialogical structure of Consciousness this that we're always in relationship with ourselves we're never really alone and so aloneness therefore becomes uh a space within which we get to know ourselves better we get to be more uh in touch with our feelings as they say or with with a you know maybe emotions or or difficult memories that we would normally just try to sort of brush aside um and meditation though it's often associated with you know states of peace and joy and all these things meditation is for anyone who's practiced it for any length of time can also be could be pretty scary stuff comes up when the mind gets still and when you're in your Solitude that kind of hits you out of left field memories from childhood perhaps or a very uncomfortable conversation you had which you've been trying to forget suddenly becomes right there in your meditation and that is associated with all the physical and emotional feelings that those words or whatever it was then provoke so we need disciplines discipline is too strong a word we need practices I think that enable us to in a way live better with with ourselves much in the same way as we need practices to exercise our bodies to uh develop social skills and so forth but our education system doesn't address that maybe some schools now might be introducing mindfulness and so on but it's certainly not a priority and I remember when I was a little kid um probably seven or eight years old I remember once very very vividly asking myself why in these classes on history geography English Latin French does no one ever talk about what's actually happening for them nobody's talking about what it feels like to be in a classroom I I was very conscious of that at a very young age and I found it was a weird kind of deliberate ignorance of the thing that really matters most for us and that is how I feel who who I am do people like me but that's taboo we can't address that but if we don't deal with these feelings we're not actually receiving an education that is I think prop preparing us for the kind of world we live in now and I would like very much to to to to to see particularly with children you know more and more of this kind of self-reflective awareness do you find with your kids that they're exposed to this at their school or not my young yes both of them but we've chosen schools very carefully okay so you know we we we chose our our elementary school based on its social emotional learning where they'll they'll prioritize that over anything that H they'll prioritize a conflict on the playground over anything any math problem that they're dealing with in the day uh and uses use a lot of um conflict kind of resolution compassionate conflict resolution practices but really that's why we go to pum Village in the summer that week is invaluable education for for them and uh we see the impact um was a long tale of impact when they come home for a long time and it's something that we use in our family and it's also you know I think it's an education that I that I continue to need to have even as you asked that question nobody ever talks about what it's like to be learning the material in the classroom in a lot of ways this this podcast is about also not with you because you're not a therapist when I talk to therapists is like what's it like to be a a therapist in the room with a client you know you're not just teaching skills you're a human that's having an interaction that's impacted by another human and uh you take it home and you you know you have your own self-doubt and you don't know what direction to head or you um really care about this person and what's what's that like so there's um I I'm interested in having those types of conversation of kind of pulling back the veil a little bit of what's going on inside um but you know as you were talking about Solitude I also think that we can make more of an intentional practice to to like go off and be by ourselves yeah go away for a few days actually a good friend of mine was just she just um I was talking to her and and she was just coming back she I just went to a hotel for three nights because I needed it doesn't have to be a retreat even she like I just need to leave everyone behind and go and be in my own space and just be with myself again like what is it what time do I want to wake up what what do I like what am I question because we're moving so quickly and there so so our margins you know we used to have papers with with margins on them and now we're looking at everything on a screen where there's there's no margin it's just from one thing to the next that's right I listened to your interview with Christa tippet couple interviews you've done with her oh that's right yes really beautiful yeah she's she's I I really enjoyed speaking with her it terrific she's such a good interview wonder she's so good uh but what was interesting is that the the the one that you did with her was pre-pandemic on Solitude so the I mentioned that we're going to talk about what's coming out next for you and uh if you want to hear more about montine and and your work around go listen to the Christa tippet interview because we didn't even tap into any of that and she talks with you more about that which is part of artst solitude but you then you like to um creatively pair these philosophers with um Buddhism and the next one that you have uh coming out is about Socrates which piqued my interest a little bit because one of the um you know there's a lot of influence of Buddhism in Psychology but there's a there's a huge influence on on Socrates had a huge has a huge influence especially on the cognitive behavioral branch of psychology the Socratic method is one of the things you get trained in in as a as a therapist of how to ask questions uh so there's a there's a thread there too but tell us what you're interested in now in terms of Socrates and Buddha and these how these two um relate to each other perhaps the thing that really clicked with this particular project is the recent scholarly work that's been done in Buddhist studies that has um led to a redating of the Buddha's life uh traditional Buddhism uh and even you know Western scholarship on Buddhism has accepted that the Buddha lived in the 6th Century BC see that he was born in about I think about 650 and he died in about 580 or something like that in other words in the 6th Century BC and that's been accepted for a long long time but recent scholarship has shown that actually this there's very compelling evidence in fact evidence that has more or less convinced the scholarly community that the Buddha was actually born about 80 years later was born around 480 BC and he died around 400 in other words he lived in the fifth century BC now for most people that probably doesn't mean a great deal so long ago it's 80 years yeah but what that does is it makes the Buddha suddenly an exact contemporary of Socrates in other words Socrates is said to have been born about the Buddha about 480 and Socrates dies and we know this you know this is historical he dies in 399 BC in other words just after 400 BC which is roughly the date the Buddha died so it struck me well could I then write a book in which I told these two people's lives as it were um in tandem could I use what we know so much more about Socrates than we do about the Buddha I mean just we have the whole of Plato we have xenophon we have all the we have we have plays with Socrates appearing there huge amount of material there very little material on the life of the historical Buddha uh in one of my other books books confession of a Buddhist atheist I spent a lot of time reconstructing what the human Buddha would have you know what would he have done what sort of world would he live in what can we know about you know the course of his life but by casting that against the much better uh information we have about Socrates in a weird way the Buddha can be somehow reflected off his contemporary in some way and what I do as a literary device is I imagin myself as a Buddhist in Athens in the fth century BC I think perhaps what in a way gives them the strongest connection is that both of them were people who in a way embodied another way of Being Human a way that broke with the traditions of their past and I mean quite radically broke with their respective traditions of the past and introduced a way of life that was based upon what I am calling an an ethics of uncertainty in other words neither the Buddha nor Socrates made any absolute truth claims this is the nature of socres case you know what is Justice what is love what is compassion and so on he analyzes it he probes into it he asks questions but he never gets to an answer he he comes to rest in what's called an aporia uh a kind of a basically a a suspension a space a bit like nirvana in a way in which you you you are passionately concerned about living a just life you're passionately concerned with Justice but at the same time you don't really know what it is and the more you look into it the more mysterious it becomes but that doesn't diminish your commitment to live according to a life that is just a life that is fair and Socrates life was is you know from what we know of it through Plato and xenophon was a you know was a modeling of that kind of Life A Life That's not based on any metaphysical or religious foundations the belief in God or the belief in absolute truth or the law of karma or something and the Buddha I think is much the same he also doesn't uh he actually formally rejects uh answering any metaphysical questions in the beginning of the world end of the world mind and body same or different he says don't go there that's not not not relevant what matters for him as it mattered for Socrates was how do I live well how do I cultivate a way of life that allows myself and others to live more fully to flourish and so what I've done in this book is really is is is try particularly to go deeper into that commonality into that deep shared ethic that I think that both figures embody or be it in very different ways because the you know you know fifth century BC Athens is not remotely similar to fifth century BC utar Pradesh where the Buddha was so uh there are differences but I think it's been very helpful to me to uh you know to to really use these two figures as a way to get at what lies at the root of human you know what Socrates calls leading an examined life life the unexamined life he says is not worth living the Buddha would have said the same and um so that's where that book starts off and then it goes off actually it's a big I just printed it I just made a file today um of the of the first complete draft and it's 400 Pages it's a big thick fat book and it goes off into all kinds of odd directions as well but I found it enormously helpful and I think it could also be useful as a way to somehow know heal some of the divisions of the world to have to recognize there is a deep Common Ground between you know the source of of Western philosophy and the source of at least the Buddhist philosophies that we find in Asia and I think to be able to to honor that common origin uh I think would be something that would bring people together and it would also I think give us the possibility of starting again what would be the relevance of that in it in dealing with say climate change now that's the only important question for me so I try to use this ethics of uncertainty as a framework for then addressing the kind of Crisis both personal and social and environmental that we we are currently confronted with and I think a joint venture as it were uh bringing stuff in from the Buddhist Traditions bringing more in from Socratic tradition as well as the later Greek philosophy opies particularly skepticism epicurian ISM stoicism all of this I think can work together towards um providing us with a framework to perhaps see the world more clearly but more importantly to have practices that enable us to respond to the world more creatively more intelligently and and ultimately more ethically so the ethics of uncertainty kind of circles back to where this all began uh with agnostic Buddhism yes and exactly uh that it's it's more about asking questions as Socrates did or maybe as a good therapist would do without having the answers just asking more questions yeah uh as well as having the ethics of of a desire to uh be helpful yeah in this world be helpful to yourself be helpful to others and what that looks like whether it's in climate change or um poverty or your own just really your own household what would be most helpful in your own household and maybe maybe the term you know thinking again like what are we Mom I don't know if we're agnostic Buddhists because like you there's I don't want to just sit in Buddhism there's all these other uh Traditions that I'm that I'm drawn to I'm drawn to yoga I'm drawn to um you know aspects of psychology or act that have a spiritual nature to them I'm drawn I'm drawn to physically nature you know I'm sort of the the just the the Hawks that are outside my office and the little rabbits like there's something there that's quite spiritual as well and uh I'm looking forward to reading that it sounds like a um a big one well if you want I'll I'll send you a copy if you like well yeah I would have liked a copy before this interview that would have been helpful it didn't exist before this interview it's only just being put together it's just put together yeah this morning this morning but going to your point though which I think is is actually a very important one is I think more and more people today feel like you do probably like I do I find the spaces between these Traditions to be more interesting than the Traditions themselves yeah uh is is the bit between Buddhism and Christianity or between therapy and Rel religion that's where I find myself interested and this is a space again it's an in between it's an uncertainty it's it's it's full of possibility it's not constrained by the the doctrines or the beliefs or the practices of Buddhism or therapy or Yung or Freud or whatever it might be it's a free space and maybe what we're moving towards globally is actually a kind of um uh a celebrating of the spaces between our cultures in which we're able to meet each other and to meet each other in the you know with full respect of our differences but in by by finding a space that exists between them uh a Bardo almost that's what the Tibetan word for the intermediate state is called um it's a space of Freedom it's a state based of uncertainty um and I think it's also it's actually I think the origin of much creativity right and a space of mul culturalism right you know in terms of when we look at food and the evolution of of food you go to a restaurant and you see all these different cultural influences in one in one dish that makes it unique to that to that Chef that may have you know some roots in Vietnam and some roots in Cuba and they and maybe some travels to somewhere else and they put it all together in something that's unique to them with as we live in a much more Multicultural world uh the the lines between East and West are not really I don't know what where those lines exist I don't think those lines are there anymore it's a hangover from the colonial period really right and um it's it's a very useless distinction it's hopelessly General the East the West doesn't mean anything uh and I think it's had it it's passed itself cell by date I think we need to move on to a genuine Multicultural Global awareness it takes us out of our parochial obsessions and our you chauvinism and sectarianism and so on that I think is what's causes so much suffering in the world well thank you Stephen Bachelor a delight to come across your work and I look forward to reading more I'll share all lots of information about you for books and want to read some of the books that we've talked about and uh listen to interview with Christa tippet which is please don't compare she's a tall order she's she's incredible and uh yeah and next time I'm in Bordeaux I'll yes next time you're in Bordeaux look uh we'll probably be here um I'm not going we'll be here all summer I think next year no do give us just drop us a line and um and we'll meet up either you're on the way to Plum Village we're between Bordeaux and Plum yeah exactly halfway yeah there you go can drop in have a cup of tea and then go on to Plum Village sounds good okay all right di it's been lovely talking to you you as well and I hope this records well and comes out well yeah so do [Music] I

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Length: 51min 18sec (3078 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2023