After Buddhism

Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

By: Stephen Batchelor

Narrated by: Stephen Batchelor

Some 25 centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha's teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent, ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age.

After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha's inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose perpetual survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today's globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha's vision of human flourishing.

©2015 Stephen Batchelor (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

must listen for all traditions

Excellent review of the historical Buddha. In addition, this book is invaluable for a deeper, or new, understanding of layordination and/or the western practice of Buddhism in general.

Such a deep and thorough explanation

This is the kind of book that clarifies the subject. You learn things You didn’t know you didn’t know. There were questions about Buddhism I never thought to ask.
This book answered those questions. Questions about the early disciples and information about the evolution of the practice. Stephen batchelor covers all of it.

informative... but, slow and complicated...

although it is difficult to fully grasp in one listen, this book is very informative.

Great synopsis

This is a great summary of early Buddhism during the time of the Buddha. Very insightful

Fascinating dive into Buddhism and it's history

The author did a very thorough study of what is in the original Buddhist writings and how it may have come about. The intertwining of teaching and political strife of the day was a heavy doze of realism that I feel we badly lack when it comes to talking and thinking about anything religious.

He also explains very well what Buddhist practice is from a rational and secular perspective. As a practitioner I found a lot of the book helpful to my own spirituality. Listening to it added good fuel to how I approach it.

At the same time I believe that some of the book was based on not much more than speculation. Bachelor is obviously trying to build a foundation for his world view, which is liberal, secular and purely rational, devoid of any mystery or the Divine. He constructs multiple arguments for why the passages in the ancient texts that do not fit that worldview are to be neglected or interpreted differently than they appear. In that sense the book functions as apologetics.