I agree with you on this part. It does expose people, and gets a lot of people on the path. A professor friend of mine talks about “barnes and noble Buddhism” being a gateway for a lot of people as well.
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No disagreement from me. I found Buddhism via Goenka retreats. Yet I also think it’s important to call out what isn’t Buddhism, such as when Venerable Brahmali pointed out multiple times in the video, that Stephen Batchelor’s views might be well and good, but it’s not Buddhism. Then people’s curiosity can be aroused and they can investigate for themselves.
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How does not believing in rebirth change anything about the practice? Secular Buddhists are still pursuing the end of suffering. Do people believe doubts about rebirth amount to an insult to the Buddha? Why is this even an issue?
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You are right, they are. But, if there is only one life then you can easily escape suffering by dying.
I don’t know if it is an insult to the Buddha, it is just cherry-picking through and through, and that fact can’t be logically argued since in his very formulation of right view, and also the four noble truths, the Buddha speaks on rebirth as what I would say is an ontological reality in the Buddhist system of thought.
[EDIT] To add a little bit here as well, it isn’t about “believing” in rebirth … but honestly, to really make progress on the path, you have to accept it as a possibility and understand that the Buddha is making a truth claim regarding rebirth. This really cannot be glossed over or put aside as “cultural baggage” or whatever kinda stuff S. Batchelor says about it and many others in the secular world. I would say this is my opinion, but I (and I am a skeptic and critic of a lot of stuff believe me) think it is actually the truth.
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This may also be helpeful. I cherry-picked it just for this conversation, LOL.
"The flat denial of the possibility of rebirth would count as an instance of
wrong view and therefore is better avoided. In fact, at the current stage of our
knowledge there is no incontrovertible evidence that either proves or disproves
rebirth. Although the notion that the mind equals the brain is a paradigmatic
assumption in much of modern science, to date this has never been conclusively
proven.
Right view can take two forms. One of these involves an affirmation of
rebirth, the other finds expression in the four noble truths. Someone
uncomfortable with the idea of a continuation beyond death need not feel forced
to accept rebirth as a matter of mere belief but could simply consider it an
element of Buddhist thought presently beyond personal verification. As a guiding
principle for actual practice, the four noble truths could be relied on.
Although the above considerations suggest that there is no need to believe in
rebirth in order to be a practicing Buddhist, for those who wish to understand
early Buddhist thought, there is definitely a need to try to understand the
doctrine of rebirth. This holds in particular for those who wish to teach the
Dharma to others. Given the centrality of rebirth, it is not possible to gain a
proper understanding of early Buddhism without having at least a basic grasp of
what this particular doctrine involves."
-Ven. Analayo
excerpt from “Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions” Wisdom Publications
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Yes, it’s a doorway into Buddhism, but not Buddhism itself. There are other doorways into Buddhism, I believe many in the west stumbled upon Buddhism via psychedelic drugs. Psychedelic drugs are not something I would recommend.
The issue with some secular Buddhists is if they claim that secular Buddhism is a form of Buddhism, or worse, the original Buddhism as the Buddha meant for it to be. Then it becomes a cult. Something which claims the name of Buddhism, but serves the food, with the essential ingredient missing. There are plenty of other cults of Buddhism Controversial ‘Buddhist’ Teachers & Groups (viewonbuddhism.org) which we wouldn’t necessarily recommend people to get into, although, for some cases, it’s good for them to get exposure to Buddhism and come to right view eventually. Best is to come to right view straight away.
It’s still ok to use secular Buddhism as the doorway to ease some people into Buddhism, but basically, we are already doing it by saying: leave rebirth aside for now, let’s focus on meditation/psychological parts of Buddhism. The term secular Buddhism gains a dirty name due to some of them not being willing to see secular Buddhism as merely a step along the journey to Buddhism, but as the endpoint in their understanding of Buddhism, not open to be converted.
It’s an issue for the sake of future generations. Who knows if the current mainstream Buddhism which includes Mahayana initially started as a splinter group which is universally condemned by others, then over time, had to be acknowledged as mainstream for the sake of harmony? I am thinking of Nichiren Buddhism, which looks very different from Early Buddhism, yet is now recognised as one of the mainstream Buddhism in Japan. It has very similar practises to Pure land, which is on an even more solid foundation as mainstream.
Could calling it out as not Buddhism work? Look to the case of Lu Jun Hong, Lu Taizhang of Oriental Radio. I don’t foresee them becoming mainstream Buddhism, perhaps due to so many orthodox Buddhist organization calling it out as not Buddhism, or as a cult. However, secular Buddhism has the potential to become mainstream. I dunno if calling it out would ultimately work, but it’s better than just keeping silent as if we approve of them modifying the teachings of the Buddha to suit materialism philosophy.
For the sake of the practise, kamma and rebirth does form a major part of the morality basis in Buddhism. Secular Buddhists use humanism as their morality due to not believing in kamma and rebirth. There are one or two part which is of the crucial difference between the 2 morality here, which might become relevant.
Say for a depressed, single, secular Buddhist, who’s suicidal and doesn’t have any friends or family or relatives. They might not see anything which would prevent them from killing themselves, since there’s not even anyone who would be sad for their passing. Since they don’t believe in life after death, to them, suffering can end faster by killing themselves, rather than to keep on living without hope, suffering like hell in depression. Whereas, for us Buddhists, we would avoid suicide at all costs due to kamma and rebirth. It might not be that easy to convince a secular Buddhist at that stage about rebirth, but more conventional anti-suicide techniques have to be used.
A second issue is euthanasia. There are plenty of posts by secular Buddhists, or new Buddhists from the west (who most likely doesn’t believe in kamma and rebirth yet, or haven’t internalized it) that says that they are ok with killing animals who are fatally wounded, dying slowly just to quicken the death of those animals. They don’t consider the bad kamma of killing they would incur on themselves. They don’t consider that ending the animal’s life doesn’t necessarily end their suffering (due to samsara).
This becomes even more important when it comes to parents. If for some unfortunate cases, some people’s parents got into a terminal illness, no hope for any quality of life, comatose etc, which at some point might face the decision to be hooked to a life support machine. If later on, due to various reasons, the children has to decide if the life support machine would need to be unplugged, that’s killing parents there. 2 of the 5 heavy evil kammas, resulting in hell for sure next life, and no attainment possible. For those who don’t believe in kamma and rebirth, there’s much less incentive to stop them from that unspeakable evil.
This issue would be multiplied to generations of unfortunate Buddhists if secular Buddhism became mainstream down the generations.
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Yes, I’ve actually heard people saying that - that they like how people like Batchelor are rediscovering “what the Buddha really taught”. It seems to me quite different from people like Robert Wright, or the mindfulness/wellness movement, who are quite clear that they are just picking up the Buddhist concepts and techniques that they find useful for a particular purpose, and feel no need to even engage with other aspects.
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I’m surprised noone has mentioned Bhante Sujato’s conversation with Stephen Batchelor (perhaps I missed it).
I thought there was an interesting contrast between Stephen’s denial of rebirth via logic and Bhante Sujato’s comment that he became intuitively convinced of something bigger than one life in the car park of the leper colony south of Chiang Mai on Christmas day of 1992. You can watch about minutes 38 to 43 if you are in a hurry.
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Why does this matter? A lifetime of suffering and certainty of death is enough to motivate practice. If practice will make me happy in this life, why can’t this be enough? One more thing, if dying were the end of suffering, I would take comfort in that.
If you believe that every word of the canon came from the Buddha’s mouth, you might believe this. Think about why there is so much talk about EBTs here. There is an acknowledgement on the part of many here that some of the canon is secondary.
It is not cherry picking to bracket off parts of the canon that appear incongruent with parts you believe to be primary. There are many parts in the canon where the Buddha will not make declarations about metaphysical questions. Also, the Kalama sutta has him saying that his dharma makes sense even if there is no rebirth.
AN3.65
‘If it turns out there is no other world, and good and bad deeds don’t have a result, then in the present life I’ll keep myself free of enmity and ill will, untroubled and happy.’ This is the second consolation they’ve won.
The vast majority of people in the Buddha’s time believed in rebirth and there were some who did not. Maybe the Buddha’s middle way approach was not to make a declaration about rebirth either way. Maybe the quote above is evidence for this. In any event, I do not see a reason for the animosity toward Secular Buddhists.
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It could be easily mistaken, but please don’t mistake calling out secular Buddhism vs animosity towards secular Buddhists.
One is a movement, the other are humans.
We can condemn a cult, but have compassion for the followers who are led astray.
We can condemn smoking, but have compassion to help the smokers to quit smoking. One of the requirement is to get the smokers to see that smoking is bad in the first place. So naturally, there could be some debate towards people who promote smoking as good.
Is it enough to be in robes for decades? I am often amazed at the motivation and drive of secular Buddhists to practise, and it’s very good. That’s an encouraging part of them.
As for rebirth, refer again to my comments on the top for why secular Buddhism is not a full school of Buddhism, and Why Secular Buddhism is Not True - Discussion - Discuss & Discover (suttacentral.net).
There are plenty of parallels in the other canons, so rebirth is very solidly baked into the suttas. It takes a lot of effort and crazy creative thinking to weave rebirth into the canon as a late teaching, which I don’t think it is possible to even academically attempt to produce that, and I don’t think any secular Buddhists goes into academic Buddhism to prove that, it’s basically not possible.
If dying (for non-enlightened people) is the end of suffering, there’s no need to practise at all. Same result for those who practise, devote their whole life to abstaining from sensual pleasures, vs those who indulge in debauchery, hedonistic lifestyle.
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If you consider anything I said to contain animosity, jeez, you don’t wanna see me on a bad day.
Exactly. There is compassion, and then there is being a doormat. Criticism doesn’t immediately equal ad hominem attack.
I hate to break it to you Stephen, but that is actually, by definition, what cherry-picking is. Picking out pieces of something you agree with, and leaving out the parts you don’t … I mean, am I off-kilter here?
What I shared from Ven. Analayo is a text-critical statement based on “EBT.” There is no doubt that rebirth is part of the what is accepted as EBT. Most of us on this forum know that the scriptures are nuanced, and may have changed over time, been added to, etc … but us regular lay folk need to take it easy sometimes in regards to our essentially amateur exegesis. There are many secular Buddhists—and I am not trying to target them, I am personally quite indifferent toward them to be honest with you—that have “translated” texts that absolutely, in literally no way, actually align with the other translations accepted by monks and scholars. You cannot just take personal conjecture and make up doctrine, edit it, or cherry-pick it and create new “renderings” or whatever people call this stuff nowadays.
Back to rebirth, it has already been stated you don’t have to “believe it” but you do, really, have to keep it open for consideration as an idea. You can just say to yourself you cannot personally verify it, so, yeah you move on and focus on other parts of the teachings that are more relevant at this particular moment.
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Regarding “What can get in the way of being open to rebirth”, what about the following?
Attachment to body or rupa khanda. Taking this khanda to be me, mine, myself, some people may not be able to imagine seeing themselves as having a different physical body.
Stinginess with regard to the sixth indria, mind consciousness, or mind object (idea). Idea saying that consciousness arises from physical body or any other idea. Idea is an idea, not direct seeing like what’s done by the sages who rightly see there is rebirth. The culprit is the thinking mind, or in Buddhist terms the sixth sense with its consciousness and mind object, isn’t it?
I don’t think a teacher should force a student to believe in a particular thing.
If the student is still greedy about his view or body, the forceful instruction may make the student develop rage because he doesn’t want to be separated from what he considers his e.g. his body, his idea, or his sixth consciousness.
To overcome greed or stingess maybe one needs to do dana frequently which doesn’t need to be in big amount. The more frequent the dana is, the more often one practices letting go. [Addition: and other practices in the Noble Eightfold Path]
Thumbs up. If possible, we should try to bring more right view into existence (addition: should be in a proper way). To back up criticising is necessary (when context and time are right), I’ll mention AN2.61 available in SuttaCentral
Just my two cents.
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I think there is a tendency, not just in the secular buddhists but in a very wide range of contemporary thinkers to be, perhaps out of naivety, perhaps out of conceit, or perhaps out of expedience, to genuflect towards “modern science” as being obviously or fundamentally “true” and to describe what’s “real”.
It’s something for example I have noticed Graham Priest do, and many others, trying to fit Buddhism into what we “now know to be true”.
I personally think this is a bit silly, as of course our best theories, QM and GR have very little to say about metaphysics etc, and in fact one of the few things they DO say is that they are definitely wrong as they are incompatible at a fundamental level and will need to be replaced one day by a “unified” theory…
Which brings me back to “expedience”. I suspect that a lot of people, especially people who carved out their careers in “academia” as in Preist’s case or adjacent to it as in Batchelor, that a lot of the declarations of faith and belief in “modern science” was more or less required by the powers that be in order to be able to speak about “spiritual” topics at all.
So that’s my take on what can “get in the way”, a contemporary society that can be deeply hostile to “spirituality” can get in the way, both on an institutional level, and on an internalised, personal one.
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When was the last time 98% of scientists got something really important wrong?
Not 98%, but almost 100% of the scientists in the world got this one wrong.
And it was not even half a century ago. 
Takeaway of the story: When there are at least evidences pointing to new discovery that contradicts our own theory (especially when the new evidences also have their own logical theory to back them up) my suggestion is: it’s worth investigating before straightaway denying. Don’t you agree? 
I think you are wrong here. The person who always “needs” more will never be happy. The punishment for greed, is greed. Greed is never being satisfied. The same can be said of those who hate and resent those who have more.
My guess is that you are much younger than me that you do not think the certainty of death is something that needs to be dealt with. You may feel differently later in life. Most skeptics have doubts, not certainties. No living thing wants to die.
Since rebirth is not needed for the practice, it could be regarded as extraneous and therefore easily separated from it. Some might find it motivating, but for many, it serves no such purpose. To say it is baked solidly into the suttas is to say you believe every sutta is primary and no interpolation took place. The fact that there are parallels could just mean rebirth material was introduced shortly after the Buddha. Given the fact that virtually all converts came in believing it in the first place, it is easy to see how it could have be woven in later. I think the Buddha would have been more unique an individual if did not declare or deny rebirth than if he did.
I actually believe rebirth is possible though I am not sure how punishment and reward would factor into it. If it is possible, I hope I find Buddhism again.
By definition, cherry picking is taking bits and pieces arbitrarily based on what you like. I am saying something very different here. I am saying that if you regard X as primary and Y as incongruent with X than saying Y probably was secondary is perfectly logical.
See my reply to NgXinZhao on this issue.
My sense is that the Buddha was highly unique on this issue insofar as he distinguished kamma and rebirth from reincarnation, and the kamma of ritual in Vedic practice. It’s a subtle point, but he made this distinction quite sharply from the widely held positions of the time on reincarnation. Part of the entire structure of the Buddha’s theory involves these unique teachings of kamma and rebirth, along with the means of cultivating ethics and opening doors to insight into reality. And so, the support for rebirth is essential, in my view, but I don’t begrudge people that do not hold it for themselves and consider themselves Buddhists. In a way, we know that the Buddha taught some concepts to folks like the Kalamas in one way, and he taught his monks and nuns in a different way, understanding that different people will understand and accept his Dhamma with greater or lesser precision.
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We are on different planets obviously. I regress.
Cheers!
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I agree 100% with your statement.
Kamma is essentially null and void without the potentialities regarding rebirth. Limiting it to “this life” or just boiling it down to another spiritual bank account which is not what it is, at all, in the Buddhist system.
We could go on and on around this topic, and I am not even going to go into the actual metaphysical and wild and weird stuff in the canon that cannot just be reduced to “added later” or myth or some other excuse people make to try and rectify Buddism with “modern science.” Buddhism is not science, and the two are not reconcilable, because as with all religions there comes a point where aspects must be taken on faith in the dispenser of knowledge, the Buddha in this case. To look at Buddhism with a reductionist lens is not only to detract from it the true beauty within the system, but to seriously lose a the chance to examine its actual potential as a system of thought. We don’t have to “believe” anything I wil say again, but we must be open to things beyond our scope of understanding. There is just no way around it in my opinion.
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I think the Buddha in his first noble truth does not only describe the suffering of humans or the human situation in samsara. I think this is a nice aspect of Buddha-Dhamma. It opens a very broad perspective on life. It is not anthropo-centric. Suffering is not only for humans. We see animals suffer a lot. We are all in the same boat. I do not doubt there are beings other than animal and humans.
Buddha describes the suffering of all sorts of beings.
From this perspective seen one might question if one even can understand the first noble truth without the perspective of the suffering of all kinds of other beings in samsara and their situation.
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