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| Massive Buddha statue on a hill in Himalayan Buddhist Bhutan (Michael Foley) |
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Preeminent Western Buddhist thinkers -- Allan Badiner, Jack Kornfield, Stephen Batchelor, and Robert Thurman -- weigh in.
“The Buddha was an atheist.” Writer Allan Badiner made this bald pronouncement in the midst of a conversation that spanned the wee hours of a cloudless Burning Man night.
Sitting in a vast tent where, during the day, scores of partygoers had washed off their dust and grime in a plexiglass chamber,
we discussed prevailing notions of a Buddhist godhead and, conversely,
our mutual embrace of the [Buddhist] religion in its secular form.
I was most intrigued, though, by Badiner’s description of the Buddha as an atheist. I asked for sources.
Badiner’s first response:
I would need time to do it, but there are passages from the Tripitaka [a collective name for the three divisions of the Buddhist teachings] that strongly indicate that the Buddha denied the existence of a creator god. Rather than classify him as an atheist or an agnostic, it would be more appropriate to use the term nontheist. [Note: Nontheism is NOT atheism; it is saying that Buddhism is not dependent or affected on their being or not being a God.] An atheist believes only what he can see but, of course, the Buddha suggested that not all that you see is real.
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| Batchelor is a Buddhist atheist. |
I responded with enthusiasm and persistence: “I like nontheist -- thanks -- but do send me the citation when you can.”
He did: According to Stephen Batchelor’s Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, on the few occasions in the [Pali] Canon where the question of [the Buddhist conception of] God [as polytheistic devas and brahmas] is addressed, Gautama [the historical Buddha] is presented as an
ironic atheist.
The rejection of God is not a mainstay of his teaching,
so he did not get worked up about it.... More
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