Buddhist atheism irks B. Alan Wallace
Wow, we suspicion serious Buddhists were ostensible to be full of compassion, empathy, as well as oneness with all sentient beings. Guess not.
Because we only quickly review through a sardonic critique of Stephen Bachelor's "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist," which B. Alan Wallace hates. (Thanks to Ira for an email which turned me upon to this essay in Mandala, a Buddhist magazine.)
Wallace is a heading Buddhist thinker who tries to meld scholarship as well as spirituality. According to Wikipedia:
His life's work focuses upon a deep rendezvous in between Buddhist philosophical as well as contemplative exploration as well as modern scholarship as well as philosophy, with a special significance upon exploring a nature as well as potentials of a thoughts in a in essence experimental manner, as giveaway as possible from a dogmas of religion as well as materialism.
Calling materialism a "dogma" offers up a clue to what bothers Wallace so much about Bachelor's book, which I've review as well as enjoyed (mentioned it in a couple of blog posts, here as well as here).
Wallace is very much into a abnormal side of Buddhism.
He believes in past lives as well as reincarnation. These have been religious beliefs, since there is no proof for them. But if a Buddha supposedly taught something, no matter how small justification there is for it, this is great enough for Wallace.
Since Batchelor dismisses all talk of change of heart as a waste of time, he projects this view onto his image of a Buddha, declaring which he regarded speculation about destiny as well as past lives to be only an additional distraction. This explain flies in a face of a countless times a Buddha spoke of a measureless significance of change of heart as well as karma, which distortion during a core of his teachings as they have been recorded in Pali suttas. Batchelor is one of many Zen teachers nowadays who regard destiny as well as past lives as a small dist! raction.
Well, I'm no Zen teacher, though I'm upon Batchelor's side.
I used to hold in reincarnation. Now I'm thoroughly agnostic, with a tilt toward atheistic, upon this possibility. Sure, it'd be good to have an additional chance during life. It strikes me as more important, though, to live this hold up as fully as possible.
If Buddhism is as religiously dogmatic as B. Alan Wallace makes it out to be, it's no consternation because physical Buddhist writers such as Stephen Bachelor have been so popular nowadays. A commenter upon Wallace's essay says:
This conflict of atheists is unwarranted. Most atheists we know dont hold in a God as well as as far as we know a Buddha did not hold in a God. If he did, we substantially would not be a Buddhist. As such, someone who doesnt hold in God is an atheist. Likewise, we confess which we do not hold in a Virgin Birth of possibly a Virgin Mary, or Achi Drolma, a Tibetan Buddhist deity. we do however, hold in parallel universes, simply because there is some justification of that!
...Whatever the beliefs, whether we have been Buddhists who hold in God, or drifting saucers, or not, to say atheists as well as agnostics have been people who have been not endangered with awakening or reality as Mr. Wallace implies is an gross error.
