However, from the standpoint of classical Buddhist doctrine as preserved in the Pali Canon and lived by the global Sangha for millennia, his "agnostic" reinterpretation presents a fundamental and, we would argue, fatal reconstitution of the Buddha's teaching. While well-intentioned, it severs the vital arteries that give the Dharma its transformative power and ultimate purpose.


Here is a critique structured around his key arguments:

1. The Redefinition of Right View (Sammā-Diṭṭhi) Undermines the Entire Path

Batchelor's agnosticism toward rebirth is not a minor adjustment; it is a direct challenge to the foundational principle of Right View, the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.

• As Defined in the Suttas: The Nikāyas are unequivocal. In MN 117, Right View is explicitly defined as the understanding of the moral efficacy of action (kamma) and its result (vipāka), and of the process of rebirth across multiple lives. Suttas like MN 135 (The Shorter Discourse on Deeds) and AN 3.33 detail the specific, observable principles that lead to rebirth in heaven or hell, not as metaphors, but as descriptions of a natural law. To bracket these is to remove the "right" from Right View, reducing it to a provisional, therapeutic perspective.
• The Moral Horizon: By limiting the scope of kamma to a single lifetime, Batchelor truncates its profound ethical implications. The knowledge that unskillful actions can have consequences spanning countless lives provides a powerful, long-term motivation for restraint and purification. When this horizon is collapsed, the urgency to abandon deep-seated defilements (āsavas) can be diminished, turning the Path from a matter of life-and-death transcendence into a system for managing present-moment psychological stress.

2. Diluting Mindfulness and Effort by Severing Them from the Full Dhamma

Batchelor's framework risks fostering the very "McMindfulness" he might wish to avoid.

• The Function of Sati (Mindfulness): In the foundational texts for mindfulness (DN 22, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta; MN 10), the practice is never value-neutral. It is yoked to the goal of "dispassion," "cessation," "relinquishment," and "release." What is one mindful of? The Dhamma. And a core part of that Dhamma is the understanding of the peril of saṃsāra - the endless round of birth, aging, and death. Without this context, mindfulness can easily devolve into a technique for stress reduction or improved focus, detached from the radical reorientation toward Nibbāna.
• The Scope of Right Effort: The project of abandoning unwholesome states (SN 45.8) gains its profound depth from the recognition that these are not just passing moods but deeply ingrained tendencies (anusaya) that have been carried forward from life to life. Right Effort is the struggle to uproot these latent defilements completely. If there is no rebirth, the project becomes one of management, not ultimate eradication.

3. Truncating the Very Goal of Liberation

This is the most significant departure. Batchelor redefines the problem the Buddha set out to solve.

• The Buddha's Central Problem: The first noble truth (SN 56.11) is not merely "there is suffering in this life." It is that birth itself is suffering, because it is the precondition for aging, sickness, and death. The entire teaching of Dependent Origination (SN 12.2) is a detailed map showing how ignorance leads to birth (jāti). The goal of the Path is to break this chain, to bring about the cessation (nirodha) of the entire process, thereby ending rebirth.
• Redefining Saṃsāra and Nibbāna: By interpreting saṃsāra as a psychological cycle within one life and nibbāna as a state of existential freedom or authenticity, Batchelor offers a profound and valuable humanistic philosophy, but it is not the Buddhism of the Buddha. He transforms a soteriological project aimed at transcending conditioned existence into a therapeutic one aimed at finding peace within it. This turns the Dhamma from a raft to the far shore into a better way to decorate the raft.

Additional Tensions with Mainstream Tenets

• Selective Agnosticism: The Buddha was famously silent on certain metaphysical questions (e.g., the exact nature of the Tathagata after death), but he was abundantly clear on the reality of rebirth (e.g., SN 12.65, where he explains past lives as a cause of present suffering). To be agnostic about rebirth while accepting other principles like the Four Noble Truths creates an inconsistent epistemic standard. It asks for faith in the diagnosis and cure while dismissing the doctor's explanation of the disease's cause and recurrence.
• Weakened Soteriogical Motivation: Texts like AN 4.198 and the opening verses of the Dhammapada ("Mind is the forerunner of all states...") ground ethical conduct in the long-range, inescapable consequences of our choices. Removing this horizon can, in practice, weaken the restraint needed to confront grave moral temptations, especially when short-term justifications are compelling.

What is Valuable and a Proposed Middle Way

Despite these critiques, Batchelor's work serves a crucial purpose. His emphasis on the urgency of addressing dukkha here-and-now, on experiential verification (ehipassiko), and on demythologized language that reduces clinging to cultural forms are all powerful antidotes to a dogmatic, culturally encrusted practice. These align beautifully with the Kalama Sutta's (AN 3.65) call for graduated confidence and the practical, compassionate focus of the brahmavihāras (AN 4.125).

A practical middle way, faithful to the tradition yet accessible, might be:

• To hold rebirth not as a blind article of faith, but as a working hypothesis - a foundational assumption of the Path that one agrees to "try on" and investigate through practice, as the Buddha advises in MN 95.
• To teach the Eightfold Path as an integrated whole, ensuring that mindfulness and ethics are never divorced from their ultimate context: the cessation of saṃsāra.
• To remain in humble dialogue with the living Sangha and the canonical texts, recognizing that our modern skepticism is not necessarily superior to the wisdom of a 2,600-year-old tradition.

In conclusion, while "Buddhism Without Beliefs" offers a compelling philosophy for modern life, it does so by performing major surgery on the body of the Dhamma. It removes the heart of the teaching - the liberation from the cycle of rebirth - and offers in its place a noble, but ultimately incomplete, path of psychological well-being and existential authenticity.

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Note:
1. Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
by Stephen Batchelor (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Without-Beliefs-Contemporary-Awakening/dp/1573226564

Print length: 144 pages
Publication date: March 1, 1998
ISBN-13978-1573226561