Bøker av Stephen Batchelor

Demystifies Buddhism by explaining, without jargon or obscure terminology, what awakening is and how to practise it.

Some twenty-five 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 long 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.

Solo con los Demás. Un acercamiento existencial al Budismo es una enseñanza contemporánea necesaria para comprender el mensaje intemporal del Budismo y su incidencia en las relaciones humanas.Está inspirado en Guía a la Forma de Vida del Bodhisatva, de Shantideva (traducida del tibetano por el mismo autor), en instrucciones orales de maestros budistas modernos, en el clásico Ser y Tiempo, de Heidegger, y en los escritos de los teólogos cristianos Paul Tillich y John MacQuarrie. "Está escrito con una claridad poco usual que hace accesibles temas complejos. Del modo más sensible, inteligente y cuidadoso llena un serio vacío en el dialogo Oriente-Occidente. Es pionero el uso de la fenomenología y el existencialismo, pero a pesar de ello, los términos utilizados por estas disciplinas no impiden un encuentro veraz con una tradición diferente. La estrategia de Batchelor (valerse de estas disciplinas occidentales para hacer accesible el Budismo) es un acierto".David Michael Levin, Profesor Asociado del Departamento de Filosotía Northwestern University ¡Magnífico, inspirador! Este excelente libro ha sido para mi un texto revelador, a pesar de mis casi sesenta años de interés en el Budismo.El acercamiento de Batchelor inspirará a muchos lectores que nunca han considerado el Budismo como algo relevante para ellos mismos.Del prefacio de John Blofield.

Kierkegaard said that faith without doubt is simply credulity, the will to believe too readily, especially without adequate evidence, and that in Doubt can Faith begin. All people involved in spiritual practice, of whatever persuasion, must confront doubt at one time or another, and find a way beyond it to belief, however temporary. But faith is not equivalent to mere belief. Faith is the condition of ultimate confidence that we have the capacity to follow the path of doubt to its end. And courage.In this engaging spiritual memoir, Stephen Batchelor describes his own training, first as a Tibetan Buddhist and then as a Zen practitioner, and his own direct struggles along his path. It is most uncanny that we are able to ask questions, for to question means to acknowledge that we do not know something. But it is more than an acknowledgement: it includes a yearning to confront an unknown and illuminate it through understanding. Questioning is a quest.Batchelor is a contemporary Buddhist teacher and writer, best known for his secular or agnostic approach to Buddhism. He considers Buddhism to be a constantly evolving culture of awakening rather than a religious system based on immutable dogmas and beliefs. Buddhism has survived for the past 2,500 years because of its capacity to reinvent itself in accord with the needs of the different Asian societies with which it has creatively interacted throughout its history. As Buddhism encounters modernity, it enters a vital new phase of its development. Through his writings, translations and teaching, Stephen engages in a critical exploration of Buddhism's role in the modern world, which has earned him both condemnation as a heretic and praise as a reformer.

An essential collection of Stephen Batchelor's most probing and important work on secular Buddhism As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream Western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor's writings on these themes, he explores the complex implications of Buddhism's secularization. Ranging widely-from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice-he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world.

What is this? Ancient questions for modern minds presents talks given by Martine and Stephen Batchelor during a Sön (Chan/Zen) retreat in England in 2016. Leading us through the practice of radical questioning at the heart of this Korean Buddhist tradition, the authors show how anyone at all can benefit from this form of radical inquiry today.These talks demonstrate clearly how a practice with origins in China a thousand years ago can meld with insights from the natural sciences, classical and modern western philosophy, Romantic poetry, and early Buddhism. The reader can use this book as a companion in facing the challenge of living a fully human life in our complex contemporary world, or as a practice manual, or both.Stephen Batchelor is a writer, teacher and artist. He trained as a Sön monk in Korea for four years. He is the author of Buddhism without beliefs, After Buddhism and, most recently, Secular Buddhism. He is a co-founder of Bodhi College.Martine Batchelor lived as a Sön nun in Korea for ten years. She is author of Meditation for life, The path of compassion, Women in Korean Zen and Let go. Her most recent book is The spirit of the Buddha.Martine and Stephen have taught at Gaia House since 1986. They live in southwest France, and conduct seminars and retreats worldwide.

Is your knowledge of The Crusades less than tip-top? Maybe you're curious about Columbus, or you're desperate to read about the Black Death in all its gory detail? This title includes - from kings, knights and anti-Popes, to invasion, famine, the Magna Carta and Joan of Arc (and a few rebellious peasants thrown in for good measure).

The civilisation of the Ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science and arts of Western culture.

Stephen Batchelor's seminal work on humanity's struggle between good and evil In the national bestseller Living with the Devil, Batchelor traces the trajectory from the words of the Buddha and Christ, through the writings of Shantideva, Milton, and Pascal, to the poetry of Baudelaire, the fiction of Kafka, and the findings of modern physics and evolutionary biology to examine who we really are, and to rest in the uncertainty that we may never know. Like his previous bestseller, Buddhism without Beliefs, Living with the Devil is also an introduction to Buddhism that encourages readers to nourish their "buddha nature" and make peace with the devils that haunt human life. He tells a poetic and provocative tale about living with life's contradictions that will challenge you to live your life as an existence imbued with purpose, freedom, and compassion—rather than habitual self-interest and fear.