Yes, I have been waiting on this book for all my life.

Although I’m not yet halfway thru it, I’m loving Stephen Batchelor’s new book. I’m reading it slowly, as it’s pretty heady stuff, but Therese talked about the central idea of it during our retreat at Southern Dharma in April, so I had the basic sense of it already.

I will wait until I’m done reading before I try to really address it here, but the thing about it that has so captivated me is that it allows me to understand first why I was so sure, all those years ago, that Buddhism was for me, and second, why it has been hard to relate to the institutional versions of it with which I have been involved.

Basically Stephen says is that in the first 300 years or so after the Buddha died, many modifications were made to the teachings, changing them from the very practical, relative message evident in the early texts to a more ontological, absolutist kind of religion. And… that what the Buddha was saying is that awakening is not some metaphysical event that ends all desire and thus frees one from suffering, but a process of coming to an understanding of how to end – at least moderate – one’s natural reactivity so that one lives one’s life with a perspective that makes the existential condition of life tolerable and allows one to cultivate an integrated, authentic life.

Yes, that’s the Buddha I have always been looking for!