[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Zelders.YH]

Joanna wrote :
>I ignore anything anyone says about existentialism. period.

Better to dump Batchelor's book then.

It is all too clear that Batchelor owes a large 
debt to existentialist philosophers and theologians.
He mentions Husserl, Heidegger and Lévinas as 
philosophers in which he got interested at a 
certain point, and he explicitly names Martin 
Buber, Gabriel Marcel, John Macquarrie and esp. 
Paul Tillich as thinkers that influenced him. He 
also states that he has a geater affinity with 
the theologian Don Cupitt than with any living 
Buddhist thinker. Cupitt is also influenced by existentialist thought.

Batchelor also mentions the maverick bhikkhu 
Nyanavira, who was interested in Kierkegaard, 
Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre, and who 
experimented with existentialist interpretations 
of buddhist thought in the fifties. Batchelor 
shares Nyanavira's view that : "[.] the 
existentialist philosophers can provide a helpful 
bridge, especially to a modern reader puzzled by 
the jargon of Buddhism to understanding the 
relevance of Gotama's discourses in the Pali 
Canon to their own lives."(pp.144-5).
Batchelor's first attempt to formulate his own 
thought was an essay called 'The Existential 
Foundations of Buddhism', the subtitle of his 
first book 'Alone with Others' was 'An Existential Approach to Buddhism'.

One could go on, but I'll rest my case.
I'm beginning to wonder, has anyone actually read the whole book ?

Herman