Unapologetic Conversations on Religion & Spirituality

Introduction

It’s been eight years since I last blogged as The Naked Monk. I’ve missed it!

I started The Naked Monk to talk, listen, learn and share my ideas about religion—Buddhism in particular but also Roman Catholicism, which I grew up in. I’m not a traditional believer—in fact I’m not a believer at all, even though I was a Buddhist monk for eight years and, even though forty years later I still turn to the Buddha for inspiration.

My Journey with Buddhism and Christianity

So I’m no longer a Buddhist and I don’t identify as Christian. However, I can honestly say that the two historical figures who have most affected my life choices and my thinking are the founders of these two religions—Gotama and Jesus. I still find the sermon on the mount inspired. The suttas still trigger new insights. But to get to where I’m at today, I had to get past the formulas, the dogmas and the groupthink of both religions. I had to figure things out for myself.

Gotama‘s story brought me a profound sense of purpose not because he was the omniscient superbeing presented by traditional Buddhists, but because he was not. He was just another human being like you and me. The more you study his life and times, the more you see that he was on to something much simpler and more down-to-earth than the absolute truths of mystical Buddhism.

The Importance of Personal Exploration

I‘m surprised sometimes by my own thoughts, but I get energy from comments from visitors—especially hostile ones. I have an audience to challenge me! I feel the outrage when I question sacrosanct beliefs. That’s particularly significant because Gotama did not tell people what to believe. He worked with experience, not ideas, and encouraged everyone to figure things out for themselves.

This is what sets Buddhism apart from all other religions. It’s why many of us came to Buddhism in the first place.

Gotama and Jesus: Influences on My Life

There are literally hundreds of variations on Buddhism and Christianity, most of them claiming to be absolutely true. I think that would make Gotama smile. He explained how preconceptions, biases and opinions shape our perceptions and explained that we prefer to see what we want to see—not what’s actually going on. We deliberately shut it out. Wilful ignorance, he said, is why we suffer so much.

Shoulds and shouldn’ts play no role in Gotama’s path to freedom. The world is filled with well-intentioned people who believe they should be a certain way and yet find themselves behaving otherwise. Some admit it, but most can’t—they lock in their denial with guilt and shame. The idea is to let go of that sort of emotional baggage, not to pile it on.

Challenging Beliefs and Embracing Experience

I’m not just making this up. For eight years I studied the three vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism and the scholastic commentaries known as abidhamma. After returning to lay life I narrowed down my search to the earliest literature—the Pali Canon (named after the language they’re written in).

My colleague Stephen Batchelor has identified at least six different ‘voices’ in the Pali Canon—poetic, dramatic, skeptical, pragmatic, dogmatic and mythic. Putting the last two aside helps shine a much clearer light on Gotama the man.

There’s guesswork involved—lots of trial and error. To process the story I have to explore myself. I know that to accept it as factual is to render it lifeless, but am I interpreting all the meaning out of it? That’s what true believers say.

Conclusion and Invitation

I may not be a card-carrying member of any belief system, but I’m committed. Gotama’s life and times didn’t happen in a vacuum but in a historical context. How did this affect his decisions? His teaching? Not one of my teachers ever suggested it was significant even though Gotama’s central teaching is the dependent arising of all things. I see the man and his mission in my own way. Isn’t that what commitment means?

Neatly packaged answers to existential questions are useless. The only way forward is to accept them as unanswerable. We keep exploring, and here’s the place where I’ll document my findings and musings.

Please share and comment. If you disagree, or if you’re offended by my posts—speak up! I like a good debate, and I want to hear from you all.

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