Stephen Batchelor ... sort of

Yesterday, I drove to the 'other' side of town to hear a lecture by Stephen Batchelor, an author and mildly obstreperous exponent of Buddhism.

It was like a trip to France.

The lecture itself was held at Smith College, an Ivy League institution whose many 19th and early-20th century brick buildings sit on geographically higher-ground in Northampton. Smith is the economic strong point of the community ... sort of like having a delicately-appointed General Motors plant in town. In what might be thought of as the college's bomb zone, private houses are often large and occasionally magnificent and in harmony with the stately institution they abut ... a distant cry from the farming-feel utility of the housing in neighborhoods at a greater distance ... housing like mine.

I wanted to hear Batchelor because ... well, because he had struck me from afar as an interesting and cogent expositor of something that had roped in my interest for 40 or more years: Buddhism. I had never read any of his books and had no intention of doing so, but I was curious.

The lecture was held in Seelye Hall -- one of Smith's brick buildings that had been named for the college's first president, Laurenus Clark Seelye. The steps leading to the entry doors were what I consider precious and dangerous -- made of stone that was set in such a way that delicate maidens would not be forced to lift their feet too high ... risers a mere three to four inches ... dangerous because the stair-climbing habit is generally set at seven to eight inches and the potential for miscalculating and then falling were in play.

Inside, the building immediately spoke of the past -- high ceilings that thumbed their noses at the bitter winters that New England can serve up; rich paneling tended to perfection all these years later; and, on the first floor, a ginormous -- we're talking Vladimir Lenin or Saddam Hussein or Abraham Lincoln enormous -- painting of Seelye. The oil portrait must have been twenty feet high and eight or ten across ... and its sole, standing figure was depicted in the blacks and whites of a fellow who had once been a minister. It showed a serious/solemn, if not terribly interesting, man. The painting was not a great or moving work; it just made me wonder, as a tourist in this foreign land, what sort of a man would allow or encourage such a painting to be executed.

Before the lecture, I got to say hello to Stephen Batchelor and to chat briefly. At 59, he was white-haired, balding and had a comforting paunch. His talk was entitled "Secular Buddhism," a mildly-provocative title to the extent anyone might credit Buddhism as a religion and see secularism as some sort of polar opposite.

The lecture was delivered in I took to be a reconfigured, two-classroom-sized amphitheater that was packed with perhaps 50 people, two or three of whom were brown. The seats were spacious enough so that I could and did cross my legs from time to time. Many in the audience were older and had earnest faces. Their clothes seemed to consist of assertively-unassertive linen and shoes softened by another's hands.

What did Batchelor say? He said a lot of things, eg.: something called "the Truth" appeared no where in early texts; the "Four Noble Truths" were likewise not to be found, but were, like other latter-day Buddhist touchstones, appended after Gautama's time and presentations; that what were often thought of as nouns ("Truth," "enlightenment," "Nirvana," etc.) were more sensibly to be addressed as verbs; that Gautama was sometimes portrayed, in keeping with the culture of his time, as the life-giving, nourishing, warming sun. Batchelor made his presentation with a humane and human flow that I could not begin to report, even if I wanted to.

What I realized not long into Batchelor's talk was, somewhat to my chagrin, that I was no longer interested in learning. I loved his obvious capacity to think and weave and expound but ... I was interested in enjoyment and I got a full measure of that. Some part of me wished and remembered ... times when I was dying to inform and shape whatever my notions of Buddhism might have been. Buddhism was something I dearly wanted to get 'better' at. And that was what I imagined I saw in the faces of those around me -- a devotion to and crediting of learning or Buddhism or something similar. I was slightly jealous of this point of view. A part of me wished I felt the same. But, a bit to my surprise, I didn't.

Batchelor was a delight to me in the same way that watching Usain Bolt run 100 meters was a delight. Or drowning in the flamenco guitar of Carlos Montoya. Or feeling the utter softness of alpaca. Batchelor was very good at what he did and being in the presence of someone who is very good at what they do makes the world a more delicious place. I don't want to do what those who are delicious to me have or continue to do. It is enough to know they exist in the world. A brightness descends not as something to mimic ... brightness is to enjoy ... sort of like going to a foreign country ... sort of like going to France: It's all woo-hoo new and it's not new at all... and yet, well ... hot damn!

Up in the hills from here, there is a place along the Deerfield River where, in summer, people can rent large inner tubes and settle into them along the smooth and cooling flow. I have never done it and may never get the chance, but the image delights my mind ... doing nothing, floating, sunshine and water, watching the world go by, no need to improve, nothing to hold on to ... just floating and basking and, although there is nothing exceptional, filled with a settled delight.

I'm not much good at anything any longer.

Luckily, I don't have to be.

The gossamer tendrils of expertise are not missing and they are enough.

Perhaps, somehow, it is like Marianne Williamson's "Our Greatest Fear:"

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.