TY - BOOK ID - 135672652 TI - Confession of a Buddhist atheist PY - 2010 SN - 0385527063 9780385527064 PB - New York Spiegel & Grau DB - UniCat KW - Buddhists KW - Spiritual biography KW - Batchelor, Stephen. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135672652 AB - Charting his journey from hippie to monk to lay practitioner, teacher, and interpreter of Buddhist thought, Batchelor reconstructs the historical Buddha's life, locating him within the social and political context of his world. In examining the ancient texts of the Pali Canon, the earliest record of the Buddha's life and teachings, Batchelor argues that the Buddha was a man who looked at human life in a radically new way for his time, more interested in the question of how human beings should live in this world than in notions of karma and the afterlife. According to Batchelor, the outlook of the Buddha was far removed from the piety and religiosity that has come to define much of Buddhism as we know it today. ER -