This is about four books in one-- it is a autobiography of a monk turned lay Buddhist meditation teacher, it is a telling of the historical Buddha's life, it is a travel guide to the "holy land" of Buddhism, it is a discussion of a methodology for creating a secular Buddhism.

The autobiography was pleasant to read, it is a good story. The story of the historical Buddha's life as reconstructed from the Pali texts using, of all things, a reference dictionary of names, to reassble the jumbled story line in the pali cannon. The historical Buddha lived in a "Game of Thrones"-like world with rival kings, kingdoms, everyong trying to get favor of the king, including Gautama with surprises and back stabbing along the way. This is the most human story of the Buddhas life and has disloged all others I've read in my preferred way to think about Gotama.

I say Batchelor presents a methodology because the book is light on specific advice with respect to practices (outside of applying the methodology of substracting out brahmanism, hindism from Buddhism and applying doubt and scepticism), this is a mild criticism because what does fill the book is good content.

The entire book is readable and light reading, unlike Batchelors more serious earlier existential books. ( )

A compelling journey through the life of Stephen Batchelor who spent many years in Tibetan Buddhism and became skeptical overtime. He studies the Buddha himself and finds that he was more secular than he thought at first. ( )

A young British nomad/monk Stephen Batchelor autobiograhical rendition articulates probably the “true spirit” of Buddhism is this book as he journeys as a young 18 year old departing England through Europe and to the far east ; eventually ends up tracking the path of the Buddha to his last days as decades pass by .

Buddhism through the eons (predates all abrahamic religions) has been absorbed by each culture and now reduced to a splinter groups ( Tibetan - Theravada / Mahayana ) each affirming their interpretation holds the path to salvation ; and yet they are all plagued by dogmatic , authoritarian , misogynic propaganda which is synonymous with abrahamic religions .

In retrospection with Karen Amstrong’s version “The Buddha” ( Richard Gere narration) I see how flawed and heavily biased towards hinduism when compared to the original transcripts of the Buddha ; which in summary was an exuberance of rationalism and non-theistic in nature . ( )

Written with the same brilliance and boldness that made Buddhism Without Beliefs a classic in its field, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is Stephen Batchelor’s account of his journey through Buddhism, which culminates in a groundbreaking new portrait of the historical Buddha.

Stephen Batchelor grew up outside London and came of age in the 1960s. Like other seekers of his time, instead of going to college he set off to explore the world. Settling in India, he eventually became a Buddhist monk in Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital-in-exile, and entered the inner circle of monks around the Dalai Lama. He later moved to a monastery in South Korea to pursue intensive training in Zen Buddhism. Yet the more Batchelor read about the Buddha, the more he came to believe that the way Buddhism was being taught and practiced was at odds with the actual teachings of the Buddha himself.

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.

I enjoyed this book from three perspectives; reading about the author’s personal journey, gaining some insight into the doctrinal differences in different branches of Buddhism, and also to learn about the historical life and times of Siddathma Gotma as a man, rather than “the Buddha”. ( )