Ep158: Why I Am Not A Buddhist - Dr Evan Thompson
Dr Evan Thompson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Psychology, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Available on Youtube, iTunes, SoundCloud & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast’.
Evan recounts his upbringing in his father’s intentional community, the Lindisfarne Association, and shares stories of childhood encounters with teachers of Zen, Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism, Yoga, and more.
Evan traces his intellectual and academic trajectories, and reflects on the problems of community dynamics and religious perennialism that his father’s community faced.
Evan then outlines his critique of what he calls ‘Buddhist Exceptionalism’, as laid out in his book ‘Why I Am Not A Buddhist’.
As part of this critique, Evan addresses subjects such as why Buddhism is not a science of the mind (or of anything else), why presentations of the historical Buddha used by figures such as Goenka are a useful fiction, the problems of borrowing the authority of science for the purposes of Buddhist evangelism, and the surprising influence of Protestantism on Buddhism’s development in Asia.
Evan also reflects on the future of Buddhism and explores the question, ‘what is enlightenment?’.
Topics include:
00:00 - Intro
01:23 - Evan’s upbringing in his father’s intentional community
06:38 - Exposure to Zen via Richard Baker Roshi
09:34 - Zen takeover of the Lindisfarne Association
11:13 - Childhood encounters with Buddhist, Sufi, Yoga, and Christian teachers
14:29 - Evan’s distaste for Chogyam Trungpa’s scene
16:48 - Fractious community dynamics and the Zen takeover
21:19 - Problems of perennialism
25:03 - An ecology of mysticism
26:32 - Religious superiority
28:18 - Evan’s intellectual development and academic trajectory
35:36 - Buddhist exceptionalism and the Mind & Life Institute
41:20 - What is Buddhist modernism
44:065 - Evan’s misgivings about Buddhist exceptionalism
47:37 - Evan summarises his critique
49:21 - Reactions from colleagues
54:44 - Why do elite academics engage in Buddhist apologetics?
56:58 - Goenka’s useful fiction of the historical Buddha
01:01:09 - B Alan Wallace and religious vs academic register
01:04:19 - Exceptionalism as evangelism and exhortation
01:05:20 - The core philosophical engine of Buddhism
01:07:41 - Buddhism is not scientific
01:10:56 - Personal experience and ‘test and see’
01:15:59 - Is Buddhist philosophy uniquely rich?
01:21:12 - What is enlightenment?
01:25:00 - Awakening as a regulative ideal
01:27:20 - What counts as the experience of awakening?
01:32:28 - Protestant Christianity’s surprising influence on Buddhism in Asia
01:40:23 - What would convert Evan to Buddhism
01:42:22 - Exceptionalism harms Buddhism and science
To find out more about Evan Thompson, visit:
Music ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James