[Munccoughe]

Besides Tibet, Sri Lanka is a fantastic example of Nationalist Buddhism and the horrors it can give rise to, and modern monastic involvement in the Thai catastrophe of late is perhaps further proof of the idea.

I am not sure if I understand this. Could you expand on the "horrors" and the "Thai catastrophe"?

Having read Batchelor's book, I find that critique unconvincing.

Thank you, Glow, for your thoughtful response. I actually agree with most of what you say, except perhaps the first paragraph. I think that Stephen Batchelor's approach is genuine and knowledgeable, not really disrespectful, but somehow opinionated. With "jumping on the sceptics" bandwagon, I don't want to imply that Batchelor was influenced by Dawkins or Hitchens in any way (obviously not!), but that scepticism is the leading motive here and this label tends to sell books these days.

I can actually identify with some of Batchelor's views, especially his take on devotional practices, rituals, and religious attitudes. However, I realise that this is very much a personal matter and I would argue that it should be decided by the individual what method works best for him/her. The thing that I don't like about Batchelor's book is its revisionism and latent protestantism. He recounts innumerable little facts about Buddhism, some of them quite misrepresented, whereas he always points out how these diverge from the supposedly "pure" teaching. With his supposed "peeling away of dogma" from Buddhism, he peels away good chunks of flesh, apparently quite unaware of doing so. It goes a little bit into the direction of Protestant Buddhism along with the issues that we already discussed on this forum.

Cheers, Thomas