THE WRITINGS OF STEPHEN BATCHELOR

• Creating Sangha
• Deep Agnosticism, A Secular Vision of Dharma Practice
• Existence, Enlightenment and Suicide
• Faith and Reason
• The Freedom to be No One:  Buddhism, Mind and Experience
• The Future Is In Our Hands
• Giraffe
• The Lessons of History
• Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden
• The Other Enlightenment Project

Biography of Stephen Batchelor, by StephenBatchelor.org:

Stephen Batchelor was born in Dundee, Scotland, on April 7, 1953 and grew up in Hertfordshire, north west of London. After completing his schooling at Watford Boys Grammar School, he travelled overland to India in February, 1972, at the age of eighteen.

He settled in Dharamsala, the capital in exile of the Dalai Lama, and studied at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives with Ven. Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. He was ordained as a novice Buddhist monk in 1974. He left India in 1975 in order to pursue his Tibetan Buddhist studies under the guidance of Ven. Geshe Rabten, who had been appointed abbot of the Tibetan Monastic Institute in Rikon, Switzerland. In 1977 he moved to Le Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, where Geshe Rabten founded Tharpa Choeling (now Rabten Choeling). The following year he received full ordination as a Buddhist monk. In 1979 he moved to Germany as a translator for Ven. Geshe Thubten Ngawang at the Tibetisches Institut, Hamburg. In April 1981 he travelled to Songgwangsa Monastery in South Korea to train in Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Ven. Kusan Sunim. He remained in Korea until the autumn of 1984, when he left for a pilgrimage in Japan, China and Tibet.

He disrobed in February 1985 and married Martine Fages in Hong Kong before returning to England and joining the Sharpham North Community in Totnes, Devon. During the fifteen years he lived at Sharpham, he became co-ordinator of the Sharpham Trust (1992) and co-founder of the Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies and Contemporary Enquiry (1996). Throughout this period he worked as a the Buddhist Chaplain of HMP Channings Wood. From 1990 he has been a Guiding Teacher at Gaia House meditation centre in Devon and since 1992 a contributing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In August 2000, he and his wife moved to Aquitaine, South-West France. He works as a writer and photographer and travels worldwide to lead meditation retreats and teach Buddhism (see Schedule). He is the translator and author of numerous books and articles on Buddhism (see Publications) including the bestselling Buddhism Without Beliefs. He has recently published sixty colour and black and white photographs in Martine Batchelor’s Meditation for Life (Frances Lincoln/Wisdom, 2001) and is currently writing a book that will develop the concept of an agnostic Buddhism as introduced in Buddhism Without Beliefs.

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