AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This episode of The Ezra Klein Show features a deep, introspective interview where host Ezra Klein explores Buddhist practices of doubt and non-reactivity with guest Stephen Batchelor, tying personal meditation to political and ethical living in uncertain times. Reflective and philosophical.
- The Format: An interview.
- The Key Players:
- Guest: Stephen Batchelor – Renowned author of books on Buddhism like What Is This? (co-authored with his wife Martine) and Buddha, Socrates, and Us, former Buddhist monk who spent years in Tibetan and Zen traditions, offering fresh, secular interpretations of ancient practices for modern life.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
What you'll learn
- 1 `(00:00)` **🎙️ Introduction: Stephen Batchelor**
- 2 `(02:56)` **Batchelor's Zen Retreat: Facing the Wall with "What Is This?"**
- 3 `(05:14)` **Experiencing Doubt in Practice**
- 4 `(08:43)` **Instructions for "What Is This?" Practice**
- 5 `(10:56)` **Defining Doubt: Existential vs. Inhibiting**
- 6 `(15:56)` **The Four Tasks of the Dharma**
- 7 `(20:46)` **Non-Reactivity: Peace and Vivid World**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
I like to start the year with a few episodes on things I’m personally working on. Not resolutions, exactly. More like intentions. Or, even better, practices.
One of those practices, strange as it sounds, is repeatedly asking the question: “What is this?” It’s a question I got from a book of the same name, by Stephen and Martine Batchelor. In that book, they are describing an approach to Buddhist meditation built on the cultivation of doubt and wonder. You can see that as a spiritual practice, but it’s also an intellectual and ethical one. It is, for me, a practice that has a lot of bearing on politics and journalism.
Stephen Batchelor’s latest book, “Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times,” explores those dimensions of doubt more fully. And so I wanted to have him on the show to discuss the virtues of both certainty and uncertainty, the difficulty of living both ethically and openly. You can see this as a conversation about our inner lives or our outer lives, but of course they are one. And Batchelor, as you’ll hear, is just lovely to listen to.
Mentioned:
Buddha, Socrates, and Us by Stephen Batchelor
What Is This? by Martine Batchelor and Stephen Batchelor
Ethics of Care by Carol Gilligan
Book Recommendations:
Children of a Modest Star by Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman
Work Like a Monk by Shoukei Matsumoto
The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordo
More from this podcast
The Ezra Klein Show →