Your book takes an autobiographical turn; it’s not just about your beliefs, but how they evolved. Why?

I find I am less and less comfortable with assuming you can make such a clear-cut distinction between the ideas that you hold and the life that you have lived. I don’t think the two are really separable, especially if you see Buddhism as a practice rather than just an object of academic interest. None of these texts and practices can be understood apart from their impact on your own subjective experience as a human being living in a particular place, being of a certain age, being in a particular situation. Buddhism has never flourished in a vacuum. ‚

~ Stephen Batchelor's response to a question about his latest book, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, posed by Tricycle magazine, Spring 2010

Photo: Stephen Batchelor during his time as a Tibetan monk, circa 1978