Skillful Meditation Project
A Dialog With Jason Siff and Stephen Batchelor
The Conceptual and the Experiential
On Tuesday November 6, 2008, the Santa Fe Vipassana Sangha in Santa Fe, New Mexico had the extraordinary opportunity of presenting Jason Siff and Stephen Batchelor in dialogue. This unique Dharma Talk focused on their common areas of inquiry around the conceptual and the experiential, a subject that has often gone unexamined in traditional Buddhist circles. As two of the more distinctive voices in Buddhism today, Stephen and Jason both have reputations for critical thinking in areas of Buddhist Philosophy and Practice. This dialogue reveals their common areas of understanding as well as their divergent views and approaches to meditation and the Dhamma.
Jason Siff - Stephen Batchelor - Part 1 (30:46)
Jason Siff - Stephen Batchelor - Part 2 (Q & A) (45:00)
Jason Siff:
"Concepts can really start to get in the way of opening up your investigation into what it is you're going through when you meditate...We have a concept about experience...We're trying to direct our attention to our senses in order to have an experience and then saying our thoughts and feelings are not our experience."
Stephen Batchelor:
"The Buddha, I find, is very aware of the slipperiness of language. He doesn't tie himself to a particular concept and fix it...He is deliberately being playful, and noticing the unfixability of terms and views and concepts and yet at the same using them, finding which ones are effective, which ones in particular situations are less effective."
