Ezra Klein has been a New York Times columnist since 2021 and is the host of The Ezra Klein Show podcast. Klein's interview with Stephen Batchelor appeared in the New York Times on January 2, 2026 in an article titled "This Question Can Change Your Life."

Klein and Batchelor discussed the Seon Buddhist meditation practice of What is this? and Batchelor's reframing of the Four Noble Truths as four tasks.

Tuwhiri, the secular Buddhist publishing imprint, has published a book of dharma talks given by Stephen Batchelor and Martine Batchelor on the What is this? meditation practice. Click here to purchase that book.

To listen to the full interview, click below:

In What is this?: ancient questions for modern minds, Stephen Batchelor offers a concise account of the relationship between the question posed in meditation and the core Buddhist notion of dukkha:

Thus we are confronted with the core experience of dukkha in our lives. Dukkha does not just mean the overly painful bits of our lives. It refers to that poignant, unreliable, tragic dimension of experience, which is perhaps most succinctly captured in the sense of our lives being so fragile and brief. So when we ask, "What is this" - that is what we are asking about, nothing else. In other words, how do we come to terms with the condition in which we find ourselves now?