On 22 February 2023, Stephen Batchelor was interviewed by Ayda Duroux, Saskia Graf, and Jochen Weber from Buddha-Stiftung, and Mike Slott from the Secular Buddhist Network. Stephen discussed the key aspects of a new practical and ethical philosophy, Mindfulness Based Ethical Living (MBEL). Currently, a group of secular Buddhists are working to create an online course on this topic.

In addition to the video of the interview below, we have provided excerpts of Stephen's responses to the questions posed in the interview.

On the ethical and philosophical foundations of Mindfulness Based Ethical Living (MBEL):

The practice of the four tasks …. is very much central to the structure of Mindfulness Based Ethical Living. And those four tasks have emerged quite explicitly from the early Buddhist tradition…. I feel they tap into something which does not require any kind of metaphysical belief, that it is pragmatic, and it has at its core, the question of how to live well. In other words, the four tasks -  embracing life, letting reactivity be, seeing it stop,  and cultivating a path or a way of life - is essentially an ethical project.

On what distinguishes MBEL from other mindfulness-based approaches, such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction:

MBEL is not primarily concerned with addressing a pathology, like stress, or anxiety or depression….It's concerned with seeking a framework within which to lead an ethical life that is based upon the practice of mindfulness. So, it's mindfulness based. And in that sense, it mirrors the work of Jon Kabat Zinn and others in MBSR. But because it has a wider reach, it's actually seeking to frame our lives in all aspects of our humanity and not just our inner life; it seeks to incorporate our relationships with the social world, our understanding of how collective patterns of belief and opinion and behavior become internalized…. In that sense, it seeks to expand and amplify some of the same principles that we find in MBSR and MBCT.

On what kind of skills are cultivated in MBEL and how can these skills be helpful for one’s life:

Mindfulness is obviously a very central one, although mindfulness in MBEL is classified according to the particular task it's engaged with. So, we might speak of an existential mindfulness when we're embracing our situation; we might talk about a more therapeutic mindfulness, perhaps more akin to the mindfulness developed in MBSR, when we work on coming to terms with our own reactive patterns; and we might speak of a more contemplative mindfulness that is focused on coming to dwell and rest in a nonreactive space. And particularly, as we embark on on cultivating a path, we can speak of an ethical mindfulness that is a mindfulness that's not just aware of feelings or sensations or mind states, but a mindfulness that bears in mind our values, what it is that we're trying to become as moral beings. So in other words, even when we talk of the practice of mindfulness, it's become somehow more elaborated than we were might encounter it on, say, an MBSR retreat or even a Buddhist vipassana retreat….

But if we're to think of MBEL as an approach to our life as a whole, it means that we need to identify areas of our life that perhaps we haven't paid sufficient attention to. In my case this would apply to creative work. It would also apply to expanding my sense of ethical engagement with particular issues that I might be concerned about in this world….With the practice of MBEL, we can train oneself to attend to a whole range of human experiences that may not necessarily be found simply in the practice of mindfulness itself.

On how MBEL could impact on our contemporary culture and society:

I feel that we must be careful not to be too overambitious in this regard, in terms of seeing this as a project that might help transform our society in some grandiose way. But to also register the fact that the impact of the practice of MBEL will first be felt within one's immediate surroundings, in one's family, in one's workplace, with one's friends, and with one's kids. And I think from that basis, we can begin to recognize through the feedback and response we get from others, the extent to which how we're living, how we're communicating, and how we're acting, is having an effect on their lives, as well as our own….

I don't see MBEL as something that stands apart from a whole raft of parallel approaches that are developing now, including mindfulness-based therapies, the current interest in Stoicism, etc. And I think it's together with such like-minded groups, that perhaps we can become part of an alliance that might, over time, have an impact, that begins to somehow shift the way people think about what they're doing. …. But I would simply hope to be able to trust that with good intentions, with resolve and commitment, that together, we may open up the space, in which what we consider to be the essential goods of human life can be further developed, cultivated, and articulated and shared in the wider world.

On the relationship between human flourishing and ethical living:

Of the various possible terms we might use, I find that flourishing is the one that speaks most directly to me, when I feel that I'm really fully alive. It's as though there's nothing standing in the way of the potential I have to realize my own possibilities. And so, to that extent, flourishing is a kind of code for leading a life in which we are optimally realizing what we value most deeply in lives, when we feel that what we're saying or what we're doing or what we're thinking and how we're feeling, are all as it were in alignment…. So, flourishing has to do with freeing up, it has to do very much with letting go of what it is that inhibits our flourishing. And in the MBEL model, what inhibits flourishing is what we call reactivity; in other words, attachments and fears, and aversions and opinions, all of which have the same quality of trying to hold things steady, to not allow change to really upset what we want. And MBEL is very much about recognizing the tendency we have to lock ourselves into fixed patterns of thought and behavior, which, although they might give the illusion of a certain security, have the negative consequence of preventing us from really feeling fully alive, from really being able to flow with life.

So, if we think of ethics, as our capacity to live our lives in a way that we become the sort of person we most deeply aspire to be, then that, to me, is very much synonymous with the idea of leading a life that enables us to optimally flourish. I don't see really much difference between the two.

On what sorts of people might have an interest in MBEL:

The sort of people I have in mind who would be drawn to this would be those who've already got some familiarity with the background. In other words, people who have been involved in Buddhism, but they're put off by some of the religiosity. They're put off perhaps by some of the things they're expected to believe. And they feel a kind of frustration. Now, these are the sorts of people who would also be drawn to something like secular dharma…..I also feel that there could be within that group people who would actually like to let go of the Buddhist baggage altogether. And who might be saying: ‘Well, why do we keep needing to refer to the authority of Gautama? Why do we keep having to refer back to these Buddhist texts?’ And MBEL has been developed precisely so that we hopefully retain the core values, the core practices of the dharma, but without any of the trappings we might associate with either religious practice or with holding certain doctrinal positions or beliefs. And in that sense, yes, I think they could well find that in MBEL there's a frame for them that would allow them to pursue in depth, their interest in Buddhism, and yet without having to struggle with the elements of Buddhism that they find unacceptable.

But perhaps the largest group might be those who have already established a practice of mindfulness through one of these mindfulness-based approaches, but they may never have come across Buddhism. And in that sense, this could even be a big advantage for them in many ways. You've got much less to unlearn. ….When mindfulness is put into practice, a lot of the people who do this recognize that it is not helpful just in dealing with panic attacks, let's say, but it actually affords me another starting point, another perspective on my life as a whole. And I think it's for that sort of person who's grounded themselves in the practice of mindfulness and has got a practice, and  who kind of gets what mindfulness is all about. But as I hear repeatedly on retreats and in discussions I have, they feel that they're left somehow stranded. They've got this wonderful practice, but they don't really seem to have a context or a framework for it. They might even find that even the most secularized version of Buddhism still carries with it the aura of religion or belief that they're still not comfortable with for whatever reasons those might be. So MBEL, I think, is primarily aimed at that community of those who have an established practice of mindfulness, but who don't have much interest, if any, in Buddhism, and yet who are looking for a philosophy and an ethics that will help them not only to further develop their practice of mindfulness, but to integrate the practice of mindfulness much more thoroughly in the rest of their lives.

On Stephen’s motivation for continuing to develop his perspectives over the years:

I think a lot of what drew me to Buddhism was not rational in the sense that I accepted Buddhism because it made sense and because I could accept its doctrines. The reason I was drawn to the dharma was a far more intuitive thing. It had a lot to do with the living Buddhists that I met in India. At that time, I felt that here were people - not just great Tibetan lamas - but ordinary men and women in the Buddhist communities in India that I was part of that who evoked in me the thought that there's something here that I'd like to have, that I'd like to be like them. And I suspect for many of us who are drawn to Buddhism, it's often those kinds of encounters that actually are the other real spark, that give us the resolve and the confidence, the yearning, to pursue this path further. And so that's where I think it starts really, and that it continues that way, too. I find that what really inspires me to keep going is very often encounters with people, with men and women from all kinds of backgrounds, not Buddhist necessarily at all.

But in some ways, I think what has sort of sustained this quest is my practice of Zen which I learned as a monk in Korea, which has to do with giving primacy to questions rather than answers…..What I found in Zen is that by focusing on the primary existential questions - Who am I? What is life about? What is death? – I began to realize that the power of questioning is actually far more enriching than coming up with some answer. And so in that sense, I've kind of stopped thinking in terms of where this is going, and instead, have come more and more to trust the primary kind of astonishment, perplexity, and amazement, that for me becomes more and more and more the heart of this practice.  To be able to embrace one's own uncertainty in a very radical way, to let go of the idea that one day I'll arrive at some insight or some solution to the world's problems.

On MBEL and the centrality of care:

Care is the idea that contains the whole project. It's a very inclusive idea. We could speak of MBEL as an ethics of care. I use the word care as a translation of a Buddhist term, appamada, which is often rendered as diligence or heedfulness, but I think the word care captures it rather well. From a Buddhist perspective, the Buddha describes care as the elephant's footprint. In other words, it's the largest footprint that you'll come across in the jungle, and into that footprint you can put the footprints of all the other animals. And in the same way, the Buddha understood care as the virtue that includes all other virtues. And that's very much the starting point for my understanding of care. I've expanded it by referring to other traditions, but at the root, that's where the heart of it lies.

And I understand the four tasks - embracing life, letting go of reactivity, seeing it stop, and acting - as basically a phenomenology of care….To care in the fullest sense for another person or to care for the planet means that, in the first instance, we need to be able to embrace what we care for, to be able to fully accept and understand what we care for. The next step in care is to is to take out of the experience one's own self-centered, egotistical, reactive patterns, to let those reactive patterns just be  - not to suppress them or get rid of them - but to not let them run the show. So, to care means to be less reactive, maybe nonreactive. And to cultivate that non-reactivity is to find within the core of one's own heart, a nonreactive and nirvanic space that is also a dimension of care; it is the depth dimension of care. In other words, to allow ourselves to be at peace and ease, to find a space in which we are still and in which we are well, and in which we touch a depth in our lives. That can also become a source of our care for others. So the fourth task, that of cultivating a path, is essentially a way in which we extend the principle of care into caring for ourselves, for others, and for the world; in terms of how we think, imagine, speak, and how we work.

These all are frameworks within which to become a more caring kind of person. And ultimately, I think it's about working towards creating a more caring society. And to think of care not just as a spiritual quality, but to think of it as a form of work…. So, care is an incredibly rich idea. And I'm very concerned that it remains very much in the forefront of how we understand this practice of MBEL, that it is the practice of care in the deepest sense.