In this groundbreaking portrait of the Buddha, former Buddhist monk and modern seeker Stephen Batchelor shows us the Buddha as a flesh-and-blood person who looked at life in a radically new way. He also reveals the challenges of his own devotional journey - from meeting the Dalai Lama in India, to training as a monk in South Korea, to finding his path as a lay teacher of Buddhism. Charting his journey from hippie to monk to lay practitioner, teacher and interpreter of Buddhist thought, Batchelor reconstructs the historical Buddha's life, locating him within the social and political context of his world. In examining the ancient texts of the Pali Canon, the earliest record of the Buddha's life and teachings, Batchelor argues that the Buddha was more interested in the question of how human beings should live in this world than in notions of karma and the afterlife. Both controversial and deeply personal, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is a fascinating exploration of a religion that continues to engage the West.