Stephen Batchelor Quotes

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• So the Buddha is presenting awakening not as a single mystical experience that may come upon us at some meditation, some private moment of transcendence, but rather as a new engagement with life. He is offering us a relationship to the world that is more sensitized to suffering and the causes of suffering, and he gives rise to the possibility of another kind of culture, another kind of civilization.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Mystical Experiences, Civilization, Offering

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• The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Buddhist, Powerful, Teaching

  41 Copy quote

• We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to.

  Stephen Batchelor

  World

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• A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultivates the strength of mind to let them arise and pass without identifying with or acting upon them.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Heart, Greed, Mind

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• How extraordinary it is to be here at all. Awareness of death can jolt us awake to the sensuality of existence. Breath is no longer a routine inhalation of air but a quivering intake of life. The eye is quickened to the play of light and shade and color, the ear to the intricate medley of sound. This is where the meditation leads. Stay with it; rest with it. Notice how distraction is a flight from this, an escape from awe to worry and plans.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Eye, Light, Air

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• The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in our distorted conceptions of the world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Lying, Frustration, Anxiety

  Stephen Batchelor (1983). “Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism”, p.105, Grove Press

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• The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Compassion, Temptation, Moral

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• I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Karma, Believe, Heart

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• Awakening is not a state but a process: an ethical way of life and commitment that enables human flourishing. As such, it is no longer the exclusive preserve of enlightened teachers or accomplished yogis. Likewise, nirvana-the stopping of craving-is not the goal of the path but its very source. For human flourishing first stirs in that clear, bright, empty space where neurotic self-centredness realizes that it has no ground at all to stand on. One is then freed to pour forth like sunlight.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Teacher, Commitment, Self

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• While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Believe, Buddhism, Practice

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.12, Penguin

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• In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Failing, Granted, Taking Life For Granted

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• Expectations of goals and rewards (such as Enlightenment) are recognized for what they are: last-ditch attempts by the ghostly self to subvert the process to its own ends. The more we become conscious of the mysterious unfolding of life, the clearer it becomes that its purpose is not to fulfill the expectations of our ego.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Self, Goal, Expectations

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• It has taken four billion years of evolution to generate this kind of organism with this kind of brain, and yet we wake up in the morning and feel bored.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Morning, Taken, Years

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• The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Risk, Littles, Problem

  "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist". Book by Stephen Batchelor, 2010.

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• This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the mind survives bodily death. It is the willingness to embrace the fundamental bewilderment of a finite, fallible creature as the basis for leading a life that no longer clings to the superficial consolations of certainty.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Mind, Fundamentals, Embrace

  Stephen Batchelor (2010). “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”, p.74, Spiegel & Grau

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• Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Spring, Events, Fields

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• In taking the everyday details of life for granted, we fail to appreciate the extraordinary fact that we are conscious at all.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Details Of Life, Appreciate, Everyday

  Stephen Batchelor (2004). “Living with the devil: a meditation on good and evil”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• We can be consicous of how we tend to ignore or escape anguish rather than understand and accept it. We can be aware that even when we gain insight into these things, we rarely behave differently in the future. Despite our overt resolve, we are still creatures of habit.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Gains, Habit, Accepting

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• Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles - the trappings of religion - confuse as much as they help. They endorse the assumption of the existence of an elite whose explicit commitment grants them implicit extraordinariness.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Commitment, Names, Office

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.42, Penguin

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• Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Buddhism, Thinking, Historical

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• Living from our deepest understanding requires an enormous effort, especially when it goes against the stream of our instinctually programmed perceptions of the world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Effort, Understanding, Perception

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• Awakening is the purpose that enfolds all purposes.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Purpose, Awakening

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.35, Penguin

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• A secular approach is not a dumbing down, it's not reductively identifying Buddhism with one or two particular techniques of meditation, but it is actually a complete world view and way of life in this world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Buddhism, Two, Views

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• What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

  Stephen Batchelor

  Atheist, Reality, Atheism

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• This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Heart, Body, Flesh

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.27, Penguin

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