...inner spiritual transformation is just as dependent upon the effect of our economic life upon the world as transformations in the world… — Stephen Batchelor Change Copy Share Image
“[A] person is formed from a continuum of words and actions over time and cannot be reduced to a fixed “self” that… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
“In pride we consciously elevate our own standing and concerns and look down upon others as essentially inferior.” — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full… — Stephen Batchelor Certainty Copy Share Image
While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe;… — Stephen Batchelor Action Copy Share Image
The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in… — Stephen Batchelor Anxiety Copy Share Image
“Loneliness is not only positively characterized by a certain degree of isolation, but is negatively characterized by a deficiency of participation.” — Stephen Batchelor Isolation Copy Share Image
In taking the everyday details of life for granted, we fail to appreciate the extraordinary fact that we are conscious at all. — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
“Mindful awareness is not presented as a passive concentration on a single, steady object, but as a refined engagement with a shifting,… — Stephen Batchelor Awareness Copy Share Image
“Our religion, with its beliefs, rituals, and dogmas becomes another segment among all the other segments that constitute our linear and fragmented… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles - the trappings of religion - confuse as much as they help. They endorse the… — Stephen Batchelor Assumption Copy Share Image
“One needs to be more vitally conscious of what is happening now. This is not to deny the reality of past and… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future… — Stephen Batchelor Action Copy Share Image
Yet Gotama's Dhamma is more than just a series of axioms. It is to be lived rather than simply adopted and believed… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
Each time the dharma moved into a different civilization or historical period, it faced a twofold challenge: to maintain its integrity as… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“When my self is no longer the all-consuming preoccupation it once was, when I see it as one narrative thread among myriad… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our… — Stephen Batchelor Action Copy Share Image
“When there is great doubt,” says a Zen aphorism that Kusan Sunim kept repeating, “then there is great awakening.” This is the… — Stephen Batchelor Doubt Copy Share Image
“Without relying on any deities, mantras, or mandalas, without having to master the intricacies of any doctrine or philosophy, I vividly understood… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“[T]he changing, functional, causal, and conditioned world, present to ordinary sensory and mental experience, was what was ultimately real. To be real… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
“We perceive the world in a particular way and confidently expect it to conform to its appearance. But we fail to recognize… — Stephen Batchelor Reality Copy Share Image
The art of dharma practice requires commitment, technical accomplishment, and imagination. As with all arts, we will fail to realize its full… — Stephen Batchelor Accomplishment Copy Share Image
“We are participatory beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive.… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“Life does not mechanically alternate between aloneness and participation, rather it embraces them both in an undivided unity.” — Stephen Batchelor Life Copy Share Image
The idea that there will be something spiritual or subtle, some sort of consciousness that can escape the collapse of the body… — Stephen Batchelor Body Copy Share Image
In varying degrees, the authority of the dharma was replaced by the authority of the guru, who came, in some traditions, to… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
Our conceptions of the world affect our perceptions of the world which, in turn, condition the way we subsequently conceive the world. — Stephen Batchelor Conceptions Copy Share Image
Without a rigorous, self-critical discourse, one risks lapsing into pious platitudes and unexamined generalizations. — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
It has taken four billion years of evolution to generate this kind of organism with this kind of brain, and yet we… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
“Ignorance is not merely a deficiency of knowledge but, in addition, it positively apprehends reality in a distinctive way. And being a… — Stephen Batchelor Ignorance Copy Share Image
“The astronaut in his technical and complex machine, effortlessly orbiting the earth, alone and weightless in the emptiness of space, is the… — Stephen Batchelor Astronaut Copy Share Image
This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the… — Stephen Batchelor Agnosticism Copy Share Image
“No matter how hard I tried, I was incapable of giving more importance to a hypothetical, post-mortem existence than to this very… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
“I was more concerned with refining my sense of the sheer mysteriousness of life so that it infused each moment of my… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“Nowadays, the tendency to be preoccupied with having, at the expense of losing touch with the dimension of being, is becoming ever… — Stephen Batchelor Life Copy Share Image
“It is only when the question ceases to be identified with the subject-verb-predicate structure of grammar, and is recognized within its original… — Stephen Batchelor Existence Copy Share Image
“I am empty only in the sense that there is nothing fixed or intrinsically real at the core of my identity as… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
To preserve the integrity of the tradition, we have to distinguish between what is central to that integrity and what is peripheral.… — Stephen Batchelor Aliens Copy Share Image
[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
![“[A] person is formed from a continuum of words and actions over time and cannot be reduced to a fixed “self” that is either “enlightened” or “unenlightened.” quote by Stephen Batchelor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/bf3/stephen-batchelor-5328_atheism_a-person-is-formed-from-a-continuum-of-w_1033885.png)
![“[T]he changing, functional, causal, and conditioned world, present to ordinary sensory and mental experience, was what was ultimately real. To be real [...] means to be capable of producing effects in the concrete world. Thus a seed, a jug, wind in the trees, a desire, a thought, the pain in one’s…” quote by Stephen Batchelor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/6bd/stephen-batchelor-5328_atheism_t-he-changing-functional-causal-and-cond_2931131.jpg)
![“[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130)” quote by Stephen Batchelor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/04b/stephen-batchelor-5328_antidote_mindfulness-is-not-concerned-with-anythi_151409.png)