“What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted?… — 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
“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
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
“The self does not exist “from its own side,” [...] as an object that can be isolated and defined. The more you… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“Being-in-the-world means that I am inextricably knit into the fabric of this fluid, indivisible, and contingent reality I share with others. There… — Stephen Batchelor Another life Copy Share Image
The first step in this process of mindfulness is radical self-acceptance . — Stephen Batchelor Acceptance 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
“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 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 Billions Copy Share Image
The Four Noble Truths are pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They suggest a course of action to be followed rather than a set… — Stephen Batchelor Action Copy Share Image
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known… — Stephen Batchelor Bus 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
“[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
“Learning and education have frequently degenerated into the systematic accumulation of facts and information.” — Stephen Batchelor Education Copy Share Image
Expectations of goals and rewards (such as Enlightenment) are recognized for what they are: last-ditch attempts by the ghostly self to subvert… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to. — Stephen Batchelor World 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
“Ironically, the more we crave to possess and dominate the world and others, the deeper and more unbearable becomes the chasm of… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
“Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and… — Stephen Batchelor Art Copy Share Image
“The meaning of man's life, as we have seen, is not measured by what he has, but by what he is. No… — Stephen Batchelor Life 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 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
