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
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
“... We have to constantly confront our deepest anxieties, our emptiness, our despair, our doubts; and there is nowhere for us to… — Stephen Batchelor Anxieties Copy Share Image
“Much of what animated me in those days I now recognize as the romantic yearnings of an idealistic, alienated, and aimless young… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“Anxiety, alienation, loneliness, emptiness, and meaninglessness are the fruits of living as an isolated subject admist a multitude of lifeless objects. Although… — Stephen Batchelor Emptiness Copy Share Image
“Life is a groundless ground: no sooner does it appear, than it disappears, only to renew itself, then immediately break up and… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to… — Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Copy Share Image
“Such altruism, generated in the seclusion of one's own thoughts, becomes a subtle means of evading concrete inter-personal responsibility and of justifying… — Stephen Batchelor Altruism 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
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 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
The denial of "self" challenges only the notion of a static self independent of body and mind-not the ordinary sense of ourself… — Stephen Batchelor Ambiguity 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
“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
“I was perplexed by the failure of teachers at school to address what seemed the most urgent matter of all: the bewildering,… — Stephen Batchelor Atheism Copy Share Image
The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we… — Stephen Batchelor Awareness Copy Share Image
So the Buddha is presenting awakening not as a single mystical experience that may come upon us at some meditation, some private… — Stephen Batchelor Awakening Copy Share Image
“The root of all inauthentic manifestations of being-with-others is the attitude of self-concern. It is in this state of mind that, either… — Stephen Batchelor Authenticity Copy Share Image
We could decide simply to remain absorbed in the mysterious, unformed, free-play of reality. This would be the choice of the mystic… — Stephen Batchelor Copy Share Image
“One of the most difficult things to remember is to remember to remember. We forget that we live in a body with… — Stephen Batchelor Acceptance Copy Share Image
“Gotama did for the self what Copernicus did for the earth: he put it in its rightful place, despite its continuing to… — 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 [...] 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/quotes/i/6bd/stephen-batchelor-5328_atheism_t-he-changing-functional-causal-and-cond_2931131.jpg)
