"Evasion of the unadorned immediacy of life is……" — Stephen Batchelor
"Evasion of the unadorned immediacy of life is as deep-seated as it is relentless. Even with the ardent desire to be aware and alert in the present moment, the mind flings us into tawdry and tiresome elaborations of past and future. This craving to be otherwise, to be elsewhere, permeates the body, feeling, perceptions, will - consciousness itself. It is like the background radiation from the big bang of birth, the aftershock of having erupted into existence."
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Stephen Batchelor
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40 Quotes by Stephen Batchelor
Stephen Batchelor has 40 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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...inner spiritual transformation is just as dependent upon the effect of our economic life upon the world as transformations in…
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The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to…
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This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.
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This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or…
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Our conceptions of the world affect our perceptions of the world which, in turn, condition the way we subsequently conceive…
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The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself…
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It has taken four billion years of evolution to generate this kind of organism with this kind of brain, and…
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The idea that there will be something spiritual or subtle, some sort of consciousness that can escape the collapse of…
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Living from our deepest understanding requires an enormous effort, especially when it goes against the stream of our instinctually programmed…
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Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really…
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So the Buddha is presenting awakening not as a single mystical experience that may come upon us at some meditation,…
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I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort…
See all 40 quotes by Stephen Batchelor »
More Aftershock Quotes
This quote is filed under Aftershock Quotes,
one of 7 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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The film, 'Aftershock,' for me is really about how the minor problems in life that we think are so major…
— Eli Roth
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My stories are known for featuring fun, fearless Cosmopolitan-type heroines as well as delicious, dangerous heroes synonymous with Harlequin. Afterburn…
— Sylvia Day
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We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.
— Edward Bond
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For the art-historically informed, no art has truly shocked since November 19, 1971, when Chris Burden had himself shot in…
— Mark Kostabi
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I squeezed my eyes shut and took several deep breaths, trying not to smell Jace in front of me, not…
— Rachel Vincent
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Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between…
— Anne Carson
See all 7 Aftershock Quotes »
