Stephen Batchelor (author) Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.

Stephen Batchelor
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
Yet Gotama's Dhamma is more than just a series of axioms. It is to be lived rather than simply adopted and believed in. It entails that one embrace this world in all its contingency and specificity, with all its ambiguity and flaws.

Stephen Batchelor
Our conceptions of the world affect our perceptions of the world which, in turn, condition the way we subsequently conceive the world.

Stephen Batchelor
To preserve the integrity of the tradition, we have to distinguish between what is central to that integrity and what is peripheral. We have to discern between what elements are vital for the survival of dharma practice and what are alien cultural artefacts that might obstruct that survival.

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

Stephen Batchelor
What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted?

Stephen Batchelor
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy 'one word' Zen. When asked 'What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?' he replied: 'An appropriate statement.' On another occasion, he answered: 'Cake.' I admired his directness.

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

Stephen Batchelor
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
In varying degrees, the authority of the dharma was replaced by the authority of the guru, who came, in some traditions, to assume the role of the Buddha himself.

Stephen Batchelor
The art of dharma practice requires commitment, technical accomplishment, and imagination. As with all arts, we will fail to realize its full potential if any of these three are lacking. The raw material of dharma practice is ourself and our world, which are to be understood and transformed according to the vision and values of the dharma itself. This is not a process of self- or world- transcendence, but one of self- and world- creation.

Stephen Batchelor