Stephen Batchelor Quotes

• So the Buddha is presenting awakening not as a single mystical experience that may come upon us at some meditation, some private moment of transcendence, but rather as a new engagement with life. He is offering us a relationship to the world that is more sensitized to suffering and the causes of suffering, and he gives rise to the possibility of another kind of culture, another kind of civilization.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Mystical Experiences, Civilization, Offering

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• The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Buddhist, Powerful, Teaching

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• We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Mundo

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• A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultivates the strength of mind to let them arise and pass without identifying with or acting upon them.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Heart, Greed, Mind

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• How extraordinary it is to be here at all. Awareness of death can jolt us awake to the sensuality of existence. Breath is no longer a routine inhalation of air but a quivering intake of life. The eye is quickened to the play of light and shade and color, the ear to the intricate medley of sound. This is where the meditation leads. Stay with it; rest with it. Notice how distraction is a flight from this, an escape from awe to worry and plans.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Eye, Light, Air

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• I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Karma, Believe, Heart

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• The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in our distorted conceptions of the world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Lying, Frustration, Anxiety

  Stephen Batchelor (1983). “Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism”, p.105, Grove Press

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• The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Compassion, Temptation, Moral

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• Al dar por sentada la vida, no nos damos cuenta de ella.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Failing, Granted, Taking Life For Granted

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• Expectations of goals and rewards (such as Enlightenment) are recognized for what they are: last-ditch attempts by the ghostly self to subvert the process to its own ends. The more we become conscious of the mysterious unfolding of life, the clearer it becomes that its purpose is not to fulfill the expectations of our ego.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Self, Goal, Expectations

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• El despertar no es un estado, sino un proceso: una forma ética de vida y compromiso que permite el florecimiento humano. Como tal, ya no es patrimonio exclusivo de maestros iluminados o yoguis consumados. Del mismo modo, el nirvana -el cese del ansia- no es la meta del camino, sino su propia fuente. Porque el florecimiento humano surge primero en ese espacio claro, brillante y vacío en el que el egocentrismo neurótico se da cuenta de que no tiene ningún terreno que pisar. Entonces uno se libera para derramarse como la luz del sol.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Teacher, Commitment, Self

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• Mientras que "budismo" sugiere otro sistema de creencias, "práctica del dharma" sugiere un curso de acción. Las cuatro verdades ennoblecedoras no son proposiciones para creer; son retos para actuar.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Creer, Budismo, Práctica

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). "Budismo sin creencias: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening", p.12, Penguin

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• It has taken four billion years of evolution to generate this kind of organism with this kind of brain, and yet we wake up in the morning and feel bored.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Morning, Taken, Years

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• 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

  Mind, Fundamentals, Embrace

  Stephen Batchelor (2010). “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”, p.74, Spiegel & Grau

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• 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

  Risk, Littles, Problem

  "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist". Book by Stephen Batchelor, 2010.

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• Al dar por sentados los detalles cotidianos de la vida, no apreciamos el extraordinario hecho de ser conscientes.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Details Of Life, Appreciate, Everyday

  Stephen Batchelor (2004). “Living with the devil: a meditation on good and evil”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Spring, Events, Fields

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• Podemos ser conscientes de cómo tendemos a ignorar o escapar de la angustia en lugar de comprenderla y aceptarla. Podemos ser conscientes de que, incluso cuando llegamos a comprender estas cosas, rara vez nos comportamos de forma diferente en el futuro. A pesar de nuestra determinación manifiesta, seguimos siendo criaturas de costumbres.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Gains, Habit, Accepting

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• 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

  Commitment, Names, Office

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.42, Penguin

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• El budismo, creo, se enfrenta probablemente a la transición más difícil de una época histórica a otra, que es realmente la transición a la modernidad.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Budismo, Pensamiento, Histórico

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• Awakening is the purpose that enfolds all purposes.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Purpose, Awakening

  Stephen Batchelor (1998). “Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening”, p.35, Penguin

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• Un enfoque secular no es un embrutecimiento, no es identificar reductivamente el budismo con una o dos técnicas particulares de meditación, sino que en realidad es una visión completa del mundo y una forma de vida en este mundo.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Budismo, Dos, Puntos De Vista

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• Living from our deepest understanding requires an enormous effort, especially when it goes against the stream of our instinctually programmed perceptions of the world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Effort, Understanding, Perception

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• What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

  Stephen Batchelor

  Atheist, Reality, Atheism

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• Las Cuatro Nobles Verdades son más pragmáticas que dogmáticas. Sugieren un curso de acción a seguir más que un conjunto de dogmas en los que creer. Las cuatro verdades son prescripciones de conducta más que descripciones de la realidad. Buda se compara con un médico que ofrece un tratamiento terapéutico para curar los males. Embarcarse en una terapia de este tipo no está diseñado para acercarnos a "la Verdad", sino para permitir que nuestra vida florezca aquí y ahora, con la esperanza de dejar un legado que siga teniendo repercusiones beneficiosas después de nuestra muerte. (154)

  Stephen Batchelor

  Budismo, Realidad, Médicos

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