71 Quotes by Stephen Batchelor

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

The collapsing of an empire. This changing word moves inexorably on. Thoughts bubble and the stiller the mind the more palpable the dazzling torrent of life becomes.

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. (65)

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

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.

[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130)

Each time something contingent and impermanent is raised to the status of something necessary and permanent, a devil is created. Whether it be an ego, a nation-state, or a religious belief, the result is the same. The distortion severs such things from their embeddedness in the complexities, fluidities, and ambiguities of the world and make them appear as simple, fixed, and unambiguous entities with the power to condemn or save us.

The practice of mindfulness aims for a still and lucid engagement with the open field of contingent events in which one’s life is embedded. All events are ontologically equivalent: mind is not more “real” than matter, nor matter more “real” than mind.

[A] person is formed from a continuum of words and actions over time and cannot be reduced to a fixed “self” that is either “enlightened” or “unenlightened.