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Stephen Batchelor

Stephen Batchelor Quotes

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Famous Stephen Batchelor Quotes

“Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.”

IfsWorldMatterActionVisionRiskDemandEmpathyEthicsConcernExcuseEncountersEthicalCrucialDogmaExistentialStemMetaphysicsShiftingOur ActionsAgnosticismNo ExcusesCatalystStanceBlurIndecisionFuture LifePrevarication
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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“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.”

WorldGivingKindMayMomentsSufferingCultureCausesMeditationPossibilityCivilizationAwakeningEngagementOfferingMysticalTranscendencePresentingMystical Experiences
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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“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.”

IfsWorldArtSelfValuesThreeProcessRealizingImaginationVisionPracticeFailingCreationMaterialsUnderstoodCommitmentAccomplishmentOur WorldTransformedLackingTranscendenceDharmaRaw MaterialsFull Potential
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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