Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

Stephen Batchelor (b.1953) is a British Buddhist scholar, teacher, and author renowned for his secular perspective and his agnostic approach to contemporary Buddhism. He is a former monk in both the Tibetan and the Korean Zen Buddhist traditions.

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Batchelor traveled to Dharamsala in India and got ordained as a novice Buddhist monk at age 21. He later studied Buddhist philosophy and doctrine in a monastery in Switzerland before receiving full ordination as a Buddhist monk. Between 1981 and 1984, he trained in Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Kusan Sunim at the Songgwangsa Monastery in Korea.

Batchelor and his wife Martine, also a Buddhist teacher and author, moved to a small village near Bordeaux, France, in 2000. The Batchelors travel internationally to lead meditation retreats and teach Buddhism.

Batchelor is known for his critical exploration of Buddhism’s role in the modern world, which has earned him both condemnation as a heretic and praise as a reformer. He is the translator and author of various books and articles on Buddhism, notably Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997,) Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil (2004,) Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (2010,) and Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World (2017.)

Martine and Stephen’s The Way of Korean Zen is a translation of their teacher Kusan Sunim’s book of teachings, Nine Mountains.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Stephen Batchelor

There is nothing one can have that one cannot fear to lose. Instead of living life in order to have more abundantly, live life in order to be more abundantly.
Stephen Batchelor

Learning and education have frequently degenerated into the systematic accumulation of facts and information.
Stephen Batchelor

Every attitude we assume, ever word we utter, and every act we undertake establishes us in relation to others.
Stephen Batchelor

Life does not mechanically alternate between aloneness and participation, rather it embraces them both in an undivided unity.
Stephen Batchelor

The meaning of man’s life, as we have seen, is not measured by what he has, but by what he is. No matter how many possessions we have amassed, how much wealth we have accrued, how respected and secure our position is in society, how numerous the pieces of information we have accumulated, in moments of lucidity we may still abruptly perceive the dreadful futility of it all, the overwhelming emptiness and pointlessness of such a life.
Stephen Batchelor

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

In pride we consciously elevate our own standing and concerns and look down upon others as essentially inferior.
Stephen Batchelor

Life is a groundless ground: no sooner does it appear, than it disappears, only to renew itself, then immediately break up and vanish again. It pours forth endlessly, like the river of Heraclitus into which one cannot step twice. If you try to grasp it, it slips away between your fingers.
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

Great doubt—great awakening; Little doubt—little awakening; No doubt—no awakening.
Stephen Batchelor

Ignorance is not merely a deficiency of knowledge but, in addition, it positively apprehends reality in a distinctive way. And being a distorted mode of conception, it creates a view of the world that is in opposition to, and in conflict with, the actual way the world is.
Stephen Batchelor

Ironically, the more we crave to possess and dominate the world and others, the deeper and more unbearable becomes the chasm of our own emptiness.
Stephen Batchelor

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by our outward show of ‘civilized’ manners and ‘cultured’ social behavior into believing that self-concern, desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference are steadily losing their hold over us.
Stephen Batchelor

We have to constantly confront our deepest anxieties, our emptiness, our despair, our doubts; and there is nowhere for us to escape and hide from them. It is impossible to ever turn back, and at times it seems impossible to ever make any further progress.
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

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

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