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

- Stephen Batchelor

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 bo…

- Stephen Batchelor

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

- Stephen Batchelor

A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultiva…

- Stephen Batchelor

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

- Stephen Batchelor

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

- Stephen Batchelor

Expectations of goals and rewards (such as Enlightenment) are recognized for what they are: last-ditch attempts by the ghostly self to subvert the pr…

- Stephen Batchelor

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 inhalat…

- 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…

- Stephen Batchelor