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

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

- Stephen Batchelor

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

- 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

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

- Stephen Batchelor

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

- 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

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

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