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.
Interpretation
Certainty limits growth and new experiences, while uncertainty opens doors to possibilities.
In this quote, Stephen Batchelor contrasts certainty and uncertainty, suggesting that while certainty is unchanging and repetitive, uncertainty brings about a dynamic environment filled with opportunities and potential risks. This perspective encourages embracing uncertainty as a means of personal and intellectual growth, as it allows for exploration and the discovery of new paths.
In practice
This quote could be used during a motivational speech about embracing change.
This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the mind survives bodily death. It is the willingness to embrace the fundamental bewilderment of a finite, fallible creature as the basis for leading a life that no longer clings to the superficial consolations of certainty.
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.
Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles - the trappings of religion - confuse as much as they help. They endorse the assumption of the existence of an elite whose explicit commitment grants them implicit extraordinariness.
Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.
A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultivates the strength of mind to let them arise and pass without identifying with or acting upon them.
The individuation of dharma practice occurs whenever priority is given to the resolution of a personal existential dilemma over the need to conform to the doctrines of a Buddhist orthodoxy. Individuation is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.
Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.
When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
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