James > James's Quotes

“The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.

So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“See confusion as confusion. Acknowledge suffering as suffering. Feel pain and sorrow and divisiveness. Experience anger or fear or shock for what they are. But you don't have to think of them as evil - as intrinsically bad, as needing to be destroyed or driven from our midst. On the contrary, they need to be absorbed, healed, made whole. (15)”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs – A Clear, Engaging Zen Guide for Spiritual Inquiry and Practice

“Meditation begins now, right here. It can't begin someplace else or at some other time. To paraphrase the great Zen master Dogen, "If you want to practice awareness, then practice awareness without delay." If you wish to know a mind that is tranquil and clear, sane and peaceful, you must take it up now. If you wish to free yourself from the frantic television mind that runs our lives, begin with the intention to be present now.

Nobody can bring awareness to your life but you.

Meditation is not a self-help program--a way to better ourselves so we can get what we want. Nor is it a way to relax before jumping back into busyness. It's not something to do once in awhile, either, whenever you happen to feel like it.

Instead, meditation is a practice that saturates your life and in time can be brought into every activity. It is the transformation of mind from bondage to freedom.

In practicing meditation, we go nowhere other than right here where we now stand, where we now sit, where we now live and breathe. In meditation we return to where we already are--this shifting, changing ever-present now.

If you wish to take up meditation, it must be now or never.”
― Steve Hagen, Meditation Now or Never: A Practical Guide to Getting Unstuck and Deepening Your Practice with Simple, Accessible Techniques

“What makes human life--which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs – A Clear, Engaging Zen Guide for Spiritual Inquiry and Practice

“This will never come again”
― Steve Hagen

“We often think we know things when in fact it's only our imagination taking us further and further away from what is actually happening. What we imagine then seems very real to us. Soon we're caught up in our imaginary longings and loathings. But if you're here - truly present - you realize there's nothing to run from or to go after. You can stay calm...Just be with this moment and see what's going on. (9)”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs – A Clear, Engaging Zen Guide for Spiritual Inquiry and Practice

“If it's Truth we're after, we'll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias - without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations. (6)”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs – A Clear, Engaging Zen Guide for Spiritual Inquiry and Practice

“We're never called on to do what hurts. We just do what hurts out of ignorance and habit. Once we see what we're doing, we can stop.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.”
― Steve Hagen

“The Buddha encouraged people to "know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome and wrong. And when you do, then give them up. And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them."

The message is always to examine and see for yourself. When you see for yourself what is true-and that's really the only way that you can genuinely know anything-then embrace it. Until then, just suspend judgment and criticism.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“Normally, a view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our minds. But this can never match Reality, simply because the world isn’t frozen. Nevertheless we carry on as though the way we’ve frozen it in our minds is the way it actually is.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“we pass by the joys of life without knowing we’ve missed anything.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“When we latch on to an identity, it is easy to take offense. But we offend ourselves. We lock ourselves into very rigid ways of seeing and thinking and feeling and reacting. It doesn’t have to be this way. The fact is, I’m not anything in particular. Nor are you. Nor is anyone.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“We have to realize what we are. The range of what is human is vast, ranging from the saintly to the monstrous. When we speak of other human beings as if they somehow do not belong to our species, we ignore the reality of our very nature.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day