After Buddhism Quotes

“Instead of asking “What is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do?” the practitioner asks, “What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do?”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Many centuries after the Buddha, the Chinese Chan (Zen) patriarch Yunmen (c. 860–949) was asked: “What are the teachings of an entire lifetime?” Yunmen replied: “An appropriate statement.”6 For Yunmen, what counts is whether your words and deeds are an appropriate response to the situation at hand, not whether they accord with an abstract truth.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Great doubt—great awakening; Little doubt—little awakening; No doubt—no awakening.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“The discourses that make up the different Nikāyas are all regarded as buddhavacana, but not all of them are spoken by Gotama. The “word of the Buddha,” therefore, refers to whatever is well said, to any utterance that accords with and supports the practice of the dharma, irrespective of who utters it.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“A secular approach to Buddhism is thus concerned with how the dharma can enable humans and other living beings to flourish in this biosphere, not in a hypothetical afterlife. Rather than emphasizing personal enlightenment and liberation, it is grounded in a deeply felt concern and compassion for the suffering of all those with whom we share this earth.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“The experience of nirvana marks a turning point in an individual’s life, not a final and immutable goal. After the experience one knows that one is free not to act on the impulses that naturally arise in reaction to a given situation.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“In Gotama’s time, it was impossible to wander through the countryside of north India during the three months of monsoon because the rivers flooded and the paths and roads became muddy torrents. The Buddha and his followers would settle in a park or grove, dedicating themselves to discussion and contemplation. Inevitably, people became curious as to what this man did during these retreats. “Why,” they may have asked, “did this person known as the ‘Awakened One’ have to practice meditation at all?” Here is the answer Gotama told his followers to give such people: “During the Rains’ residence, friend, the Teacher generally dwells in concentration through mindfulness of breathing. . . . [For] if one could say of anything: ‘this is a noble dwelling, this is a sacred dwelling, this is a tathāgata’s dwelling,’ it is of concentration through mindfulness of breathing that one could truly say this.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Were mind and matter me, I would come and go like them. If I were something else, They would say nothing about me. —NĀGĀRJUNA, Mūlamadhyamaka-k”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Gotama takes a noun, “the unconditioned,” and treats it as a verb: “not to be conditioned” by something. He seems acutely aware of the relational nature of language. There is no such thing, for example, as freedom per se. There is only freedom from constraints, or freedom to act in ways that were not possible because of those constraints. Nor is there any awakening per se, but only awakening from the “sleep” of delusion, or awakening to the presence of others who suffer. And there is no such thing as the unconditioned, only the possibility of not being conditioned by something. Nirvana, therefore, does not refer to the attainment of a transcendent, absolute state apart from the conditions of life but to the possibility of living here and now emancipated from the inclinations of desire, hatred, and delusion. A life not conditioned by these instincts and drives would be an enriched one. No longer would one be the victim of paralyzing habits; one would be freed to respond to circumstances in fresh, unimpeded ways.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“As Śāntideva puts it in the Bodhicaryāvatāra: When both myself and others Are similar in that we wish to be happy, What is so special about me? Why do I strive for my happiness alone? And when both myself and others Are similar in that we do not wish to suffer, What is so special about me? Why do I protect myself and not others?”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“one who loves himself should not harm others.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“But desperation easily turns into fanaticism. People adopt inflexible views as a comforting defense mechanism when they find themselves threatened and overwhelmed by forces they cannot control.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Europe learned that Buddhism was “a Babylon of doctrines so intricate that no one can understand it properly, or describe it.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Las personas equivocadas manifiestan su opinión, al igual que lo hacen las personas que están en lo cierto. Cuando se expresa una opinión, el sabio no se siente atraído por ella: no hay aridez en el sabio. En ningún caso, una persona lúcida sostiene opiniones artificiales acerca de es o no es. ¿Cómo podría sucumbir a ellas tras haber abandonado las ilusiones y la vanidad? El sacerdote que trasciende esos límites no depende de lo que sabe o ha contemplado. Ni apasionado, ni desapasionado, no postula nada de un modo absoluto.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Después del budismo

“The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo makes a similar point to Rorty: “We don’t reach agreement when we have discovered the truth,” he observes; “we say we have discovered the truth when we reach agreement.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“The tensions between Gotama and the Buddha and between the dharma and Buddhism may have started during Gotama’s lifetime. The discourses themselves provide ample examples of how Gotama was transformed from a human being into a quasi-deity, and the dharma was transformed from a practical ethics into a metaphysical doctrine. The texts that make up the early canon cannot, therefore, be regarded as sharing an equivalent antiquity, but need to be understood as products of the doctrinal and literary evolution of a tradition that took place over at least three centuries.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Deathless” (amata) is another word for abundant life. If we think of Māra as death (the words amata and māra are both rooted in the Vedic m = death), then to no longer be constrained by his armies is to be freed to live fully. Gotama does not think of the deathless as immortality—as the term is understood in Brahmanism—but as the positive absence of reactivity.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“He has no interest in pursuing an abstract argument to demonstrate a purely theoretical truth. His practical reason is ethical. Its first principle could be stated thus: Do no evil, Take up what is good, Purify the mind— This is the teaching of buddhas.11 In seeing conditioned arising as a “ground,” Gotama implies that insight into conditionality provides “grounds” on which to act.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“All schools of Buddhism place great emphasis on the importance of practice. Yet most of them have come to rely on a dogmatic rather than a skeptical foundation for that practice. At the risk of making too broad a generalization, let me suggest that religious Buddhists tend to base their practice on beliefs, whereas secular Buddhists tend to base their practice on questions. If one believes—pace the second noble truth of Buddhism, that craving is the origin of suffering—then your practice will be motivated by the intention to overcome craving in order to eliminate suffering. The practice will be the logical consequence of your belief. But if your experience of birth, sickness, aging, and death raises fundamental questions about your existence, then your practice will be driven by the urgent need to come to terms with those questions, irrespective of any theory about where birth, sickness, aging, and death originate. Such a practice is concerned with finding an authentic and autonomous response to the questions that life poses rather than confirming any doctrinal article of faith.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age