Steve Hagen > 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Buddha is not someone you pray to, or try to get something from. Nor is a buddha someone you bow down to. A buddha is simply a person who is awake—nothing more or less.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“Our problem is that we don’t pay attention to what we actually know. We give our attention to what we think—to what we have ideas or beliefs about—and we discard what we actually see.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.”
― 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

“[W]e have endless opportunities to forget the self – in planting a tree for future generations; in creating a poem, a meal, a vessel of clay;”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“Our ignorance is such that most of us don’t realize we’re thirsty. Or, if we realize we’re thirsty, we look for water in the wrong place. We go into fire looking for cool refreshment. And often we’re confused about what our thirst actually is.”
― Steven Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple

“It’s called enlightenment. It’s nothing more or less than seeing things as they are rather than as we wish or believe them to be.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“If you point out the moon to a cat, she probably won’t look at the sky; she’ll come up and sniff your finger.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“Socrates pointed out that we carry on as though death were the greatest of all calamities—yet, for all we know, it might be the greatest of all blessings.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple

“We move through the world in a narrow groove, preoccupied with the petty things we see and hear, brooding over our prejudices, passing by the joys of life without even knowing that we have missed anything. Never for a moment do we taste the heady wine of freedom. We are as truly imprisoned as if we lay at the bottom of a dungeon, heaped with chains.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“Rituals, ceremonies, prayers, and special outfits are inevitable, but they do not—they cannot—express the heart of what the Buddha taught. In fact, all too often, such things get in the way. They veil the simple wisdom of the Buddha’s words, and distract us from it.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on--not on our own terms, but on the world's.”
― Steve Hagen

“Each of you be a light unto yourself; betake yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“[A]ll things arise together … Nothing appears by itself; everything we experience appears in a context and against a backdrop of other things that are dependent on and conditioned by each other.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day

“We can't find any definitive beginning or end to … anything really.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain & Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day