Jeff

“Buddhism, it seemed, was a rational religion, whose truth-claims could withstand the test of reason.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“By emphasizing doubt rather than belief, perplexity rather than certainty, and questions rather than answers, Zen practice granted me the freedom to imagine.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“I was more concerned with refining my sense of the sheer mysteriousness of life so that it infused each moment of my waking existence, thereby serving as a ground from which to respond more openly and vitally to whatever occurred.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

“Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama's teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world.”
― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist