Wes Robertson

“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

“Attachments to views are not easily overcome; having decided among teachings, one tightly grasps [a view]. Therefore, among those bases of attachment, a person rejects and takes up a teaching. (6) 786. One who is cleansed formulates no view anywhere in the world about various states of existence. Having abandoned hypocrisy and conceit, through what would the cleansed one go [astray]194 when he is uninvolved? (7) 787. One involved is embroiled in disputes about teachings; but how, about what, could one dispute with one uninvolved? Nothing is taken up or rejected by him; he has shaken off all views right here.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Suttanipata: An Ancient Collection of the Buddha's Discourses Together with Its Commentaries

“So this holy life, bhikkhus, does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end.”
― Bhikkhu Ñaṇamoli, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya

“Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation