Steve Hagen Quotes

[E]ven in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more[.]

Truth is not … something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

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.

[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;

How can a hard and fast view of a world that is never hard and fast possibly be accurate?

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.

We have all sorts of stories about heaven and hell, about oblivion and nothingness, about 'coming back,' and so on. But they are all stories.

Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on--not on our own terms, but on the world's.

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.

[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.

There's nothing you can find - … nothing you can even imagine – that doesn't originate, develop, or exist in relation to other things.

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

Belief may serve as a useful stopgap measure in the absence of actual experience, but once you see … [it] becomes unnecessary.

Belief is at best an educated, informed conjecture about Reality.

We imagine that things come into existence, endure for a while, and then pass out of existence

[H]ow can something cease to exist that has no solid existence in the first place?

This will never come again

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.

The buddha-dharma … is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes … , not according to some … program of dos and don'ts.

Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds.

We can only be here. We can't leave. We are always here.

Good times come and go. And bad times do the same.

[W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.

[A] book is not merely a book, it is the sun as well.

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.

The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.

[A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. … [T]his can never match Reality, … because the world isn't frozen.

To forget the self is to remember that we don't exist alone, but in relation to other people, to other creatures, to the planet, and to the universe.

[F]ocus not on ourselves as a force in charge of the manipulation of others, but on how our lives interpenetrate those of others – and … all creatures of a dynamic universe.

If your idea of good opposes something else, you can be sure that [it] is not absolute or certain.

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.

There's no rule in the end, but only the situation and the inclination of your mind