Best 41 quotes of Steve Hagen on MyQuotes

And here we are with our improved human world that we've spent a great deal of time and energy working on. We've improved the rivers and the lakes and the land and our society and our ways of living to the point where we now wonder if the human race will survive.

Mindfulness of the body is awareness of... the taste and smell of this moment.

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. What are we going to call good? What are we going to call bad? Good or bad is never our choice, or even the issue.

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.

There's nothing to prove, nothing to figure out, nothing to get, nothing to understand. When we finally stop explaining everything to ourselves, we may discover that in silence, complete understanding is already there.

True freedom doesn't lie in the maximization of choice, but, ironically, is most easily found in a life where there is little choice.

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've formed many a theory and belief, but as we look about the human world, it is clear that nobody actually knows what's going on. Yet claims to Truth are being made at every hand, including the claim that there is no Truth.

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

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.

[When we drop our agendas] we begin to cultivate a mind of true goodness and compassion, which comes out of a concern for the Whole. As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of giving or of making a sacrifice. We become open, 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.

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

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.

[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.

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

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

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

[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.

Furthermore, when we speak about people based on what we think, feel, or hope rather than what we observe and experience, we deprive them of their humanity. We have replaced what they are, in all their fluid validity, with our own crystallized ideas, opinions, beliefs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

This will never come again

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.

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

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

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.

[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;

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

When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. What we do not realize is that there is only stream. What we fancy as particular is, from the first, only movement, change and flow.

[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.