Quotes from Steve Hagen

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.

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 can't find any definitive beginning or end to … anything really.

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

We determine what is good, what is bad, what ought to be, and what ought not to be- all out of our inclinations of mind. But we seldom recognize the total relativity- the total meaninglessness – of all our defining. We don't see that it's through our obsession with meaning that we create meaninglessness.

We may also notice … each feeling … is transitory and impermanent. Eventually, through simple observation, our feelings, while no less vivid, will become less urgent, and will cease to have such a firm hold on our emotions and actions. We will be able to see each feeling as it arises without feeling compelled to act on it.

we pass by the joys of life without knowing we've missed anything.

Of course, we can't just drop our notion of self as we would remove a garment. It's a rather compelling illusion. … [However, o]nce it's seen that the 'I' cannot be found the mind is free[.]

There are two kinds of ignorance: blindness and self-deception. Blindness is ignorance of the basic realities of existence: impermanence, dukha, and selflessness. … Self-deception is our belief that we can know intellectually what things are. 'Oh! That's water,' we say. 'Hydrogen and oxygen.' And then we dismiss the actual experience of the moment. ([I]f you really want to know what water is, just take a drink, or go for a walk in the rain, or take a swim.)

Normally, a view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our minds. But this can never match Reality, simply because the world isn't frozen. Nevertheless we carry on as though the way we've frozen it in our minds is the way it actually is.

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

Your breath is a unique object to meditation because it resides right at the boundary between inside and outside, between you and the outside world.

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.

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

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

L]iberation [doesn't occur] in wearing robes or performing ritual acts.

T]he term 'I' … must … be used … in order for us to talk with one another. But it's not a very accurate term.

we face the woeful prospect that we're intelligent creatures living in a meaningless world.

Reality, of course, is neither concave nor convex, neither cold nor hot, neither self nor other. If we conceive cold apart from the rest of Reality—not only apart from heat, but apart from ourselves as well—we suffer from it.

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.

We're like the comic strip character Hagar the Horrible who, when asked which he'd choose, power, gold, or true happiness, chose power: "With power, I could get the gold, and then I'd be happy." We find Hagar's idea humorous because we know better. Yet most of the time we ignore this very knowledge, and act (or at least think) much like Hagar.

The mind is] simply thus, the fabric of the world itself – the ongoing arising and falling away that are matter, energy, and events.

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

After … all the philosophy and science that we've laboured on for centuries, it's becoming very hard to find a story we can buy.