Quotes from Steve Hagen

Conscious experience is very much like a movie. It's just one moment – one still – after another. But because these seem to occur in rapid succession, we adopt the contradictory belief … there are … persistent things out there that nevertheless change.

We engage in conceptualising to clarify, to understand, to find certitude. (…) [W]e go nowhere with this process[.] … [W]e teach uncertainty, doubt, and meaninglessness to our children, all in the name of 'truth' … [I]t just goes on, generation after generation, the continuation of greed, anger, and ignorance.

Reality is not going to change with your perception of it.

B]ecause of change, what we love continues to appear, and what we hate never lasts forever.

Why would anyone want to awaken to the Reality that they're not even here in the first place?

T]he world as a Whole has no inclination or leaning … The falling of a leaf from a tree, the flow of a stream, the sound of movement and wind – all these are natural, effortless, wondrous – deeply alive. … Unwilled action over time will produce a pattern on the grass. Willed action will not.

If we're human, we habitually conceptualise our experience, thus conceiving a self. … [T]his self 1) is unlocatable, 2) contradicts direct experience, 3) is … impossible[.]

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.

Every atom, every minuscule part of the universe is nothing other than movement and change.

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.

Try as we will, we'll not find any workable, definable thing in actual experience for this 'I' to refer to.

Whenever we conceptualise, we create contradictions that we can't escape.

I]t's not conceptualisation that's the problem, but getting caught up in it, mistaking our concepts for Reality.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I' myself doesn't change. I'm still me … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream. This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I' myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream. This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

There are two kinds of knowledge … One consists of beliefs, opinions, conjectures – having an idea of something. (…) But this is not the true knowing. (…) We think that our beliefs and ideas can be relied on to give us satisfaction. … In fact, they're … our primary source of anxiety and fear, because they're always subject to contradiction and doubt.

It's not as if, when you see, the world winks out of existence.

Those who are aware," he said, "do not die. Those who are ignorant are as if dead already.

Ignorance is like a black hole that sucks everything into it, even illumination. Thus we can't see it, at least not directly.

I]f we see the fleeting nature of all things without overlaying what we see with concepts, … the notion of a permanent self doesn't occur. … [T]here's still thought and sensations, there's no notion of a permanent self – only a peace of mind and fearlessness.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream.' This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

It's in our very trying to define and arrange things for ourselves – trying to identify and assign meaning to things – that we end up creating a world that is ultimately meaningless.

Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.

If it's Truth we're after, we'll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias—without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations