Martine Batchelor Quotes & Sayings

As long as we are focusing on the breath we do not feed our mental, emotional, and physical patterns. By returning to the breath again and again we start to dissolve their power. We develop a space between experience and our identification with it, thereby weakening the process that creates habits in the first place. — Martine Batchelor

We have to be careful not to think that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts. On the contrary, I would say that meditation helps us to creatively engage with our thoughts and not fixate on them. — Martine Batchelor

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith
of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you
a metaphysical buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else's words. The faith is in yourself, in your own 'buddha nature.' You too can be a buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way. — Martine Batchelor

The Buddha does not see nibbana as a special, metaphysical place to go to but as a process of dissolution that one can achieve here and now. — Martine Batchelor

The most important part of the practice is for the question to remain alive and for your whole body and mind to become a question. In Zen they say that you have to ask with the pores of your skin and the marrow of your bones. A Zen saying points out: Great questioning, great awakening; little questioning, little awakening; no questioning, no awakening. — Martine Batchelor

Experiences are like cherry on the cake. It's nice, but that's not what's going to make a difference to the habit. — Martine Batchelor