Maharamayana

Self-knowledge cannot be gained
Until everything is renounced.
When all points of view are abandoned,
What remains is the Self.
Even in the world you do not get
What you desire
Until all obstacles are removed.
This is even more true of self-knowledge.

Deepak Chopra on Uncertainty

Scientists recognize the unpredictability of nature,
And have been trying to make sense of it.
Even the most seemingly simple events
Are governed by this unpredictability.

When and where will bubbles appear
In a pot of boiling water? What patterns will be made
By the smoke of a lit cigarette?
How does the position of water molecules
At the top of a waterfall relate
To their eventual position at the bottom?
God might just as well have taken all
Those water molecules under the table
And shuffled them personally.

The new science of chaos is attempting
To predict the unpredictable
Through intricate mathematical models.
In the classic example,
A butterfly flutters its wings in Texas
And there is a typhoon in Tokyo six days later.
The connection may not seem obvious, but it exists.
That little change of air pressure
Caused by the butterfly
Can get multiplied and magnified,
Resulting in a tornado.
But it can never be entirely predicted.
That’s why weather forecasters seem to be wrong
So often, and why any forecast longer
Than about forty-eight hours away is unreliable.
Yet among all the possible occurrences in the world,
Weather is more predictable
Than just about anything else.

What this says on a spiritual level is that
We can never really know
What direction life will take,
What changes those small butterfly-flutters
Of intention and action might cause in our destiny.
At the same time, it also tells us
That we can never really truly know the mind of God.
We can never fully understand
The how, where, and when of anything,
Even something as simple as boiling water.

We have to surrender to uncertainty,
While appreciating its intricate beauty.

Drinking the Mountain Stream: Milarepa

In the face of reality's illumination

There is neither self nor other,

No duality, no division-void of identity

And yet neither void
Nor not void.

There is no perceiver at all. Eh Ma!

Until a mountain yogi

Has realized well the meaning of this,

He should not disparage cause and result!

D. Chopra on the Shadow

When you have been treated unjustly or personally harmed,
The natural emotion is anger. If this anger can’t get out,
It festers and grows in the shadow.
Lashing out when holding it back no longer works;
This anger leads to a cycle of violence.

Guilt can make you feel like a bad person
Simply for having an impulse or entertaining a thought.
This is a kind of double blind:
If you lash out and return the harm done to you,
You have done something evil,
But if you keep the anger inside and harbor it,
You can feel just as evil.

Yet violence can be tamed by breaking it down
Into manageable bits.
Negative emotions feed off certain aspects
Of the shadow that are very manageable.

The shadow is dark.
Everyone has a shadow because of the natural contrast
Between darkness and the light.

The shadow is secret.
We store impulses and feelings there
That we wish to keep private.

The shadow is dangerous.
Repressed feelings have the power to convince us
That they can kill us or make us go insane.

The shadow is shrouded in myth.
For generations, people have seen it
As the lair of dragons and monsters.

The shadow is irrational.
Its impulses fight against reason;
They are explosive and totally willful.

The shadow is primitive.
It’s beneath the dignity of a civilized person
To explore this domain.

A secret, dark, primitive, irrational, dangerous, mythical evil
Is much less convincing if you break it down
Into one quality at a time. But this process of bringing evil down
To scale won’t be convincing until you apply it to yourself.

Shankaracharya

It is a fool who blames the sun for his own blindness.

The scriptures even proclaim aloud:

There is in truth no creation and no destruction;

No one is bound, no one is seeking Liberation,

No one is on the way to Deliverance.

There are none Liberated.

This is the absolute truth.

My dear disciple, this, the sum and substance

Of all the Upanishads, the secret of secrets,

Is my instruction to you.

Udana

Trivial thoughts, insignificant thoughts, 

When followed they distract the mind. 

Not understanding those thoughts 

The roaming mind runs back and forth. 

But by understanding those thoughts 

One ardent and mindful restrains the mind. 

An awakened one has overcome them completely 

So they do not arise to distract the mind.

"Actualizing the Fundamental Point" by Zen Master Dogen

When you ride in a boat and watch the shore,

You might assume that the shore is moving.

But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat,

You can see that the boat moves.

Similarly, if you examine myriad things

With a confused body and mind

You might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent.

When you practice intimately and return to where you are,

It will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.

Dhammapada 6

Whose minds are well-developed
In the factors of self-awakening,
Who delight in non-clinging
Relinquishing grasping-- resplendent,
Their effluents ended:
They, in the world, are Unbound.

Ashtavakra Gita 9:4

When will men ever stop
Setting one thing against another?
Let go of all contraries.
Whatever comes, be happy
And so fulfill yourself.

Ojibiwa Song of the Self

Awake! flower of the forest,
Sky-treading bird of the prairie.
Awake! awake! wonderful fawn-eyed One.
When you look upon me I am satisfied;
As flowers that drink dew.

The breath of your mouth is
The fragrance of flowers in the morning,
Your breath is their fragrance at evening
In the moon-of-fading-leaf.

Do not the red streams
Of my veins run toward you
As forest-streams to the sun
In the moon of bright nights?

When you are beside me my heart sings;
A branch it is, dancing,
Dancing before the Wind-spirit
In the moon of strawberries.

When you frown upon me, beloved,
My heart grows dark—
A shining river the shadows of clouds darken,
Then with your smiles comes the sun
And makes to look like gold
Furrows the cold wind drew in the water's face.

Myself! behold me! blood of my beating heart.

From the Path on the Rainbow: Song and Chants
Of the Indians of North America

Ashtavakra Gita 2:4-5

As a wave,
Seething and foaming,
Is only water
So all creation,
Streaming out of the Self,
Is only the Self.

Consider a piece of cloth.
It is only threads!
So all creation,
When you look closely,
Is only the Self.

More of Deepak Chopra

You are dying at every moment so that
You can keep creating yourself.

You are not in the world;
The world is in you.
This, the main tenet of the one reality,
Also means that you are not in your body;
Your body is in you.
You are not in your mind; your mind is in you.

There is no place in the brain
Where a person can be found.
Your brain consumes not one molecule of glucose
To maintain your sense of self,
Despite the millions of synaptic bursts
That sustain all the things
That self is doing in the world.

So when we say that the soul
Leaves a person’s body at the moment of death,
It would be more correct to say
That the body leaves the soul.
The body is already coming and going;
Now it leaves without coming back.

The soul can’t leave because it has nowhere to go.
This radical proposition needs a bit of discussion
Because, if you aren’t already going anywhere
When you die, you must be there already.

This is one of those paradoxes from quantum physics
Whose understanding depends upon knowing
Where things come from in the first place.

When you bring a memory to mind,
You are actualizing an event.
Synaptic firings produce the memory,
Replete with visuals, taste, and smell
If you want them.

That is, you have the potential for memory,
Which is infinitely vaster than a single memory
But nowhere in sight. This field extends invisibly
In all directions; the hidden dimensions
We’ve been discussing can all be explained
As different fields embedded in one infinity field,
Which is being itself.

You are the field.

Ashtavakra Gita 15:17/ Lama Zopa Rinpoche

You are pure awareness.
The world is an illusion,
Nothing more.

When you understand this fully,
Desire falls away.
You find peace.
For indeed! There is nothing.

..........................
Our mind and our delusions
Are formless and colorless.
However,our ignorance in believing
In their existence
Is harder than a rocky mountain.
Our delusions are harder than steel.

Chopra on Flux and the Illusion of Constancy

Everyone and everything you see is in flux.
Your brain creates the illusion of constancy,
Yet in truth the person or thing you believe
To be in front of you is actually a ghost
Of what was in front of you a few thousandths
Of a second ago.

How is this relevant to spiritual growth?

In the illusion of a continual reality
There are actually many gaps.
We go away as much as we stay here.
When you go away, blinking out of existence
For a fleeting millisecond,
You aren’t anchored in physical reality.

You voyage to the quantum dimension and beyond,
For nobody knows exactly where the universe goes
When it blinks on and off.

But we do know certain things:
Physicality is an appearance created by the mind.
In its essence reality is invisible and intangible.
Events are ambiguous. The only constant is change.
Radical uncertainty is at work all the time.

Apply these truths to yourself.
Instead of struggling to make life
Stable, unchanging, unambiguous, and certain,
Accept that you are a product of
An uncertain, ambiguous creation.

This isn’t a flaw.
It’s the glory of the creative process
To constantly flow and change.
The more you can accept this,
The easier it is to accept your own transformation.

Remind yourself of the following:
I am not fixed in time. I am not fixed in space.
The person I think I am is actually a lingering memory.
The real me lies beyond the five senses.
I am participating in the flux of the cosmos
At every instant.
The whole universe conspired to bring about
This present moment.

If you replace mistaken ideas with correct ones,
Reality can replace illusion.
What makes this notion even more potent
Is that the mind creates both illusion and reality.

You have a choice which one to invest in.
Once you accept that you are constantly in flux,
You are in a position to perceive
The changeless ground of existence,
The eternal Being that is the stage for eternal change.

Prayer to the Goddess of Confusion, Chandi Patha

To the Divine Goddess who resides
In all existence in the form of Confusion,
We bow to Her; we bow to Her; we bow to Her,
Continually we bow, we bow.

Chopra on the Afterlife

It should come as no surprise to discover

That you are a believer, skeptic, or agnostic.

Yet when you look at where other people fall,

Which could be very far outside your belief system,

It may be disturbing to consider that

You might all be right.

Believers may go to the heaven (or hell)

That matches their religious background.

In the afterlife they will meet

Their most cherished version of God–or gods.

They will find themselves surrounded

By angels or bodhisattvas.

The emotional tone of that afterlife

Could be one of total bliss,

If that is the tone they anticipate,

Or it could feel more ambiguous, even sad.

The experience could even feel like nothing.

Skeptics may find that the afterlife

Is a blank, devoid of conscious sensation.

For them, dying could lead to a long sleep

Without any perception of the self.

The question is how long this state will last

Or what it might become.

For agnostic the afterlife is problematic.

They may perceive that they remain themselves,

Occupying a kind of limbo where good and bad deeds

Form a hazy cloud that never resolves decisively.

In this kind of afterlife

The same worries and ambiguities

That reside at the center of

The agnostic worldview may persist.

And the undecided or open-minded people?

They may be in for the biggest surprise,

Because someone who is truly open-minded

Dies without any expectations.

If your approach to life is to take it one day at a time,

The very last day won’t be any different.

In short, the ability of consciousness

To shape our lives

Is the most permanent thing about us,

The one aspect of the mind we can expect to continue.

Ashtavakra Gita 11:1

All things arise,

Suffer change,

And pass away.

This is their nature.

When you know this,

Nothing perturbs you,

Nothing hurts you.

You become still.

It is easy.

Chopra on Intent

Having an intention is enough to accomplish a result.

When properly focused

–which means easily and without strain–

Awareness has the ability to carry out quite specific commands.

An intention doesn’t have to be a verbally expressed thought;

In fact, our deepest intentions are body-centered.
Our most fundamental needs–

For love, understanding, encouragement, and support–

Permeate every cell.

The desires that arise in your mind

Are often clouded by ego motives,

Which are not true needs;

People get caught up in the pursuit of money,

Career goals, and political ambitions in ways

That are disconnected from the fundamental need

For comfort and well-being

That every healthy organism must fulfill.

Many of us are so alienated from our basic needs,

So programmed to run after what the ego wants,

That we have to relearn the basic mechanics

Of how attention and intention actually work.

There are many ways to get fulfillment besides

The outward-orientated ones our culture teaches us.

The most valuable lesson in this regard is that

Intentions automatically seek their fulfillment

If left alone.

Every cell in your body is seeking fulfillment

Through joy, beauty, love, and appreciation.

This is hard to realize when the mind sets up

Its own separate agenda for fulfilling other kinds of desires,

Ones that are loveless, without joy or satisfaction.

Yet millions of people have programmed themselves

To reach only such goals.
The ability to direct your awareness is critical

If you want to change the deep-rooted patterns of aging,

For aging itself is an intention that your cells

Are obeying without your control.

Every intention is a trigger for transformation.

As soon as you decide that you want something,

Your nervous system responds

To reach your desired goal.

This holds true for simple intentions

As well as for complex intentions

100 Songs of Milarepa

By realizing that all forms are self-awareness,
I have beheld my consort's face-
The true Mind Within.

Sustained Exertion, Dogen

The great Way involves the highest form of exertion,

Which goes on unceasingly in cycles,

From the first dawning of religious truth,

Through the test of discipline and practice,

To awakening and nirvana.

It is sustained exertion proceeding without lapse

From cycle to cycle.

Accordingly, it is exertion that is neither self-imposed,

Nor imposed by others, but free and uncoerced.

The truth is that the benefits

Of one's own struggles and sustained exertions

Are shared by all beings in the ten directions.

Others may not be aware of this, but it is so ....

The merits of these exertions are sometimes disclosed,

And thus arises the dawn of religious consciousness,

Which is then tested in practice.

Sometimes, however, these merits lie hidden

And are neither seen nor heard nor realized.

Yet hidden though they may be,

They are still available

Because they suffer no diminution or restriction

Whether they are visible or invisible,

Tangible or intangible.

At this moment a flower blossoms, a leaf falls --

It is a manifestation of sustained exertion.

A mirror is brightened, a mirror is broken --

It is a manifestation of sustained exertion.

Everything is exertion.

To attempt to avoid exertion

Is an impossible evasion because

The attempt itself is exertion.

This sustained exertion is not something

That people of the world

Naturally love or desire;

Yet it is the last refuge of all.

Yun Men

Yun-men said,
“Medicine and sickness mutually correspond.
The whole universe is medicine.

What is the self?”

Chopra on multidimensionality

Quantum events that defy linear time
Take place within our cells continually.
DNA’s intelligence operates simultaneously
In the past, present, and future.

From the past it takes the blueprint of life,
Applying to the present only the tiniest fraction
Of the information needed for cellular function
(perhaps a billionth of its total data base),
And reserving for the future the information
That will be relevant years from now.

The double helix is the quantum storehouse of your future;
Here time is compressed and locked away until needed.
At the instant you were conceived, your genes gained control
Of an entire lifetime of events that would unfold in precise sequence.
At the quantum level, you live all these ages at once.

At this moment you are in two places at once.
One is the visible, sensual world, where your body is subject
to all the forces of nature “out there.”
But you also occupy the quantum world, where all things change.

Put together all the quantum events in your cells
And the sum total is your quantum mechanical body,
Which operates according to its own unseen physiology.
Your quantum mechanical body is awareness in motion
And is part of the eternal field of awareness that exists
At the source of creation.

The intelligence inside us radiates like light,
Crossing the border between the quantum world
And the physical world, unifying the two
In a constant subatomic dialogue.

Your physical body and your quantum mechanical body
Can both be called home–
They are like parallel universes that you travel between
Without even thinking about it.

Chopra on the force of love

The force of love is actually real.
In modern life we have grown used to randomness,
To the notion that life is precarious
And threatened at every turn.

But the history of life shows that it has survived
For billions of years; in fact it seems to create conditions
For its own survival by means of some deep intelligence
That is never threatened.

No matter how hostile the conditions,
Life is inextinguishable.

You can apply this insight to your own life.
Imagine its very beginning,
When against billions of odds
A single sperm managed to fertilize an ovum
In your mother’s womb.

Your present identity depends entirely on that act.
The chances against this single occurrence
Would make it seem impossible,
But it happened effortlessly.

Likewise, there have been millions
Of assaults against you from the environment:
From pollution and radiation,
Even from random mutations within your cells;
Any one of these could have ended
Your chances of survival
At any time from conception to the present day.

Yet the intelligence and organizing power inside you
Has overcome these obstacles with effortless ease,
Despite all the struggle your conscious mind
Could not anticipate or plan how to conceive life,
Keep it going, or defend it from such terrible dangers.

Now, if this effortless ease can operate
At the unconscious and cellular level,
Why not on the conscious?

Can you see yourself riding the crest of the wave of life?
In fact, that is what you are doing at every moment.

Your personal impulses to think, feel, and act
Are like the crest of a wave,
Constantly falling forward into the future,
Yet constantly renewed form below –
The surge of love that constantly upholds life
Is like the surge of the ocean that renews each wave.

Seeing this is the beginning of trust.
In the light of trust, as it develops slowly over time,
You will find that you are a privileged child of the universe,
Entirely safe, entirely supported, entirely loved.

The Stag Beetle, A. Crowley

Death implies change and individuality
If thou be THAT which hath no person,
Which is beyond the changing,
Even beyond changelessness,
What hast thou to do with death?

The bird of individuality is ecstasy;
So also is its death.
In love the individuality is slain;
Who loves not love?

Love death therefore,
And long eagerly for it.
Die Daily.

More of Master Ummon on the Dharma Kaya

A monk once asked Ummon,
"What is the Dharma Kaya?"
Ummon answered him with "The Six Ungraspables."
(The Graspables are the five senses and the mind.)

When Ummon was asked
"What is the pure Dharmakaya?",
He replied: "The flowering hedge"
(surrounding the privy).

Majjhima Nikaya

When you contemplate the body
By being within the body,
You should not engage in all sorts of ideas about it.

The same when you contemplate feelings
By being within feelings;
You should enter in without ideas.

The same applies to contemplating the mind
By being within the mind
And contemplating thoughts
By being within thoughts.

The thoughts should be just the objects of mind
And you should not apply yourself
To any train of ideas connected with them.

In this way, by putting ideas aside,
Your mind will become tranquil
And fixed on one point.

It will then enter into a meditation
That is without discursive thought
And is rapturous and joyful.

Ummon and the mythical Golden-Haired Lion

A monk asked Ummon, "What is the Dharma Kaya?".
Ummon replied: "A garden of medicinal flowers."
The monk then said, "Is that all I need to understand?"
Ummon replied: "If that isn't enough,
Then you'll need to see the mythical Golden-Haired Lion."

Chopra on Death

When you die, it might be like changing channels.
Imagination will continue to do what it has always been doing–
Popping new images upon the screen.

Some traditions believe that there’s a complex process
O reliving karma when you die so that as a person
One can learn what this lifetime was about and prepare
To make a new soul bargain for the next lifetime.

The moment of death is described
As having your life flash before you,
Not at lightening speed
As experienced by people when they’re drowning,
But slowly and with full understanding of every choice
One has made since birth.

If you are conditioned to think in terms of heaven and hell,
Going to one or the other will be your experience.
The creative machinery of consciousness will produce
The experience of that other place, while to someone
Who has led the same life under no such belief system,
These images might appear to be a blissful dream
Or a reliving of collective fantasies (life a fairy tale),
Or the unspooling of themes from childhood.

But if you go to another world after death,
That world will be in you as much as this one is.
Does that mean heaven and hell are not real?
Look out the window at a tree.

It has no reality except as a specific space-time event
Being actualized out of the infinite potential of the field.
Therefore, it’s only fair to say that heaven and hell
Are just as real as that tree, and just as unreal.
The absolute break between life and death is an illusion.

What bothers people about losing the body
Is that it seems like a terrible break or interruption.
This interruption is imagined as going into the void;
It is total personal extinction.

Yet that perspective, which arouses huge fears,
Is limited to the ego.

Deepak Chopra on Passion and Shakti

Although most of us consider ourselves fortunate
If we can still feel passion about anything as we grow older,
Feeling passion for your work or politics or even sex
Is not the same as having a passion for life.
It is not just that life is bigger than work, politics, or sex.

Shakti is life itself;
It is present in every rhythmic pulse of existence.
A passion for life implies that you are passion;
It is in your very being.
Therefore the most natural way to be is passionate;
The slow ebbing of passion is unnatural.
If you mourn the fading of passion,
Realize that nothing endures on the surface of life,
Where change is the only constant.
Things come and go, people come and go,
And although they once stoked the fires of enthusiasm,
Eventually the temperature cools.
The greatest waste is to extend passion
On needs and drives that are selfish and without spirit.
Among these wastes would be material accumulation,
Greed, love of money and power for their own sake,
Loveless sexual activity, and obsession.

Shakti is the raw ore of life, waiting to be refined and shaped.
Insights about passion, therefore,
All have to do with sustaining divine love in yourself
And transmuting it in your relationship to love and union.
The source of passion is within yourself.
When passion wanes it must be rekindled at its source.

Dôgen, "Flowers Fall"

To study the Buddha is to study oneself.
To study oneself is to forget oneself.
To forget oneself is to be enlightened
By the myriad dharmas.
To be enlightened by the myriad dharmas
Is to bring about the dropping away of body and mind
Of both oneself and others.

The traces of enlightenment come to an end,
And this traceless enlightenment
Is continued endlessly.

Deepak Chopra on the Mental Field

The mind has remained a metaphysical riddle
For centuries because it inhabits
The physical world like a ghost.

But that’s a Western perspective
Based on our bias for solid, tangible things.
We insist that the brain
Must be the source of mind
Because the brain is a visible object,
Which is like saying that a radio
Must be the source of music
Because it is a visible object
From which music emerges.
The Vedic rishis adopted the opposite perspective,
Insisting that visible objects couldn’t be the source
Of mind since the physical plane
Is the least conscious of worlds.
Our Western prejudice against the invisible
Isn’t easy to overcome.
Mind will only be proved to exist outside the brain
If it leaves some kind of footprint,
A visible sign that is as convincing as the MRIs
That provide concrete evidence of neural activity.

Right now you are a bundle of information
In mind and body.
You have unique memories;
Your cells have undergone chemical changes
Shared by no one else in the world.

When you die, none of this information will vanish,
Because it can’t.
There is nowhere for plus and minus,
Or positive and negative to go
Since the field contains nothing but information.

Therefore their only alternative is to recombine.
There is growing evidence that in fact
We do share the same mind field.
The brain belongs to “me,”
But if ideas belong to “us,”
Then we are participating together in a field,
Sometimes quite mysteriously