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.