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.