God and Buddha: A Dialogue (2003)

This is a dialog between Robert Thurman and Deepak Chopra.  First, let me say that, whatever one may think of Deepak, he is a great storyteller.  Therein lays one of his strengths and the reason he has been so successful. What follows are my notes from roughly the first 50 minutes of this 90 minute DVD.

Deepak:

The essence of Buddhism is the alleviation of suffering.

Vedanta is the great wisdom tradition of India which dates back as far as 1500 B.C.

According to Vedanta, there are 5 reasons why human beings suffer (5 kleshas):

§         Not knowing the true nature of reality

§         Grasping for things that are not real

§         Running away from and fearing things that are not real

§         Identification with a false self (ego)

§         Fear of death

All five are contained in the first one - the only cause of suffering is not knowing the true nature of reality.

The true nature of reality is Brahman - I am THAT, you are THAT, all this is THAT - infinite, immortal, eternal, ineffable...

Brahman projects Itself as the Universe through the power of Maya into the realm of space-time and causation.

The mechanics of a dream and the mechanics of waking "reality" are one and the same.

There are four ways to realize Brahman:

§         Karma Yoga - good works done for Brahman

§         Bhakti Yoga - loving Brahman through feeling, devotional practice

§         Raja Yoga - meditation and sub-disciplines

§         Jnana Yoga - the intellectual approach - using the rational mind to go beyond the rational mind

Robert Thurman:

Not knowing is not a problem in itself.  What becomes a problem is when I think I know.  There are all kinds of projections out there about who or what God is.  As humans, we cannot know who or what God actually is, and any claim otherwise is delusion.  We can sense or feel some fraction of God, but we cannot define God, other than saying that God, by definition, cannot be defined by us.

Deepak:

The direction our science is going today is very close to Vedanta.  Physicists have discovered that the essential nature of the physical world is not physical.  When you get down to the subatomic nature of things, there is nothing.  But this nothing is full of energy...infinite energy.  It is the ground of existence.  Not only is it energy, it is information.  This information is self-referring, with sophisticated feedback loops.  So...the information is really intelligence.

Robert Thurman:

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is literally translated as The Book of Natural Liberation.

There are no dead people.  Death is a natural liberation.  How can we fear death when there is infinite life?  The minute you die, you are no longer a body-mind, you are a mind-body.  You can look down and see the wetware that you inhabited.  Once you are a mind-body, you are nine times more intelligent because you are no longer constrained by habit energy and fight or flight responses (remember, this is according to Tibetan lore).

Deepak:

We experience three general states of consciousness: dreaming, dreamless sleep, and waking.  The fourth state of consciousness is Spirit awareness.  Most people have some glimpses of this.  He then quotes Walt Whitman: I must not be awake, for everything looks to me as it did not before.  Or else I am awake for the first time, and all that was before was just a dream.

The meaning of the word Buddha is awake: waking up from this insubstantial reality into glimpsing the soul.  If you enter that space now, you do not fear death.

The fifth state of consciousness is cosmic consciousness: not merely glimpsing this soul, but inhabiting it on a sustained basis.

To be continued... (lunch is over!)