I just finished Deepak Chopra’s book, “Buddha.” Say what you will about Chopra, but the man has created quite a cottage industry for himself. His other recent book on Jesus was also quite good. These are “fictional histories” not intended to be taken literally, and Chopra does an admirable job of explaining not simply what might have occurred during the missing years of these mystics’ lives, but also the possible events that helped lead them to their enlightened states.
As is so often the case when I read a book like this, a reward is gained where least expected. In the case of “Buddha,” something in the story’s telling suddenly made accessible to me an idea I’d been exposed to many times in the past: namely that humanity’s endless focus on “good” vs. “evil” is a large part of what keeps us unconscious. Something in “Buddha” made this perfectly clear: That I must let go of EVERYTHING including man-made contrivances such as good and bad, dark and light, conscious and unconscious, etc.
It is so easy for us to meditate and pray and otherwise immerse ourselves in spiritual practices that frown on pain, darkness, suffering and conveniently couple those same meditations with thoughts of goodness and light and purity and love. We tell ourselves, “I’m good and honest and virtuous” and in that telling become forever trapped in the same human drama playing out next door with the guy telling himself, “I’m worthless and stupid and dishonest.” Two sides of the same coin, both of them traps set by the mind.
But the jnani or awakened ones tell us that ALL of these ideas and concepts must be eliminated, that no thoughts about ourselves are allowed because in those thoughts are the self or “little me” and wherever the little me exists the higher Self cannot.
So with a debt of gratitude to Mr. Chopra I recommend “Buddha” (as well as “Jesus”) and I hope you find a gift or two in them as did I.
