January 10, 2010

"The Wheel of Samskara"




An interesting & I think good post by Deepak Chopra on Care2.

"How can I retrieve a sense of self that fits one reality? The answer once again is freedom, yet in a most peculiar way. You must free yourself from decisions. The voice in your head will die down once you stop making choices.

"A samskara is a choice you remember from the past. Each choice changed you by a tiny fraction. The process began at birth and continues to this day. Instead of fighting it, we all believe we should keep on making choices; as a result, we keep adding new samskaras and reinforcing the old ones.

"In Buddhism, this is called the wheel of samskara because the same old reactions keep coming around again and again. In a cosmic sense, the wheel of samskara is what drives a soul from one lifetime to the next – old imprints impel us to face the same problems time and again, even beyond death.

"Kierkegaard wrote that the person who has found God has freed himself from choices. But what does it feel like to have God make your decisions for you? I think you would have to be deeply connected to God to even come close to answering that question.

"Yet in a state of simple awareness, the most evolutionary choices seem to come spontaneously. While the ego agonizes over every detail of a situation, a deeper part of your awareness knows what to do already, and its choices emerge with amazing finesse and perfect timing.

"Hasn’t everyone experienced flashes of clarity in which they suddenly know just what to do? Choiceless awareness is another name for free awareness. By freeing up the choice-maker inside, you reclaim your right to live without boundaries, acting on the will of God with complete trust.

"Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004)."

via Care2

image credit: lewishamdreamer via flickr under a Creative Commons license