Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment - Deepak Chopra
Chopra is best known for his spiritual how-to books. Here, he turns to fiction (though he adds a how-to epilogue), writing about the life of Prince Siddhartha, who became the Buddha. Chopra divides his book into three parts. The first chronicles the youth of a motherless boy who has a destiny: to be a spiritual leader as foretold by astronomers at his birth. But his powerful father refuses to bow to fate and keeps his son isolated from the world. In the second part, Siddhartha, now a husband and father, sees suffering and decides to leave his life of leisure and become a monk. Despite extreme asceticism and a duel with a demon, enlightenment eludes him. In the final section, Siddhartha sees the error of trying to defeat his body and, in one night, achieves enlightenment and becomes the Buddha. The Buddha's story is compelling, and though Chopra's writing can be overly dramatic and his language flowery, he captures the essence of the spiritual seeker, sometimes shockingly single-minded in the pursuit of illumination. When the novel ends, the explanations begin, with Chopra providing a Q and A about the tenets of Buddhism. Many will find his "answers" as enigmatic as they are enlightening.

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God and Buddha - A Dialogue (1999)

God and Buddha - A Dialogue (1999)
This dialogue is of a live presentation between Columbia University professor, Dr. Robert Thurman and Deepak Chopra, MD, a student of Indian Philosophy and author. Mr. Chopra presents views from Vedanta, one of the six classical systems of Indian philosophy. The term Vedanta refers both to the wisdom of the Upanishads, which makes up the last section of the Veda, and to the realization of its ultimate significance. Mr. Thurman presents views from Buddhism, which is a kind of reform movement within Hindu thought that has become an independent pluralistic tradition of it's own.

Within the first 20 minutes of the program, Mr. Chopra sums up the core teaching of Vedanta. He describes some of the causes of human suffering and also describes some of the suggested paths to discovering the true nature of reality. Most of the rest of the program is a kind of free-flowing meditation on the implications of these teachings.

Mr. Chopra, with a background in the field of medicine, conveys his insight and knowledge through a kind of systematic, formal approach to verbal communication. Mr. Thurman, with his years of experience in engaging skeptical college students, takes a more anecdotal approach. He works to win the attention, and ultimately the heart, of his audience.

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