EDITOR'S COMMENT:

I just finished listening to a two-part discussion between Ken Wilber and Deepak Chopra. While their talk revolved around Chopra's new book on Buddha, it also discussed some of the fundamental tenants of Buddhism, including the nature of life, self and suffering.

A significant part of the interview also dealt with the growing war between atheists and people who believe in spiritual, supernatural forces of various kinds. Chopra recounted attending a conference at TED (in April of 2002) in which he was scheduled to speak about creativity after famed evolutionary biologist, author and atheist Richard Dawkins. According to Chopra's account, after listening to what Dawkins had to say he felt compelled to publicly challenge Dawkins:

"He was giving the most arrogant talk I'd ever heard... First of all, he's British so he puts on this huge British accent. Secondly, he's condescending... Thirdly, he shows a slide of a dollar bill which says "In God We Trust". Then he shows a pound, a British pound, and it's got a picture of Charles Darwin and he sneeringly says 'that's the difference between you and us'... So he went on and on and I was next -- he got a standing ovation by the way... So, fortunately, sometimes my emotions get the better of me and I loose my sanity. When I got to the stage I said 'I came here to talk about creativity but after listening to Dr. Dawkins I feel compelled to respond'... He was sitting right there, in the front, and I said 'you're an important man in the world of science with everything that you've accomplished... but my first reaction to you in meeting you personally is that you are a bigot and a fundamentalist.' And I preceded to really attack him for the next hour because it was very obvious to me he had no idea on the nature of consciousness. He had no interest in consciousness. And these guys when they attack God, or whatever, they're attacking some dead white male in the sky... So the upshot of it was I also got a standing ovation and he didn't have a chance to respond so he actually had a meeting and had me thrown out from TED."

There's more, but that's a taste.

A search of TED turned up the talk by Dawkins, but nothing from Chopra.

For your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Buddha: A Story Of Enlightenment - Part 1 (mp3)

Buddha: A Story Of Enlightenment - Part 2 (mp3)

If you would like to listen to discussions like this one as soon as they are available, I encourage you to subscribe to Integral Naked:

http://in.integralinstitute.org/

What is Integral Naked? Here's a brief description:

"Integral Naked is the world’s first multimedia portal into Integral Consciousness, featuring hundreds of hours of audio and video conversations with today’s greatest thinkers, leaders, artists, and visionaries. Often moderated by Ken Wilber, these discussions span a wide range of topics -- including spirituality, sexuality, psychology, ecology, art, business, and politics. Through the rich diversity of subject matter runs a single thread, a fierce determination to connect the dots of fragmentation and begin to make sense of a world gone more than slightly mad..."

--- David Sunfellow

P.S. Here's how TED currently describes the talk by Richard Dawkins that Deepak Chorpa took such strong exception to:

"The session was titled 'The Design of Life,' and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution's role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education (quoting Douglas Adams in the bargain). Scientists and intellectuals hold very different beliefs about God from the American public, he says, yet they are cowed by the overall political environment. Dawkins' scornful tone drew strongly mixed reactions from the audience; some stood and applauded his courage. Others wondered whether his strident approach could do more harm than good. Dawkins went on to publish The God Delusion and become perhaps the world's best-known atheist."

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BUDDHA: A STORY OF ENLIGHTENMENT - PART 1                  
Deepak Chopra & Ken Wilber

Original Link

As Deepak is the first to admit, his new book Buddha <http://tinyurl.com/yslw57> is a fictionalized treatment of the life and awakening of Gautama Buddha -- in fact, the subtitle to the book says as much up front: A Story of Enlightenment. For that matter, Publisher's Weekly wrote "Chopra scores a fiction winner." Everyone seems pretty clear about the fact that Deepak took the creative liberties needed to describe a first-person account of what Gautama Buddha may have been thinking, feeling, and experiencing during various stages of his life and awakening. And yet, certain traditional Buddhist scholars, teachers, and academics find the book offensive, misleading, and possibly even heretical.

As Deepak and Ken discuss (and we hear the Dalai Lama agrees), that kind of perspective rather seems to miss the point: if the popularizing influence of a fictionalized account of the life of Buddha brings a wider audience of people to an appreciation of the Buddha dharma, isn't that ultimately a successful expression of upaya, or skillful means? Is it not the duty of a bodhisattva to use skillful means to communicate the truth of Reality by whatever means actually work? And once introduced to this wonderful tradition, is it not likely readers will be turned on to Buddhism in general, and start exploring the detailed and rigorous offerings of other teachers, scholars, and writers? To suggest that a man with a medical degree from Harvard is incapable of understanding the true sophistication of the Buddhist tradition is just silly -- it's simply not what he was going for in this particular work.

Deepak and Ken also touch on the always-lively topic of how to interact with people who stridently insist that scientific materialism is the only approach that's "really real" (e.g., a world with no respect or understanding for the true depth of the consciousness principle, and certainly no room for a transcendental or universal Spirit). In a surprisingly humorous account, Deepak goes on to describe getting kicked out of a major conference for rebutting a particularly offensive presentation by Richard Dawkins -- a spat that he assures us he's over now, but it's a darn good story nonetheless.

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BUDDHA: A STORY OF ENLIGHTENMENT - PART 2                  
Deepak Chopra & Ken Wilber

Original Link

After discussing the presentation and criticism of Buddha in detail in Part 1 of the conversation, Deepak and Ken move on to explore some of the most central tenets of the Buddhist tradition, as well as Vedanta Hinduism. Mentioned first is the trikaya or "three body" doctrine, whereby all sentient being are said to have a nirmanakaya (gross body), samboghakaya (subtle body), and dharmakaya (causal body). These three bodies are said to literally support, respectively, gross-waking consciousness, subtle-dreaming consciousness, and causal-deep-sleep consciousness -- all of which are states of consciousness, which everyone experiences every single day, because everyone wakes, dreams, and sleeps (it is through contemplative practice that these states reveal their deeper nature, and one can begin to Witness all states, and then find nondual Union with all states). In addition to bodies and states, Ken reminds us that both Vajrayana Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism posit sheaths -- or koshas or structures or levels -- of consciousness, such as annamayakosha (material), pranamayakosha (emotional-sexual), manomayakosha (middle mind), vijnanamayakosha (higher mind), and anandamayakosha (bliss mind). Together, states, bodies, and sheaths/structures paint a very sophisticated picture of what contemplative, trans-rational spirituality is all about (and to which we would add, in an AQAL and Integral Approach, quadrants, lines, and types -- see "What Is Integral?" in keywords).

Ken goes on to express his appreciation for how Deepak uses the "three marks of existence" as a teaching tool, in the epilogue to Buddha. These three marks of existence -- duhhka (the awareness of pain), anicca (the awareness of the fleeting, momentary nature of experience), and anatta (the awareness that we are identified with a separate self, which is ultimately not real) -- are in fact marks of relative, manifest experience, the deep contemplation of which can reveal the absolute, unmanifest Reality of this and every moment.

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