这几年为数不过来的会议提供翻译服务，学到了不少东西，因为许多会议的内容都是某个行业或专业的精华浓缩。

也听到了不少至理名言。

印象最深的、最具震撼力的一个故事，现转述如下：

This is an old Red Indian tale.

On a starry night, in a mountain valley, a group of young children sit down around a bonfire, waiting eagerly to hear another story from their beloved Grandpa.

"Tonight, let me tell you a story of two wolves." So begins Grandpa.

"Yeah, we love wolf stories," cheer the children.

"You know, there are two wolves inside each one of us."

One of his grandchildren is puzzled, "Really, two wolves, in me? Where are they, Grandpa?"

"They are in your heart. They are in my heart. They are in your papa's heart and your mama's heart. They are in his, and his," Grandpa continues, "One wolf is kindness, patience, generosity, forgiveness. The other wolf is resentment, greed, selfishness, cruelty.

"These two wolves are always fighting, inside each one of us."

"Which one wins in the end, Grandpa?"

Silence.

Then comes Grandpa's reply,

"The one you feed!"

等待
等待

一位老汉，九十五岁了。坐在河沿，叼着烟斗，眯缝着眼看着远方。

这是我在电视系列片《巴蜀古镇》中看到的一幕。就在那一瞬间，我意识到了：

人生是一场长短不一的等待。

等什么？

表面的答案可能有很多。

但深一层的答案似乎跟“人生意义何在”这个问题的答案同样难以捉摸。

隐约之间，我却在这两个问题之间看到了一丝联系：

Maybe, just maybe, we are waiting, with lifelong patience (or impatience), for that very moment...

the moment when all things fall into place and we can MAKE SENSE of what LIFE is all about.

《两只蝴蝶》的歌词，试译如下：
亲爱的你慢慢飞
小心前面带刺的玫瑰
亲爱的你张张嘴
风中花香会让你沉醉
Mavourneen, fly slow
Mind the thorny roses as you go
Mavourneen, open your lips
Savour the wind-borne scent
Intoxicating in just a few sips
亲爱的你跟我飞
穿过丛林去看小溪水
亲爱的来跳个舞
爱的春天不会有天黑
Mavourneen, fly with me
Visit the gurgling brooks through many a tree
Mavourneen, let us dance
In the love-filled spring, darkness as no chance
我和你缠缠绵绵翩翩飞
飞越这红尘永相随
追逐你一生
爱你无情悔
不辜负我的柔情你的美
Flutter as love-birds, you and I
Beyond this mortal world, low and high
Chasing you on my wings that never slack
In the name of love, I never look back
(For I'm as amorous as you are gorgeous)
我和你缠缠绵绵翩翩飞
飞越这红尘永相随
等到秋风起秋叶落成堆
能陪你一起枯萎也无悔
Flutter as love-birds, you and I
Beyond this mortal world, low and high
When leaves fall to oblivion
In the autumn blast
Comes the bliss of withering with you
Breathing our last

Spiritual development.

Two questions, frequently asked.

(1) Why do I have to worry about my next life, my after life? I don't really know who my "predecessor" (previous incarnation) was and it doesn't seem to matter, does it?

(2) Why are we the way we are?

This is how I approach the first question.

I think my life is quite good. According to the theory of transmigration, this is the sum total of what my past lives did. Obviously, my previous incarnations didn't do too bad a job. I'm grateful to them.

Incidentally, could ancestral worship be a veiled form of worshiping one's former incarnations? Just a thought, but an interesting one, I believe.

I know my life can be "better" (however one interprets it), but I don't really strive for a "better" life. Maintaining and enjoying this life I have is more important (call me unambitious). Out of basic human decency and empathy, I would like my next incarnation to enjoy at least the same level of "goodness" that my current life seems to be blessed with. And, hopefully, with a little effort on my part, that being will have a "better" life. After all, that being will be a continuation of "me" and if I'm nice to my family and friends, I have no reason not to be "nice" to the future "me".

As for the second question, I believe it all boils down to "scale". We have five to six senses, out of many senses that we possibly can develop and employ. But for each sense, we have to allocate some resources. Therefore, we need to strike a balance, between maximising the number of senses that we possess to safeguard our survival, security and well-being and minimising the amount of energy we consume in order to mobilise those senses.

In other words, it's almost certain that the senses we KNOW we have are essential to our survival. But are they enough for our spiritual well-being? This is an open-ended question. Through meditation, we seem to be able to sharpen these "normal" senses and develop some extra ones. It's easy to assume that those extra senses are essential to our spiritual well-being, without which we are mere "living" organisms, not enlightened beings.

Imagine - the totality of this cosmos (including all dimensions, spiritual and physical) is projected onto a spectrum. We as average human beings have access only to the middle section of the spectrum (we can sense the vibrations occurring across a certain stretch of frequencies on that spectrum, which are palpable to us). Being aware of vibrations beyond this bracket is not essential to our physical survival. We have those senses so we can sense and avoid danger, and sense and find sustenance. That's why we are the way we are.

I don't want to discuss the "necessity" of spiritual pursuit here, as that's too personal.

Let's say you decide to make a foray into the spiritual realm by taking up a religion and/or following a spiritual master and/or practising meditation. Then you are exposing yourself to the rules of another realm, which presumably are rather different from those governing this reality. In this reality, most of us have from birth a complete set of senses tailor-made for this physical world. But when you embark on a spiritual path, it's unlikely that you are fully equipped with all the senses necessary to steer you clear of lurking perils in that other realm. In this reality, if you lost sight and hearing, you couldn't walk without aid. It would be life-threatening.

Maybe the same applies to the other realm? If that's the case, then it's clear why we have to be very particular about the path we choose to follow.

Your heart is your lodestar, they say. But how do you know your heart is not clouded?

My answer is: Meditation.

How do you know you are on the right path? My answer is: Don't choose a path yet, as long as you still have that question. Just be "watchful". Watch out, in particular, against two things:

Greed
Ego

Religion is attractive to many for two reasons:

(1) It offers an attractive proposition/deal.
(2) It fills a vacuum

By the same token, people go to religion for two reasons: either seeking to change their 'rotten' life (it's a transaction, with tangible benefits expected) or looking for something to eliminate a void in their life (once that void is gone, the believer will go back to being a non-believer, although he/she will never admit it). Or both.

Adopting a religious faith is not as easy as it sounds. One has to be very, very careful, if one is serious about one's spiritual well-being. If you are not serious about it, then why go to religion in the first place? Family heritage? Peer pressure? Fashion? Force of habit?

That's frivolity, if you ask me, and frivolity is an even graver danger, because you render yourself vulnerable to misguiding influences. Because you don't REALLY care.

Meditation should be made very simple. Strip it down to basics only and remember:

惟灭动心，不灭照心
但凝空心，不凝住心

The first line is an antidote for GREED and the second line, for EGO.

Through meditation, questions start to emerge. The right spiritual guide for you is the one who can answer those PARTICULAR questions of yours convincingly. Don't go for the "famed" grand master at the very beginning. If you do, it'll be little more than blind faith. In time, different guides will present themselves to you, when you are ready. As you stay the course, by bearing the two-line "mantra" in mind, your heart, and therefore your vision, will remain unclouded and you can see more and more of the "truth".

听说，在过去一个月里，余秋雨、余华这样的大作家都纷纷建立了自己的博客。掐指一算，咦，跟我建博客的时间差不多。看来有种能量漩涡正在兴风作浪，把许多人吸进去了，我也未能幸免。

那我就随波逐流吧。

这几天，针对精神的修为，有很多想法，正在梳理，成熟了再付诸笔墨。

前几天写的帖子给几位老同学看了之后，其中一位建议如下：

Jim asks:
"各显神通" 可否简单译为"..., each using his own theurgy."?

My reply:
谢谢Jim教我这个单词。原来是 "godly art/skill"之意... 要好好地翻译这句成语，显然应首选这个词。估计汉英辞典的编撰者也没想到这个词，是不是？

... like the legendary Eight Immortals who ferry themselves across the sea by invoking the unique theurgies they each possess -- i.e. people rise up to challenges in their own ways, as if wielding some unique magic power they each have.

这样如何？很罗嗦，但没有背景知识的人听了也能明白。