不知为什么，对自己的这句翻译感到挺自豪的：
美国对华投资的行业结构
Distribution of US investment in China by sector
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Take Two... as follow-up to the previous post, in my second message to the same friend on the same topic:
Indian historians are indebted to Xuang Zang and, before him, Fa Xian (法显). Apparently, the record of Indian history would have been more fragmented without those two.
My study was also motivated by curiosity. I noticed certain phenomena that I wanted to make sense of. So many sects of Buddhism speak of scriptures, mantras, icons, other "realities", to which so many believers are attached. This seems to me contradictory to the fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy, although the argument is that you are first attached to something good, or more desirable, or less injurious, before becoming detached, because this something has some built-in mechanism of paradox, whereby you will be detached of it when you are attached to it. I have found that it's only partly true and very much depends on the aptitude of the student. So, inevitably, those without such aptitude who continue to hold on to it for dear life till the end of their lives are comforted with the theory that they are bound for heaven nevertheless because of their faith. And, inevitably, the issue of "Ultimate Reality" and substantiality comes up and indeed, all leading religions in the world are agreed on this principle - the ultimate reality of god, allah, some powerful buddha or bodhisattva who IS, or is in tune with, the ultimate reality and therefore has infinite power to save the worthy ones, and the worthy ones only.
Hence my decision to get to the bottom of it. I have been told that this "bottom" doesn't exist. But I want to find out for myself.
Indian historians are indebted to Xuang Zang and, before him, Fa Xian (法显). Apparently, the record of Indian history would have been more fragmented without those two.
My study was also motivated by curiosity. I noticed certain phenomena that I wanted to make sense of. So many sects of Buddhism speak of scriptures, mantras, icons, other "realities", to which so many believers are attached. This seems to me contradictory to the fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy, although the argument is that you are first attached to something good, or more desirable, or less injurious, before becoming detached, because this something has some built-in mechanism of paradox, whereby you will be detached of it when you are attached to it. I have found that it's only partly true and very much depends on the aptitude of the student. So, inevitably, those without such aptitude who continue to hold on to it for dear life till the end of their lives are comforted with the theory that they are bound for heaven nevertheless because of their faith. And, inevitably, the issue of "Ultimate Reality" and substantiality comes up and indeed, all leading religions in the world are agreed on this principle - the ultimate reality of god, allah, some powerful buddha or bodhisattva who IS, or is in tune with, the ultimate reality and therefore has infinite power to save the worthy ones, and the worthy ones only.
Hence my decision to get to the bottom of it. I have been told that this "bottom" doesn't exist. But I want to find out for myself.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
给朋友的电邮，粘贴如下：
Thanks for the encouragement and the reminder... I knew I could tell you and get a positive response. Most people would, I imagine, be "scared" when topics of consciousness and life and death come up in a conversation. That's why I keep it to myself. The good thing is, because of my experience with Qigong, I can temper my meditation with daily Qigong practice, so it's more fun.
According to Bertrand Russell's reasoning, people like the Buddha are perpectually faced with an insurmountable dilemma when attempting to explain their experience in one state to an audience who are in another state, because to do the explanation, they have to necessarily come out of the first state and once they are out of that state, their experience ceases. It's very much like waking up to recount a dream - much is lost and much is distorted. You know what the Buddha did? He resorted to similes, anecdotes and repetitions, over and over again. Such similes, anecdotes and repetitions abound in Buddhist scriptures and if you are to read them, you will be bored to tears and driven crazy.
The gist, actually, is very straightforward - impermanence of all phenomena (and laws governing such phenomena), unsatisfactoriness (of being, of life, because of the aforementioned impermanence, as it's human nature to aspire towards perpetuality, which is an illusion or a conjured-up reality) and nonsubstantiality (which is in the same strain as impermanence, except that it's more personal - it's the nonsubstantiality of "self", including the individual self, "Atman" in Sankrit, and the universal self, "Brahma" in Sanskrit).
In Chinese, they are 无常，苦，无我.
Being literate in English and being exposed to related literature in a language other than Chinese is a blessing, isn't it?
In the original Buddhist philosophy, there's only one "ultimate" rule, namely, causality [因果法则 or, if you want to sound cool, 缘生法/缘起法]. That's all. It's atheism, through and through. But its later ramifications turned it into a religion. It started off as a philosophy (in theory) and an "order" (in practice). But human beings need faith more than they need truth. Buddhism, as a religion, came into being. The Pureland Sect (净土宗), for example, is very much a Chinese version of Christianity. As I have not come to any conclusion about Christianity, I can't say I have formed a definitive opinion of the Pureland Sect. But between the lines, you can suss out what I might be thinking: Release/nirvana comes when you truly understand impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and nonsubstantiality. You live like a normal person and may react to and interact with the world like anyone else, but there is a core in you that is no longer affected/shaken by external stimuli, so you have the ultimate peace in your inner world and that is pureland, bathed in infinite light. It never was, never is, and never will be outside our "mind". But Mahayana (大乘佛教) would immediately denounce my argument as attachment to causality (执于缘生法). That might be so, but one must not jump the gun... It's a process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (正题、反题、合题）as in Hegelian philosophy and I'll get there one day. Somehow, I sense that Chan Buddhism may be the gateway to the true essence of Buddhism and the real essence may lie in 唯识宗, aka 法相宗, founded by 玄奘 himself. You wonder why he bothered to set up his own sect, which soon lapsed into oblivion because no one could get it. However, my reservation is about the "ultimate reality" that 法相宗 talks about. The Buddha was reticent about the ultimate reality, for a good reason definitely. The ultimate reality runs the risk of becoming a de-personified god or divinity. The Buddha said - regarding ultimate "self", if all experiences are absent (i.e. there's no frame of reference), can you sense that self? No. If not, how do you know it exists? He posed it as a question. He did not answer it. Clever guy!
In a nutshell, the Buddha reached enlightenment by three means: (1) ESP (extrasensory perception, 神通), (2) reasoning and inferences based on ESP-derived experiences, and (3) predecessors' accounts of their experiences, for reference only. With ESP, he saw the causal links between phenomena, which proved the law of causality; through reasoning, the law of causality was elaborated upon; and by referring to sages' experiences, he was able to confirm, refute or modify them and improve his own system.
The importance of ESP to the Buddha's enlightenment may come as a surprise, because we often hear that Buddhism discourages pursuit of 神通. But the fact is that without ESP, there's no Buddha. But this is no average ESP, it's ESP of a higher order, attained at the end of 四禅定. At lower levels, ESP is tainted with human instincts, namely, death instinct and pleasure instinct (both the Buddha and Freud were agreed on this point), and illusions will cloud the seer. Interestingly, God was created because of these instincts.
That'll lead to another topic...
I must sign off here... I'm hungry. I'll finish off the watermelon first.
Thanks for the encouragement and the reminder... I knew I could tell you and get a positive response. Most people would, I imagine, be "scared" when topics of consciousness and life and death come up in a conversation. That's why I keep it to myself. The good thing is, because of my experience with Qigong, I can temper my meditation with daily Qigong practice, so it's more fun.
According to Bertrand Russell's reasoning, people like the Buddha are perpectually faced with an insurmountable dilemma when attempting to explain their experience in one state to an audience who are in another state, because to do the explanation, they have to necessarily come out of the first state and once they are out of that state, their experience ceases. It's very much like waking up to recount a dream - much is lost and much is distorted. You know what the Buddha did? He resorted to similes, anecdotes and repetitions, over and over again. Such similes, anecdotes and repetitions abound in Buddhist scriptures and if you are to read them, you will be bored to tears and driven crazy.
The gist, actually, is very straightforward - impermanence of all phenomena (and laws governing such phenomena), unsatisfactoriness (of being, of life, because of the aforementioned impermanence, as it's human nature to aspire towards perpetuality, which is an illusion or a conjured-up reality) and nonsubstantiality (which is in the same strain as impermanence, except that it's more personal - it's the nonsubstantiality of "self", including the individual self, "Atman" in Sankrit, and the universal self, "Brahma" in Sanskrit).
In Chinese, they are 无常，苦，无我.
Being literate in English and being exposed to related literature in a language other than Chinese is a blessing, isn't it?
In the original Buddhist philosophy, there's only one "ultimate" rule, namely, causality [因果法则 or, if you want to sound cool, 缘生法/缘起法]. That's all. It's atheism, through and through. But its later ramifications turned it into a religion. It started off as a philosophy (in theory) and an "order" (in practice). But human beings need faith more than they need truth. Buddhism, as a religion, came into being. The Pureland Sect (净土宗), for example, is very much a Chinese version of Christianity. As I have not come to any conclusion about Christianity, I can't say I have formed a definitive opinion of the Pureland Sect. But between the lines, you can suss out what I might be thinking: Release/nirvana comes when you truly understand impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and nonsubstantiality. You live like a normal person and may react to and interact with the world like anyone else, but there is a core in you that is no longer affected/shaken by external stimuli, so you have the ultimate peace in your inner world and that is pureland, bathed in infinite light. It never was, never is, and never will be outside our "mind". But Mahayana (大乘佛教) would immediately denounce my argument as attachment to causality (执于缘生法). That might be so, but one must not jump the gun... It's a process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (正题、反题、合题）as in Hegelian philosophy and I'll get there one day. Somehow, I sense that Chan Buddhism may be the gateway to the true essence of Buddhism and the real essence may lie in 唯识宗, aka 法相宗, founded by 玄奘 himself. You wonder why he bothered to set up his own sect, which soon lapsed into oblivion because no one could get it. However, my reservation is about the "ultimate reality" that 法相宗 talks about. The Buddha was reticent about the ultimate reality, for a good reason definitely. The ultimate reality runs the risk of becoming a de-personified god or divinity. The Buddha said - regarding ultimate "self", if all experiences are absent (i.e. there's no frame of reference), can you sense that self? No. If not, how do you know it exists? He posed it as a question. He did not answer it. Clever guy!
In a nutshell, the Buddha reached enlightenment by three means: (1) ESP (extrasensory perception, 神通), (2) reasoning and inferences based on ESP-derived experiences, and (3) predecessors' accounts of their experiences, for reference only. With ESP, he saw the causal links between phenomena, which proved the law of causality; through reasoning, the law of causality was elaborated upon; and by referring to sages' experiences, he was able to confirm, refute or modify them and improve his own system.
The importance of ESP to the Buddha's enlightenment may come as a surprise, because we often hear that Buddhism discourages pursuit of 神通. But the fact is that without ESP, there's no Buddha. But this is no average ESP, it's ESP of a higher order, attained at the end of 四禅定. At lower levels, ESP is tainted with human instincts, namely, death instinct and pleasure instinct (both the Buddha and Freud were agreed on this point), and illusions will cloud the seer. Interestingly, God was created because of these instincts.
That'll lead to another topic...
I must sign off here... I'm hungry. I'll finish off the watermelon first.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
《南怀瑾与彼得·圣吉》，共一百八十五页。
一边看，一边等待
我知道，在彼得一行人临走之前，南师必定要抖一点“猛料”。而一路说的东西，是为了让听众作好准备，将思想和思维朝某个方向引。
果不其然，在倒数第四页，来了。
“现在我们不谈梦了，因为讲思想而讲到梦。我们的思想那么多，自己看不清楚。其实大家静坐下来，是不是知道自己思想那么多啊？譬如诸位坐在这里听的时候，是不是知道有一个很清楚的在听讲话的，有没有？一定有吧！当然有个知道的，那个是知性，不是思想。
“现在我讲话，你们听到，同时你们自己也在分析这个话的道理，对不对？ 起了很多作用，对不对？可是你有一个知道自己在分析、知道自己在听话、知道自己在思想的这个东西，它没有动过，这个东西很清楚。
“所以这个东西不需要你去用力的，不需要你去找的，你自然知道自己思想。搞清楚了吗？起码有一两个搞清楚的吧？假如全体搞清楚，那不得了啦。
“我们知道自己有思想有感觉的，这个是知性，它没有动过。当我们睡觉一醒过来，第一个是这个东西，那个叫‘睡醒了’，很快的，第二个东西--思想来了。是不是这样？
“对，就是那个东西，你把握住。
“自己的思想为什么那么多？这个叫妄想，也可以叫浮想。我们知道的这个妄想，可以分成三个阶段：过去、现在、未来。过去就没有了，未来还没有来，讲现在，现在已经没有了。
“所以你静下来的时候，不要怕妄想多，你那个知性看到妄想，就把握这个。前念已过去，未来还没有来，就看着现在。分成三段。常常这样反省、体会，时间一长，你就会很空灵了。
“如果你把握这个空灵，假如盘腿打坐，越把握得久越好。这个把握久了以后，你的身心、脑力、体力什么都转变了。”
（摘自《南怀瑾与彼得·圣吉--关于禅、生命和认知的对话》，上海人民出版社，ISBN 978-7-208-06790-5/B·561）
This is IT!
一边看，一边等待
我知道，在彼得一行人临走之前，南师必定要抖一点“猛料”。而一路说的东西，是为了让听众作好准备，将思想和思维朝某个方向引。
果不其然，在倒数第四页，来了。
“现在我们不谈梦了，因为讲思想而讲到梦。我们的思想那么多，自己看不清楚。其实大家静坐下来，是不是知道自己思想那么多啊？譬如诸位坐在这里听的时候，是不是知道有一个很清楚的在听讲话的，有没有？一定有吧！当然有个知道的，那个是知性，不是思想。
“现在我讲话，你们听到，同时你们自己也在分析这个话的道理，对不对？ 起了很多作用，对不对？可是你有一个知道自己在分析、知道自己在听话、知道自己在思想的这个东西，它没有动过，这个东西很清楚。
“所以这个东西不需要你去用力的，不需要你去找的，你自然知道自己思想。搞清楚了吗？起码有一两个搞清楚的吧？假如全体搞清楚，那不得了啦。
“我们知道自己有思想有感觉的，这个是知性，它没有动过。当我们睡觉一醒过来，第一个是这个东西，那个叫‘睡醒了’，很快的，第二个东西--思想来了。是不是这样？
“对，就是那个东西，你把握住。
“自己的思想为什么那么多？这个叫妄想，也可以叫浮想。我们知道的这个妄想，可以分成三个阶段：过去、现在、未来。过去就没有了，未来还没有来，讲现在，现在已经没有了。
“所以你静下来的时候，不要怕妄想多，你那个知性看到妄想，就把握这个。前念已过去，未来还没有来，就看着现在。分成三段。常常这样反省、体会，时间一长，你就会很空灵了。
“如果你把握这个空灵，假如盘腿打坐，越把握得久越好。这个把握久了以后，你的身心、脑力、体力什么都转变了。”
（摘自《南怀瑾与彼得·圣吉--关于禅、生命和认知的对话》，上海人民出版社，ISBN 978-7-208-06790-5/B·561）
This is IT!
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