好書共享-Turtle Feet

                   
 
剛剛看完一本不錯的書 （實際上看書的時間很有限，但是每天忙裏偷閑，久了也會看不少). 寫的是一個鋼琴家到印度西藏流亡地出家學習的回憶錄。字裏行間滿了黑色幽默，我一個人常常捧腹大笑，笑過之後確是深深的思考。對生命意義的追尋是多麽亙古的一個話題啊！可是尋錯了方向也是很惋惜的。真希望小孩子快快長大學好中文可以跟我一起討論交流讀書心得。

書名： (A Memoir)Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk by Nikolai Grozni (Riverhead Books, 2008)

我想摘錄書中的一些句子來跟大家分享：
"In order to understand something clearly, one must first give it up". (p.326) ( 我不完全讚同這個說法，不過對應上下文，這話說得還是比較貼切).

"Then suddenly it occured to me that the connection between children and their parents, between people and their countries, between believers and their gods, between humans and their home planet, between me and my body, between the I that perceives and the I that is perceived, is completely illusory, mind-made". (P.318)

"That was his way of showing affection. It was the best he could do--after spending forty years in a monastic institution filled with cantankerous, love-starved males whose only means of communication was debate." (p.303)

Reality was a conbstruct; because it was a construct, it never worked the way you expected it to; perpetuating this construct was the same as perpectuating sorrow; dissolving this construct was the end of the sorrow. (p.77)

I've never been to a country where nonsense is the norm. It is like a big joke -- life, death, rebirth, Englightenment - it all amounts to nothing, a play on words, a crazy puzzle that can never be solved. No wonder they came up with the idea of maya, or illusion, you know. In the West things are taken seioursly. Life is a serious matter. Eathing is a serious matter. Tomorrow is a serious matter. Here I can finally breathe: there is no pressure to stay alive! Whatever happens is okay. Dying is okay, begging is okay. I don't have to plot my life. I can sit back and actually enjoy it. (p.40)

這裏有一段另外一本書裏麵的引文： "Circumstances don't amount too much, character is everything; there is no point breaking with exterior objects and things; you cannot break with yourself. (不太讚同作者的看法，又覺得作者有點自己攻擊自己。因為我個人認為一個人的品行(character)很大程度是受了後天環境(circumstances)的影響，先天的因素和後天的環境都不可缺少。一個人通過努力是可以break with yourself (the innate self)的。 這實際上是專家們爭論不休了多少年的nature vs. nurture 的話題－－扯遠了.) --- Benjamin Constant, Adolphe quoted in Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah.