Nonself

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.

《法句經》第95偈中提到 Indra's pillar，若非經過考據，是不會有人瞭解它背後的含意的。古漢譯將此偈譯為：不怒如地，不動如山，真人無垢，生死世絕。原文翻成英文為：There is no more worldly existence for the wise one who, like the earth, resents nothing, who is firm as Indra's pillar and as pure as a deep pool free from mud.

Indra 是印度教中司地，也是雷雨神。Indra's pillar 是放在城門口的石柱，受人供奉鮮花貢品；然有些對此習俗不以為然的人則會在此便溺。此偈便以 Indra's pillar 來形容有智慧的人，對於別人的看法不為所動。梭羅說我既可以是漂流的浮木，亦可以是空中俯視它的 Indra; 我的存在只是人性單元，是思想和情感的舞台。這樣的說法就很像佛教術語「有情」。佛經上說，因執著故為有情。但是當你不再執著，你只是這個舞台的旁觀者，當戲落幕時，你就像觀眾一樣的離開戲院。

有人問何謂「無我」。答曰：『人和一切有情感的生物都叫做「有情」。佛教的緣起論認為所謂有情，無非是種種物質和精神元素的聚合體。有情不是固定的單一獨立體，而是種種元素的聚合體，而所有元素是剎那剎那依緣而生滅著的，所以找不到一個固定的有情在支配著身心，也就是找不到「我」的存在。
　
當初笛卡兒提出精神和物質二元論，是因為當時科學界不斷地與宗教界發生衝突；提出精神和物質二者是平行的論點等於是向宗教界宣告科學的研究不會侵犯到宗教的領域。但不久就有唯物論者挑戰笛卡兒的說法，認為所有的精神作用也不過是各種物質之間的互動造成的，完全是機械式的；本體論者則認為所有物質不過是心靈客觀的具體形式。

佛教也把組成有情的要素分為精神和物質兩類，就是所謂的「名色」。名是精神的要素 -- 受、想、行、識；色是物質的要素。（色、受、想、行、識又稱「五蘊」。）名色就是身心合成的存在。無論組成有情的要素為何，如果對自己的身心只是因緣所生的道理不能自覺，以為其中有常住的、惟一的、做主宰的我，那就是「無明」，就會因此而起煩惱。』

我的朋友

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

吾人最不堪忍受者有四：寫自己不想寫的東西，一不堪也。喜慶宴喪
，送往迎來，二不堪也。與俗人共事，三不堪也。瑣事煩心，四不堪
也。

夫人之相知，貴識其天性。不要以為此人不喜歡去ＫＴＶ唱歌，他就
不快樂，硬是要把他拉去。雖是出於善意，亦已疏矣。師橫犁游心於
寂寞，以無為為貴；好友去拜訪他便隨性之所至，不用事先知會，縱
未見到人亦無妨。此可謂能相終始，真相知者也。

志同道合之友從容交談，無論所談為有趣之事抑或世間瑣事，皆樂事
也！唯此等人至不易得，若與對談者之意見了無異議，則與一人獨坐
何異？與大哥、喬峰交談時，喬峰意見每與人相左，口稱「余之設想
則不如是」而加以爭論，大哥則謂「唯其如是，故余之意見如是」云
云。余意此可慰無聊之情。雖於書本中發現有與思想一致而稍有不同
時，可稍慰寂寥，然終究兩心懸隔，意有未足，與面對知友不同也。

註：師橫犁為梭羅的中文姓名。

德不孤，必有鄰。

Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!"

"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them."

"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides."

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances — have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors."

中庸第十六章

子曰：「鬼神之為德，其盛矣乎！視之而弗見，聽之而弗聞，體物而不可遺。使天下之人，齊明盛服，以承祭祀，洋洋乎如在其上，如在其左右。」

梭羅在此所引的中庸十六章尚有一小段，即孔子引詩經《大雅．抑》：詩曰：『神之格思，不可度思，矧可射思。』，然後孔子作結道：「夫微之顯，誠之不可揜如此夫！」而詩經《大雅．抑》主要是衛武公自責自勵之詩；在這裡衛武公告訴自己，「人在做，天在看。不能說這裡很隱密，人家看不到，就去作有愧良心的事。要知道神的來到，是無法預期的，所以隨時要謹慎，不放縱自己的言行。」孔子作結說：鬼神的事本來就是隱微的，卻又如此顯著，所以真實無妄的心不能掩藏就是這道理啊！

這「夫微之顯」的鬼神，因為近代科學思想的昌明而黯淡不明，其實人們心中明明知道，卻怕被冠上迷信不科學的帽子，而且告訴自己，這只是一種過時的錯誤想法，於是在沒人看見的地方，就幹起見不得人的勾當。

12/17,18二日去花東參加千里苦行時，第二日中午在花蓮光復糖廠休息，點了杯手工舞鶴咖啡，鄰座有鄭麗君和她的友人，室外棚下有林義雄夫婦，讓我有一刻時間脫離台灣那專扯八卦的社會，讓我的思想來款待我自己。我只能想到這句話：德不孤，必有鄰。

憂鬱症及孤獨

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Æolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

憂鬱症，是「一種陰霾般的低潮情緒籠罩的心理疾病，宛如織網般地難以揮去，而不是一種短暫可消失的情緒低沈」。聯合國世界衛生組織(WHO)說，在2020年全世界有三大疾病需要重視，包括：心血管疾病、憂鬱症與愛滋病。憂鬱症會造成嚴重的社會經濟負擔，在所有疾病中排名第二，僅次於心血管疾病。憂鬱症也是所有造成失能疾病的第一名。

即便比一般人更注重我的內心，力圖解脫人生的一切枷鎖，但孤獨感仍像幽靈一般在我身旁纒繞不去。這也許是住在城市裡的關係。台灣道路的修補與開挖，因為沒有經過共同管道，所以經常有一個月挖補數次的情形發生在廣州一街。三月(世運那一年)的最後一個星期，某天早上，將小狗放到屋頂上不久，就傳來轟隆隆的巨響。原來是鑽地機正在搗碎柏油路面。上到屋頂一看，果然把小狗嚇的蜷縮在水塔底下。我不知道路面的開挖與我的孤獨感有何關聯，也許愈是嘈雜憒鬧，孤獨的幽靈就愈能從中作祟。水泥築成的各式囚牢也許是另一原因；就算我只是稍微離開市區，都能感到身心的輕快。

在<孤獨>這一章中，梭羅說他從來不覺得孤單；只有一次，在搬進林中小屋幾個星期後的一個下雨天，大約一個鐘頭的時間，他感到孤獨，懷疑這樣一個人住是不是不太健康；他那個時候想著：獨處畢竟不是件愉快的事。接著他感到自己大概精神有些錯亂，而預知了自己的康復。我想，這是因為梭羅經常觀照自己的心理狀態才能有這種自癒的能力；一般人恐怕無法辦到。

他說：「如果一個人仍有知覺，不論他有多麼的厭世和憂鬱，都可以在自然界中找到最甜美溫馨，純潔而令人鼓舞的社會關係。」就在梭羅為孤獨感而無助的那個鐘頭，外頭的雨聲則用最柔和的語調圍繞在他的小屋，表達伊無限佮算不清的情義。這款的相挺馬上讓那些與人作伙可得到的好處變的微不足道，此後他對那些好處再也沒有任何想頭。


寫到這裡，突然間，外頭原本吵鬧的機車聲似乎也變的可愛起來。原來廣州一街也可以是我的大自然。

禪學述原

THIS IS A delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature's watchmen — links which connect the days of animated life.

『這是一個可口的黃昏，整個身體是一個感官，自每個毛孔吸入美味。我以一種奇特的自在進出於自然，而我實是她的一部份。』 在我所曾讀過習禪的書中 ── 儘管我讀的並不多，還沒有看過這麼貼切的描述。這也許不是禪定的最高境界，但對我來說，也夠了。這個境界，正如湖水，波而不亂。

根據呂澂先生〈禪學述原〉一文，他認為，中國禪宗的三個系統，都源於印度大乘瑜伽學，“但以譯家傳述之詳略，而聞者因之立派分流，但得其仿佛而已”。呂澂的結論是禪宗三大系統“空談依教，究屬訛傳，誤解自覺、本覺、自性、菩提，輾轉束縛，愈溺愈深，此以大乘教義校量，而可斷言者也。… 眾生心妄，未曾本覺，榨沙取油，寧可得乎？即還其本來面目亦不過一虛妄分別而已。今講此題，禪學原形備見，詳猶不具，然必如是，決無可疑也。

又，印土大乘瑜伽學原以小乘上座化地部禪學為本，改進而為大乘。上座化地部是第二次部派分裂時形成，後來化地部分遣許多大德到各地宣揚而形成許多派別，如西北印迦濕彌羅、健陀羅一帶的說一切有部即其中一支。但是後來說一切有部反而跟原來的化地部不同調，轉而去支持原來與化地部分裂的犢子部觀點。犢子部是主張有我的，被認為是依附於佛法的外道。說一切有部在這一點上表面反對，暗中卻又採納。然而化地部的禪學由說一切有部所吸收，再傳給說一切有部分裂出的經部。經部以及它的前身譬喻師分別代表了小乘過渡到大乘的二個不同學派的階段。譬喻師的理論可為大乘中觀學說的開導；經部的理論可為唯識學說的開導。後來經部發展成佛教四大派別之一，反而與說一切有部在小乘佛教分庭抗禮。印順法師自稱是大乘中觀學者(但不是西藏所傳的後期中觀學者)，所以他在〈略說罽賓區（註：即健陀羅以北的雪山區，亦可包括迦濕彌羅，說一切有部亦在此區活動）的瑜伽師〉一文說：『等到(譬喻師)從禪出教，…，經部是大盛了，與有部對立了，也就成為學理的研究，不再有譬喻瑜伽者的自化化他的活力。』等於是連唯識學的小乘過渡都否定了。

那麼中國禪宗所傳承的大乘瑜伽又是怎麼來的？原來在譬喻師形成經部後，有一些禪師還是持行於罽賓山區，不斷地大乘化與秘密化，直到西元三四世紀間才分化出大乘瑜伽師。而傳宏大乘瑜伽師的重要人物，無著，從禪出教，集出唐玄奘魂縈夢牽的《瑜伽師地論》後，後學者也就化成法相唯識學，偏重於義理的精究了。

天籟

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.

齊物論第二

　　　　南郭子綦隱机而坐，仰天而噓，荅焉似喪其耦。顏成子游立侍乎前，曰：「何居乎？形固可使如槁木，而心固可使如死灰乎？今之隱机者，非昔之隱机者也？」子綦曰：「偃，不亦善乎，而問之也！今者吾喪我，汝知之乎？汝聞人籟而未聞地籟，汝聞地籟而未聞天籟夫！」子游曰：「敢問其方。」子綦曰：「夫大塊噫氣，其名為風。是唯無作，作則萬竅怒呺。而獨不聞之翏翏乎？山林之畏佳，大木百圍之竅穴，似鼻，似口，似耳，似枅，似圈，似臼，似洼者，似污者；激者、謞者、叱者、吸者、叫者、譹者、宎者、咬者，前者唱于而隨者唱喁。泠風則小和， 飄風則大和，厲風濟則眾竅為虛。而獨不見之調調之刁刁乎？」子游曰：「地籟則眾竅是已，人籟則比竹是已，敢問天籟。」子綦曰：「夫天籟者，吹萬不同；而使其自已也，咸其自取。怒者其誰邪！」

此篇為《莊子．齊物論》第一節，其中描述得道者南郭子綦憑几坐忘，精神不為形體所縛的情況與佛教打坐入定之描述並無二致；其弟子顏成子游觀察到他的老師，「形如槁木，心如死灰」，跟以前靜坐時的樣子很不相同。便問他老師為何會這樣。南郭子綦便說：「今者吾喪我，汝知之乎？」（今天我已經達到無我的境地了，你知道嗎？）接著他用天籟來作比喻；他說，所謂天籟，乃是風吹萬種孔竅所發出的聲音，使這些聲音不同的原因，並不是風，而是各個孔竅形狀不同所致；都是自已造成。世間的思想言論，雖為態百殊，也像風吹萬種孔竅所發出的聲音，都是自然而然並且不得不然的天籟，都無是非曲直之可計較。

我們常會想，要是別人怎樣怎樣就好了；但是別人也有可能要求你應該這樣或那樣。而事實上，大部份是自己本身的問題，就如南郭子綦所說：「夫天籟者，吹萬不同；而使其自已也，咸其自取。怒者其誰邪！」

高雄地名的由來

As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle! I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now: —

"In truth, our village has become a butt
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord."

高雄，這個竹林，

已經成了二氧化碳的故鄉 －
因為，她只剩下馬卡道路，
在打狗山旁！

高雄的原意是竹林，正是從打狗轉音而來。馬卡道族（平埔族中的西拉雅族的支系）為了防禦敵人和海盜的攻擊以及颱風的侵襲，在部落、家屋的四周，種植刺竹林作為防衛圍籬。他們稱這種圍籬叫作TAKAO。六世紀時，漢人開始和馬卡道人頻繁接觸，對竹林圍籬的妙用印象深刻，就以閩南話翻譯成【打狗】，因此出現打狗山、打狗社的稱呼。一八九五年以後，日本人統治台灣，根據日本本國同音的地名，取漢字【高雄】傳統名稱，移用到打狗來，從此打狗變為高雄，並且在大正十三年《民國十三年》建立高雄市。 （取材自柴山探訪）

央行總裁彭淮南

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads — because they once stood in their midst.

較之一般台灣人來說，我的生活型態起碼也有這樣的好處：無需期待國外或者中國來帶給我娛樂，也無需社交和買門票看表演；因為我的生活本身就是娛樂，而且永保新鮮，從不會變的無聊。聽說中央銀行總裁彭淮南的生活近乎無趣，除了工作，唯二的消遣就是跑步和讀書。無趣是世俗的看法。人類受到本身屬性的捆綁，因而為肉慾所驅。所有的肉慾，型態固然萬千，但卻只有一個。人們以為這樣才富情趣，其本質卻低俗至極。所謂時尚，可能是前幾年商店裡的庫存貨。為肉慾所縛的人儘管一時得意，也終究無法忍受老病的折磨。但是如果一個人的心地純粹專注，經過長時間的淨化和鍛鍊，就如彭總裁一般，他就能夠心想事成。

《雜阿含65經》有：愚癡無聞凡夫不如實知色，色集，色滅，色味，色患，色離。不如實知故，於色所樂、讚歎、繫著住，色縛所縛、內縛所縛，不知根本、不知邊際、不知出離，是名愚癡無聞凡夫，以縛生、以縛死、以縛從此世至他世，於彼亦復以縛生、以縛死。是名愚癡無聞凡夫隨魔自在，入魔網中，隨魔所化，魔縛所縛，為魔所牽。受……想……行……識，亦復如是。

因為無法看清楚各種繫縛的本質，以為是一種享受，於是便為縛所牽、為魔所繫，不得自在；死後還念念不忘，隨逐往來，循環不捨。

禪定的境界

BUT WHILE WE are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

1. on the alert 是準備好面對各種可能發生的情況。

2. 孟祥森把 the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen 譯成 「清楚的看你所看到的東西」，有點不太清楚。重點是在 discipline，應該是正念現前之意。如下面的故事所述的訓練。上一句說到沒有任何一種 discipline 可以取代 on the alert；這裡又說所有的課程都比不上這個 discipline of looking always at what is to be seen, 所以二者應該是同一個東西。

I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

　　「第一個夏天我並沒有讀書；我鋤地種豆子。不，我常常做了一些比種豆子還要好的事。有某些時候，我無法承受把時間花在任何勞心或勞力的工作上，因為太可惜」，梭羅如是寫道。

是什麼時候讓他覺得連讀書工作都是一種浪費呢？

曾經有一個人他乘坐的船沉沒，只有他一人生還。漂流到岸上後，他以樹葉造了一件衣服，坐在樹下休息。在古印度，有很多修行的人，他們都坐在樹下修行。人們看到以為他是阿羅漢，帶各樣東西給他，他於是裝成一名修行者。為了使別人相信自己是阿羅漢，他拒絕接受人們的奉獻，以顯示自己有異於常人，結果人們真的對他更加敬仰。有一晚，一位天神來到他面前，這天神在前生是該人的朋友，曾經一同修行。天神希望指示他正確的道路。天神說他作虛弄假，利用宗教欺騙別人，是一個虛偽的人，不是阿羅漢，也未曾踏上正確的道路。他聽到後便請天神教導他應如何做。天神著他前往跟隨佛陀學習。

幾經辛苦，他來到舍衛城。在他的再三請求下，佛陀說了幾句：

"當你看到某東西，只用明白這東西；當你聽到某聲音時，只用明白這聲音；當你的感官感接觸任何東西，只用明白這東西，不要有任何的感覺，不要生起任何的喜惡。"（註）

梭羅認為沒有一門歷史課，哲學課或詩歌的課程能夠與這種訓練相比。他繼續寫道：「我喜歡給我的生活一個開闊的額外空間。有時，在夏天的清晨，依慣例洗完澡後，我坐在門前曬太陽，從日出一直到中午，完全沉浸在冥想裡...，在完全不受干擾的孤獨及平靜中，一直到太陽從我的西窗落進來，或者遠處傳來過客的馬車嘈雜聲，才使我意識到時間的流逝。在那些沉思的時刻，我便如夜間的穀類一樣生長。」梭羅說，那些流失的光陰，並沒有自他的壽命中減去，反而是高出於他的生命之上的。他的意思是，用世俗的眼光來看，他一共在世間活了45年（1817~1862）； 但若不是因為靜坐為他賺得的時間，他可能更早離開這個世間。

註：以上的故事節錄自 Studying Buddhism

用心才聽得出來的語言

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.

從觀照自身得知，愈來愈少的人能夠認真看待文字；縱使已開發國家的教育程度提升，文字對社會整體的影響力也愈來愈小。

我相信像林義雄先生這樣信仰梭羅的思想的人是一個真正誠實的人。但是因為以類似面貌出現在人們眼前的人太多，漸漸人們也就不以為意了。所以當李敖說這個人不可相信，也就有人半信半疑。心中充滿權術的人認為道德有時只會壞事，也就更不會把林先生所代表的當一回事。

文字所面臨的困境也是如此。大部份的人看書是為了獲得「有用」的知識；只管這種知識是不是能賺錢，是不是能提升自己的情緒管理，是不是能洗滌自己的心靈，而沒有人在意文字背後的生命和靈魂。

什麼樣的時代會有什麼樣的產物。現代的作品說話的對象不再是人類的智慧與心靈，不再是一切時代能夠了解它們的人。它們的目的只是希望像演說者那樣，讓聽眾對他們的滔滔言詞發出掌聲。梭羅說的好，經過淬煉的語言太具有含意，不是耳朵可以聽得出來的。而只有已經重生的人才能學會「說」這種語言。

閱 讀

My residence was more favorable, not only to
thought, but to serious reading, than a university;
...

Says the poet Mîr Camar Uddin Mast, "Being seated,
to run through the region of the spiritual world; I
have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated
by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this
pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the
esoteric doctrines."

在網上找了許久，沒有找到這個波斯詩人的資料；可見這個世界是極不平衡的。如果我懂得阿拉伯文的話可能會比較容易找到。我的心思見地是十分狹隘的。一個時常將目光瞧向天際及星空的人，內心總是比較平靜。

我的住處也很適合思考及嚴肅的閱讀；梭羅的《華爾騰湖》為我們整理了他一生所得；在他那個時代以前所完成的書，《華爾騰湖》所提供的書目我們一輩子也看不完。所以只要讀完華爾騰湖就好。不過，我還想讀《雜阿含經》及《法句經》；因為它們都是過去的哲學家為我們揭示的真理，現在他們要藉由我們的眼睛去複習。禪宗的經驗告訴了証悟的禪師們，只要通過了「無門關」，就可以與歷代的祖師攜手同行，用同一的耳朵聽，用同一的眼睛看。

另一位波斯詩人 Omar Khayyam 在他的《露杯夜陶》寫道：

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

咱來樹腳歇一下仔，

遮仔有吃的，美酒含詩冊；

更有汝作伴佇荒野咧唱歌，

呵！佇荒野中著是佇天堂！

或者如黃克孫衍譯的七絶：　

一簞疏食一壺漿，一卷詩書樹下涼，

卿為阿儂歌瀚海，茫茫瀚海即天堂。

這個瀚海天堂不正是詩人 Mîr Camar Uddin Mast 飲盡那杯秘教教義之酒才能到達的領域！

孔子的新聞

What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! "Kieou-pe-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot accomplish it.. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!"

什麼新聞！知道不會變舊的東西才是更重要的！

蘧伯玉（衞國的大人物）使人於孔子。孔子與之坐，而問焉。曰：「夫子何為？」對曰：「夫子欲寡其過而未能也。」使者出。子曰：「使乎！使乎！」 　　－ 論語(憲問第十四)

梭羅引《論語》此章有些奇怪，可能是他讀到的英譯（梭羅應該不懂中文）將使者的意圖譯成想要去打探孔子的消息，實則原文並未提及使者的來意。蘧伯玉和孔子是舊識，孔子每次去衛國都住他那裡。派使者去孔子那裡可能只是表達問候之意。

不過我在網上查閱《論語》此章時，發現就在上一章孔子所說的話更有智慧：

子曰：「古之學者為己；今之學者為人。」

孔子的思想其實很值得看看，只是無論什麼好東西一旦到了中國人手裡都變了樣。現在又被中國人搬出來供奉；但是我想若是今天孔子重生，中國的當政者也不會讓他說心裡想講的話。

藥方三帖

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain.If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

大概每個台灣人心裡都在想，台灣真的病了 －－ 無論是看得到的生態環境還是看不到的社會環境。可是好像沒有一個人知道該怎麼辦。150年前的梭羅就為我們開了三帖藥方，就看台灣的人民要不要去做：

1. 絕對的節約 a rigid economy.
2. 比斯巴達還要嚴格的單純生活 a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life.
3. 更高的目標 elevation of purpose.
   （至少要比「經濟發展」這一目標要來的高。）

通向涅槃的渡口之道路

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

早上，餵過小狗，吃過早餐以後，我就開始看梭羅的《湖濱散記》。而通常等到樓下機車行開門營業時，我已經開始我的修行了。『與其給我愛、金錢或名譽，不如給我真理。(Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.)』而欲證真理，必先修行。僧叡說：「禪法者，向道之初門，泥洹(涅槃)之津徑也。」所以修習禪法只能到渡口，要過河還得搭船。修習禪法的結果也有可能跟吃搖頭丸一樣，不過是幻覺的產生而已；禪定也只是有如動物的冬眠，然而還是值得一試。因為它是一種有意識的心靈努力。『人，絶對有能力用有意識的努力來提升自己的生命。』這是梭羅所發現最是鼓舞人心的事實。即使參禪的結果和使用毒品或冬眠一樣，其過程也不會是相同的。

以前，安可先生曾和哲學家有過這樣的對話：

哲學家：聽說你認為”自我”是不存在的？

王安可：我所讀的佛書是這麼教誨的。

哲學家：相信我，兄弟！你的”自我”正理直氣壯地訴說自己的存在 ── 這個有創造力、有意志、有價值的”自我”，便是權衡一切萬物的標準。

王安可：莫非是說「人是萬物的尺度」？

哲學家：正是。這個最純正的存在，自我 ── 即使當它在冥想、狂嘯、或以折翼飄飛時，也還訴說著肉體、意想著肉體。相信我，兄弟！只有病人和將死者才會鄙視肉體與大地，並且虛構一個天堂世界。然而，是誰給予他們解脫時的那份激動與狂喜呢？不仍是肉體和大地嗎？

王安可：應該不是這樣的。確實有些信佛的人是病者和將死者，但解脫的喜悅並不是肉體所能給予的。

哲學家：那是什麼給予的呢？”自覺”能不靠”自我”？

王安可：我也不知道。不過佛教認為涅槃的境界「唯聖者所知」，不能以經驗上的有、無、來、去等概念來測度，是不可思議的解脫境界。

哲學家：兄弟！還是聽聽一個健康肉體的語調吧！那是一種更為誠摯與純潔的聲音。　

『可是肉體是無常的。』安可先生心裡如是說道。

苟日新，日日新，又日新

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages.

11月初的早上，冷氣團剛要從本島南端溜走，我騎了單車，後頭跟著老爹，打算讓清晨的空氣洗滌身心的髒污。然而這樣宗教式的行為並不保証有效。早上五點多就已經有不少人在運動，他們起床運動的目的卻不是每日更新自己，而是希望能為殘敗之軀多延續幾日。《法句經》有：

若人壽百歲，不知成敗事，不如生一日，見微知所忌。

正法之王尤帝世提爾說：『這世間最奇怪的事是：每天，每天，我們都知道有無數的人死去，但大多數的人卻以為自己可以一直，一直地活下去，並且不斷用這樣的想法在行動！』

據說，有一位慈濟師姊向證嚴法師投訴：『為什麼我已經作這麼多了，還是經常生病？』證嚴法師回答：『你看我，也是天天在打針。』

學佛不是為了帶來幸福、健康、富裕、美滿的人生，只是讓你能夠坦然面對生命中的不幸、病痛、窮苦及缺憾。

台灣獨立紀念日

The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

註：梭羅於1845年三月底起造湖邊小屋，7月4日(美國獨立紀念日)正式入厝。

當我讀到這裡時，很不幸的，台灣正處於近幾年來最不獨立的年代，最令人氣餒的年代。雖然我希望像梭羅一樣，學公雞在清晨引頸高啼，試圖喚醒我的國人：盡可能的作一個自由自在的人，不要委身於任何東西 －－ 不論是美國，日本，還是中國。並不是如憤青一般高唱台灣民族主義，只是站在一個台灣人的立場，真誠地喜愛他的國家與國內的事物。但是要聽的耳朵太少。

補充詩：庚戍歲九月中於西田穫早稻

I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied, Each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents. — Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress."

莫留心於短暫無常之事物 －－
因為繁華過盡，逝水如斯。

若是你家道殷實，要如棗樹般慷慨大方；
若是你囊篋俱乏，應似柏樹般了無罣礙。


註：《Flower Garden》，真境花園，13世紀阿拉伯著名穆斯林詩人、蘇菲主義學者薩迪 (Sadi，1213—1291)著。


補充詩：庚戍歲九月中於西田穫早稻

人生歸有道，衣食固其端．孰是都不營，而以求自安．

開春理常業，歲功聊可觀．晨出肆微勤，日入負耒還．

山中饒霜露，風氣亦先寒．田家豈不苦？弗獲辭此難．

四體誠乃疲，庶無異患干．盥濯息簷下，斗酒散襟顏．

遙遙沮溺心，千載乃相關．但願長如此，躬耕非所歎．

--　陶 潛

經濟問題可以是枝微末節的事，但卻不可以因之棄之不顧。

如果開春就按步就班的下田，一年下來的收獲也會很可觀．

透早就出門，到了日落才回家；山中的霜露讓氣候冷得早．

（甭怕田水冷酸酸）

作田的豈不艱苦？但是這是免不了的．

雖然四肢疲憊，至少心安理得，不用害怕意外的麻煩．

在簷下洗濯乾淨，就可小酌一番，散盡一天的辛勞．

古代先賢的心，竟然就在此時向我揭露，告訴我他們就是這樣想的．

希望可以一直這樣下去，而不是說有什麼遺憾才這麼做．

The holiest son of God

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.

梭羅臨終前他的姨媽來看望他，她說：「亨利，你同上帝講和了嗎？」梭羅睜開眼說：「我好像從來也沒有和他吵過嘴呀。我從沒和他爭吵過。」

他的姨媽大概從來沒有好好看過梭羅寫的東西。梭羅爭吵的對象不是上帝，是上帝的兒子。

華 品

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even — for that is the seat of sympathy — he forthwith sets about reforming — the world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers — and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it — that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

《法句經》第54偈：

奇草芳花，不逆風熏；近道敷開，德人逼香。

此偈意謂道德的香氣更勝於花香，能遍及於各個方向，不似花香會受風向的影響。梭羅說，他不以慈悲和正直來衡量一個人，他認為那只是人的莖和葉 －－ 他要的是人的花和果！與充滿花果香的「德人」交往應是如沐春風，或似春風化雨；給人勇氣而非悲情，給人健康及輕快(ease)而非病恙(disease)。若是我們的慈善團體多的是這樣的人，吳念真的妹妹也不會覺得無處可逃，寧可一個人忍受痛苦。台灣佛教徒所強調的大悲心，其實只是佛教教義的莖和葉。讓這些在世界各地救苦救難的菩薩們最痛心的不在苦難的世人，而在他們自己的病恙。若是有一天他的病體得癒，春天走向他、晨光重臨他的床榻，他會毫不猶豫地向他的同修道別，連一聲抱歉也沒有。

慈濟的慈善事業

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me — some of its virus mingled with my blood. No — in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much.

吳念真有一次上談話性節目時談到他因重度憂鬱而過世的妹妹。他的妹妹生前曾經打電話拜託吳念真，要他去跟那些宗教慈善事業團體說，不要再打電話或到家裡來安慰她了，因為她實在沒有能力應付這些人。梭羅說，腐敗的善有著最難忍受的臭味。他說，並不是人家餓時你給他飯吃，冷時你給他衣服穿，你就是好人；一隻訓練有素的狗也可以做到這個。即使有上千百個慈濟團體，你覺得世界就會變得比現在好嗎？令慈濟人最悲哀的不是他們對世人苦難的大悲心，而是他們自己的無明。

如何選擇職業？

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice — for my greatest skill has been to want but little — so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.

As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do — work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.

1. 工作的時間要儘量的少，除非你不知道如何運用閒暇的時間。
2. 在衣著和交通無需額外的費用。
3. 不要賠上了你的思想及信仰。
4. 無需分散太多心力於其上，而可專心於自己想做的事物。
5. 最好不要從商；因為交易的行為會在交易的物品中下符咒。
6. 考慮自己的自由。
7. 不要把時間花在賺取豪宅名車，除非獲取這些東西的過程並不違背上述的原則。
8. 維生只是消遣，如何生活的更單純更藝術才是人生最重要的職業。
9. 過自己想過的生活方式；如果你不知自己想過怎樣的生活，想想北極星如何指引人們方向。
   

圓明園「鼠、兔獸首」

I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual: —

"The evil that men do lives after them."

As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.


　　　　"It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

”我們最好從一開始就遠離邪惡。”梭羅連別人好意送他一個腳踏墊他都拒絶，因為根據莎士比亞的名言，『人之過惡，雖死猶存』，所以人死後最好什麼也別留下來。然而梭羅的這段文字還把輪迴的概念用上了。他說在一個拍賣會場上，那些東西是賣家的父親就開始累積的。梭羅認為這些東西都該送到梵化爐燒個乾淨，結果卻由買家買去，等到有一天讓故事重新來過。

台灣的「故宮」拒收圓明園「鼠、兔獸首」，看來是我們政府難得正確的決定，最好連「故宮」的東西都送回去，和「萬惡」的共匪斷的乾乾淨淨。可是你看這有多難，這就是梭羅之所以這麼說的原因：

　　　　"It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

OS/2

人從農夫墮落為工人正像人從人墮落為農夫一樣值得紀念。

Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's family — thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer; — and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold — namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.

在梭羅的時代都很難在商家買得到甜美的粗麵粉，更何況是現在呢！

梭羅在他那個時代偏偏去作已經很少人在做的事，自己種吃的、做傢俱，凡是能自己動手做的，很少假手他人；我由於從小只被要求要讀書，什麼都不作也沒關係，所以到現在想要學學做點什麼也沒力了。當我用OS/2這種已經很少人在用的作業系統播放mp3時，是不是可以美其名為Walden 2.0呢？一般來說，2.0好像表示比較先進的意思。但是，從梭羅的觀點來看，也許是另一回事吧！他也許會說，從1.0墮落到2.0就像人從工人墮落到上班族一樣值得紀念。

這台裝載OS/2及Windows 98中文版的機器是我在1999年買的，到現在滿10年了。幾年前曾經換了一顆硬碟，其他運作一切尚稱平順。前陣子去海盜灣下載了OS/2 Warp 4.52來玩，把我原先裝載的德文版Windows98刪了，之後又安裝了兩三次，到現在才完全滿意。

最近也是最後一次的安裝正是我在牙痛的時候。當時，牙痛難耐，只好找事情轉移注意力；也是在那時才發現自以為是的修行是多麼不堪考驗。作業系統安裝完成後，必須自行安裝音效卡驅動程式。因為我有一個老舊的英文電子字典要用到Win-OS/2的模式，所以也作了一番設定。

正像梭羅的時代的他並不完全孤單，現在還是有不少人在用OS/2。所以這個在mp3還沒開始流行時就有的作業系統，現在也有人為它設計了播放mp3的程式；也有人為它寫了fat32檔案系統的驅動程式，也因此我才能讀取存放在Windows 98 硬碟分割區的檔案。

2009年9月20日，發現螢幕開始有閃爍的情形。於是我將她收起來，也許日後接上外接螢幕再用。沒多久，11月10日，因為幫朋友作了一些木工，他拿了500釦來給我當工資。我心想這是意外之財，正好日前在一間電腦維修店的櫥窗看到一台17吋的CRT二手螢幕，標價也是500釦，便去買回來接上。自此我又可以用她來聽mp3及學英文單字；我在想，是不是也應該好好學一下REXX電腦語言...

她是梭羅失去的那隻斑鳩。

西元前的麵包食譜

Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor, I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire — some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land — this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable — for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process — and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean, — "Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover," that is, in a baking kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month.

Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang, —

"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips."

Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it.
（此段話在梭羅1845年12月25日的日記中第一次寫到。）

有機會可以試試看：

• 買黑麥及玉米並用磨咖啡機將之磨成粉（或直接買黑麥粉及玉米粉）
• 把手及用來揉麵粉的槽洗乾淨
• 將黑麥粉及玉米粉放入槽中，慢慢加水，仔細徹底地揉
• 揉好後和成麵團
• 放入烘麵包機（不是烤麵包機）中烘焙

大悲湖

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years — not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last date — was

Rice ................ $1.73½
Molasses ............. 1.73 Cheapest form of the saccharine.
Rye meal ............. 1.04¾
Indian meal .......... 0.99¾ Cheaper than rye.
Pork ................. 0.22

All experiments which failed:

Flour ................ 0.88 Costs more than Indian meal,
both money and trouble.
Sugar ................ 0.80
Lard ................. 0.65
Apples ............... 0.25
Dried apple .......... 0.22
Sweet potatoes ....... 0.10
One pumpkin .......... 0.06
One watermelon ....... 0.02
Salt ................. 0.03

Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field — effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say — and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to
$8.40¾
Oil and some household utensils ....... 2.00

So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been received — and these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the world — were


House ................................ $28.12½
Farm one year ........................ 14.72½
Food eight months .................... 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months ......... 8.40¾
Oil, etc., eight months .............. 2.00
In all ............................... $61.99¾

I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold

$23.44
Earned by day-labor .................. 13.34
In all ........................... $36.78,

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21¾ on the one side — this being very nearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred — and on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.

These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my drink, water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who love so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this.

簡單的說，梭羅在1845年7月4日到1846年3月1日，8個月的期間，共花掉了將近62美元。他的農作物賣了23.44元，作散工賺了13.34元，一共是$36.78。透支的25元，差不多是他原本預估要發生的。當時一美元相當於今日100美元，所以梭羅渡了8個月的假所花的代價為2,500美元，每個月大約新台幣壹萬元。當然這還包括他自己蓋的湖濱小屋。我因為住在父母親的房子，所以花費應該可以更省。

2008年，520的早上，外頭飄著毛毛細雨，雖是五月天，卻微有涼意。我一個人騎了我的川崎125（相當於梭羅所失去的栗色馬）來到大貝湖，真的是一時心血來潮，因為起床後無心看書。可能由於開始工作讓心變得有些散亂，不聽使喚。大貝湖其實是一個人工湖，湖面面積103公頃，由於遊客不多，非常清幽，甚至比天然的湖泊還有韻味；如果華爾騰湖是「神之滴」(God's Drop)，那大貝湖就是「人之滴」。大貝湖本只是曹公圳的一條支流，用來供應農田灌溉用水。後因太平洋戰爭爆發，日軍乃將之改為蓄水池，供應工業用水。之後又由自來水公司經營擴張，乃有今日之規模。

5月23日一早，政府又派人來對街的巷子裡敲打路面，依照我父親的說法是國民黨的白色恐怖幽靈又在蠢蠢欲動了。但這應該是綠色執政的高雄市政府幹的好事，不能把帳算在國民黨頭上。梭羅能夠把一切過手的東西都多多少少作成記錄「Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account.」, 他是這麼說來著。我曾經試過多次都失敗了。但是希望有一天我也能像他一樣，口袋空空一個多月，依然還能過活。莊子曾經說過這麼一個故事：

　　子輿和子桑是好朋友。有一次連續下了十天的雨，子輿就說：「我看子桑必定是餓壞了！」於是就包了些飯菜過去看他。果然在門外就聽到子桑在哭爸哭母。子輿進了他家，問道：「哪Aㄚ奶？」回說：「我想攏無為何我會落到這款地步。甘講我的父母會希望我沒錢嗎？天和地哪會管我有窮嘸？按怎想嘛想無是ㄚ哪卡會這慘。可能著是命吧！」

五月下旬，台灣就進入了梅雨季。六月初高雄連續下了一個禮拜的雨，雖然處於M型化社會中比較沒有多餘的那一塊，所幸我並沒有餓到肚子。雨停後，小狗卻因天氣潮濕得了皮膚病一直沒有好轉。蹓狗的同好中有人告訴我可以帶去泡泡海水自然就會好。我想這倒是去海邊一個不錯的理由，於是挑了一個早晨載著小狗到西子灣坐渡輪去旗津，一直玩到將近中午，喝了杯咖啡，學著齊天大聖在如來佛的掌中撒了泡尿，才又搭船回來。

不偏不倚的良心之見

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before.


由於對當今一般人所認同的成功或失敗不感興趣，我因而比任何一位高雄市民來得獨立；我既不被一間房子給拖住，也不為一份工作而虧待自己的靈魂。尤其我想東西的速度有如孫悟空的筋斗雲，日遊四海，所以就算高雄市由國民黨執政，我還是能過的和現在一樣好。

Windows 7

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.

9/26(2009)，與朋友到里港一遊，回程時繞到旗山老街吃暗頓。吃飽之後，走進小7，發現微軟的 Windows 7竟然就放在架上賣(應該只是廣告)。真不知在這條老街上有誰會用到這種作業系統，因為我們還看到一家賣錄音帶的商店。

一直以來，微軟作業系統所謂的新功能就很少是正面的；總是在怕遭淘汰的情況下才去增加使用者需要的功能。這個公司從20年前就開始賺錢，但是到現在也沒有因為產品的任何進步而能讓地球被少砍一棵樹。朋友拿了一支智慧型手機給我；它的智慧就在於幫使用者管理行程及待辦事項。但我實在沒有什麼重要行程可記。我相信有不少人花了錢買了這種手機，結果都是在記別人的行程，看看別人有沒有攤。有了電子郵件之後，人們反而不寫信了；只剩下垃圾信，但是實體信箱內的廣告傳單還是沒有少。人們不寫信的原因大概是因為寄出去太容易，怕麻煩收到信的人回信，心裡不安。使用即時通及噗浪或推特，多半不是在作什麼嚴肅的事，但是卻會使我們對馬上要去做的事更不專心，反正終有一天會噗出一個台灣國來。目的並沒有任何進展，手段方法及工具卻變的比任何時期都強大。Windows 7不就號稱是史上最強大的作業系統！

山寨機

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

在網路上買了種植小麥草的培養盒，盒裡有小石子及種子。這種小麥草是用來幫寵物清除胃腸的毛髮的。我拆了一盒放在陽台上，卻在還沒發芽前就被不知道那裡來的小鳥吃掉了。一開始我還不知道是怎麼回事，只見盒內的種子都不見了，石子則有很多散在盒外。然後才想到應該是小鳥鑽到陽台來，在挑種子吃時把石子撥出來了。陽台是有鐵窗圍著的，所以小鳥應該不會很大。

陳玉峰先生節省到生活所需只要過去的五分之一就可以。他認為拼經濟是最大的錯誤；從每個人開始做起，生活只要現在所需的一半就足夠，明明煮三個馬鈴薯就夠，你煮五個就是錯。可是這樣的說法誰聽得進去。觀光客來不就是要他們買越多越好？我的父母親去澳門深圳旅遊，回來母親跟我說大陸現在好進步，我們台灣實在不能比，他們那個表演真厲害，小孩子身體可以彎來彎去，疊到好幾層樓高的地方。我跟她說那不叫進步，只有落後的國家才會叫小孩作那種表演。我母親才說，台灣的父母親才捨不得讓小孩去學那些。我的父親帶了一支山寨版的鑽石機回來。他已經快70歲，有時連手機響了都不知要接。可是卻買了一支連我都不會用的智慧型手機。他說這一台在台灣買正版的要一兩萬，他那一支只要兩三千。真不知是何種心態。但是現在這樣的老人家應該不少。如果可以，我父親大概也會學學台灣首富去討個嫩妻吧！
我一直很嚮往美國在拓荒時期的生活。一個男人，一輛馬車，載著老婆孩子，到一個新世界開始新生活。他們一開始可能只是在山坡下挖個地洞，作為最初的遮蔽處。梭羅說的好，最可以入畫的不是那些豪宅大廈，而是窮人的小木屋和村舍；使這些屋子有看頭的，不是它們的外表，而是住在裡頭的人的生活。如果每個人都能像鳥一樣築自己的巢，而不是靠建築師，設計師及營造商來蓋房子，那這個世界就不會這麼醜陋，而是處處寫生的材料。世間最動容的詩篇不會是在室內寫就，悅耳的鳴聲也不會來自洞窟的鳥叫。

雜阿含經

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had made.


2008年3月21日，星期五，我在筆記本上寫下這段文字：

卷39 第827經

重點整理

• 修不淨觀斷貪欲。
• 修慈心斷瞋恚。
• 修無常想斷我慢。
• 修安那般那念斷覺想。

經過了一年的時間，2009年5月1日，也是星期五，我則寫下這個：

放空自己，包括好幾個部分：

1. 想要寫信給誰給誰，都可以不用。
2. 眼睛老花，以後看書寫字很吃力，就不要再看。
3. 想把電腦學好，這輩子不可能。
4. 手上的兩台電腦，一台筆記型，一台桌上型，可以用到死都不用再換。
5. 人生最重要的就是要放空自己！
6. 有能力的話，就讀讀《法句經》和《雜阿含經》。
7. 再有能力的話，就讀讀 《Walden》.
8. 再有能力的話，就讀讀 《Programming Abstractions in C》.
9. 要精進，精進，再精進，不放逸。
10. 學習安那般那念。
11. 只用減法，不用加法；減法即修行之法。
    

到現在為止都沒有什麼問題。

2010年，我多加了一條：

12. 學習寂止禪修(奢摩他)及內觀禪修(毗鉢舍那)。

廣州一街

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.

So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, —

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

2008年二月中旬，我決定在這裡住下來。原本想要學梭羅跑到森林裡住一陣子，過自給自足的生活；自在地過生活，讓自己不要在死前發現自己沒有真正活過。後來覺得住在離父母親家不遠的市區反而更省錢，衣服可以丟到洗衣機去洗，晚餐可以回家吃。若是需要什麼生活用品，也可以順手牽羊而不必擔心被抓去警察局。並非每個人都像我一樣佔盡所有便宜，但如果梭羅能在那種環境下生活，相信其他人也應該為自己想到辦法，更何況我也並不是一點問題都沒有。

之後，我為自己買了一台桌上型電腦(HP Pavilion g3220tl). 2009年五月，自行下載 Solaris作業系統並安裝完成，但是安裝程式找不到網路卡的驅動程式，不能上網。6月9日，終於在 Free NIC drivers for Solaris 找到驅動程式。10日安裝完成，11日設定ADSL撥接上網。我將安裝結果上傳至昇陽公司(Sun Microsystems, Inc.)，他們也給我回了信，內容如下：

Record ID: 33523
Submitter Name: Onkell Wang
Type: System - Desktop System
Manufacturer: HP
Model: Pavilion g3220tl

Hello Onkell Wang,

Your HCL submission has been approved.

This item is expected to be published on the sun HCL next week.

Thank you for your submission and for contributing to the BigAdmin site.

Sincerely,
Sarah Yang

HCL Auditing Team
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

30年前，在這附近還沒有這麼多房子時，文化中心也是一大片空地；國小老師會帶我們去那裡焢土窯。下課後，小孩子會一起在庭仔腳玩橡皮筋，把十條打個結，放在一條線上，用橡皮筋將它射出一個距離外；橡皮筋是色彩鮮豔而透明的活筋而不是死筋。或者捌牌仔，每個參賽者出幾張疊成一榻，將這榻圓牌中的一張用牌仔打出來算贏。捌牌仔的人要小心，要確定自己這一摔就能把標的打出來且完全和其他牌仔分離，否則就會作牌給別人。用來捌的那一張要養的厚，打起來才會有力；有時候會凹一小折來捌。還有巷仔底有一塊小泥土地，可以挖五個洞玩天國窟彈珠遊戲。現在那塊泥土地已變成水泥地了，巷子也不像現在有一堆汽機車停放著，可以玩稻草人跳格子遊戲，小孩子多時就玩踢銅罐仔，忍者哈特利真人電影裡有作到這個。下雨天可以作土丸子。好像是挖一些灰色的黏土，揉成球狀，外頭再覆上泥土，然後埋起來。過一陣子挖出來後慢慢將表皮抹去，可以看到亮亮的一層。

無論我的想像力有多豐富，都很難把住處想像成一個適合旅行的神仙歇腳的地方。雖然決意在這裡住下來，還是希望有朝一日能在山上找個地方，那裡有清晨的風吹出天籟，可以不斷創造天上才有的詩歌。

愛情中有自由，靈魂中有自在。

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

人類為了解決生活上的問題，往往想了一個比此問題更複雜的問題給自己。為了喝杯牛奶養一條牛就是典型的此類情況。為了得到一些舒適，他設計了一連串的圈套， 卻沒想到先把自己給套牢了。這就是我們貧窮的原因，即便我們週遭都被奢華的物質給包圍，卻犠牲了所有野蠻人所能享受到的。為何當初智慧之神否決了享樂之神所造的房子，就是因為享樂之神所造的房子不能移動，要是碰到了壞鄰居怎麼辦？我的叔叔嬸嬸十多年前就想要搬家，到最近終於還是決定不搬了。梭羅說：只到了死才能讓他們撒手。

就連我之前想要從我原來租屋處搬到隔了兩條街父母親的房子去住，便覺得非常困擾。人的問題是，一旦在一個地方定下來，就不想再搬了。這樣到最後還是會陷入自己所設的圈套之中。也許我要去一個地方之前，要先想好要怎麼離開。要不就是買一個可供窩身的空箱子，打幾個孔，讓空氣進的來，重點是要讓愛情中有自由，靈魂中有自在。

用減法過日子

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money — and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses — but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly.

很難相信，150年前的美國，人們為貸款所苦的情形，一直到現在都沒有改變。台灣樂透彩公司的經理說，幾乎所有頭獎得主拿到錢後第一件要做的事就是把房貸還清。我持續的買樂透已經一段時間，但一直到最近我才確定，若是我中了頭彩，我還是要過目前這樣的生活；除了會把為朋友作的事停掉之外。雖然多了錢，但一樣的用減法過日子；如果有增加了什麼東西，那只是為了更快速的消化之前已有的。

所謂用減法過生活，除了是物質上的，主要還是精神上的。當初釋迦牟尼提出輪迴轉世說法的重點在於解釋現象，而不在教化人心。釋迦牟尼在成道後自然認清了他的前世今生，於是他把他的體驗加上原本在印度就有的觀念加以說明。而也許在那個時代此種轉世的現象不像現在這麼稀有，佛陀的說法就為普羅大眾解釋了那些現象。

但是知道了自己的前世並無助於佛教解脫的目的。如果沒有因此而體認到整個世界體系在無止盡的、周而復始中生起與消滅，前生的記憶將只是一項負擔、一項無用且不必要的心靈累贅。死亡的作用不只是釋放衰壞的身體，還包括了過份擁擠的知識、習慣了的常規、僵化的意見與偏見、不重要的記憶累積。這些會把我們綑在過去，抑制我們在面對新的情境與較廣的關係時可能的醒覺。恢復了前生的記憶而沒有正確的體認，會使死亡的釋罪失去作用。要想過一種新的生活，不能佔用舊的軀殼，因為舊的軀殼只會腐朽。

用減法過生活就是一種釋罪的生活。

修行之非無政府主義者

Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

經濟是枝微末節的事，大事則是修行。修行是為了讓自己像夜間的穀類一樣生長(grow like corn in the night)，讓時間在不知不覺中流逝，或者說是靜止。讀書則是我修行的一部份。讀書最重要的目的在讓人學會如何思考。只要學會怎麼思考，你便具有無限的適應性；無論世態人心如何改變，你都一樣可以過得下去。歷史上最會思考的兩個人，一個是釋迦牟尼，另一個則是亨利大衛梭羅。他們兩個都把了解自身當作是最重要的事。因為他們知道，一個人若連自己都不瞭解，如何談到其他的事物。他們二人在完全理解自己之後，才知道如何運用自己的思想改變自己對世界的看法。所以梭羅才會說，我們應該改變事物的順序，只有週日工作，其餘的六天都用來休息。佛陀則說，這個世界就是人的感官知覺及其對象所組成，即便有其他的存在，說了也是白說。他們兩個也都不認為自己的思想能改變世界的狀態。佛陀認為一切都是因緣和合而成；梭羅則說作散工是最好的維生方式，卻從不考慮到如果人人都作散工，勢必將無散工可作的問題。所以，如果我在這裡住的夠久，高雄市的這一帶在我眼中應該會是另一個光景。

"Thoreau is being every bit as revolutionary and anti-capitalistic as Karl Marx, but his solution depends on the actions of individuals rather than on the actions of armies and mobs. If you want a Marxist revolution, you have to join with others to overthrow the present system, but if you want a Thoreauvian revolution, you need to change only your own life, not that of others." - Ken Kifer

（梭羅就像馬克斯一樣的反資本主義和具有革命性格，但他的解決之道不是依賴軍隊或者群眾的行動而是自己本身。如果你要的是馬克斯主義的革命，那麼你就得加入其他人去推翻現有的制度；若是你要採取梭羅的方法，你只要改變你自己的生活，而非其他人的。 - Ken Kifer）

因為原本計劃是要到森林或鄉間去住，所以在未搬進來之前就去認養了一隻小狗。每當我無處話淒涼之時，還有牠來作伴。梭羅所失去的那隻獵犬算是被我尋回來了。事實上我對自己的人生是相當滿意的，只是我想如果臺灣想要成為一個正常的國家，不能沒有像梭羅這樣的人。梭羅說，當時的美國人民，只要跟他們的政府有關，便感到屈辱；梭羅一分鐘也無法承認這個販賣奴隸的政府也是他的政府。就是因為他的文字才使美國漸漸變成一個可以讓人尊重的國家，而不是因為她的武力和財富。

在梭羅的眼裡，所有的政權都是不義的。一個主權獨立的政府並不能保証這個國家的人民受到其他地方的人的尊重；一個標榜自己是本土政權的政府往往破壞本土最深，以至於把本土的根都挖了。但是要從自作聰明的老人腦子裡把康固力刮掉，幾乎是不可能的事。不管你教他多少遍：他所執取不捨的這個虛妄的本土政權，是他們錯誤看法的產物 ── 他還是無法相信，而且認為你到現在還沒有辦法覺醒，因為幫他們編織這個東西的報紙是「自由」的！我必須再說：凡是心繫"祖國"的人，是沒有希望的 ──

你腳下踏著的這點土，你如果不覺得它比這世界上（或是任何世界上）任何別的土更甜潤，那我就認為你這人毫無希望了。

我們曾經跟中國人有過交往，只要他是為了自由而來到這裡、真正地把他的祖國留在背後了，我們就沒有不歡迎他的道理。

下民應是難欺

The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men.　They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.

梭羅的年代距離美國獨立已超過50年，但當時美國本土所崇尚的還是在歐洲流行的事物。愛默森說：『從來沒有一個人比梭羅更是一個真正的美國人。他對他的國家與國內情形的喜愛是真誠的，而他對於英國與歐洲的禮儀與嗜好具有一種反感，幾乎到了蔑視的程度。他不耐煩地聽著從倫敦社會中蒐集來的新聞或是雋語；雖然他想保持禮貎，這些軼事使他感到疲倦。』

台灣是這麼小的一個國家，沒有像美國那樣的機會成為世界強權，人民難以建立自信心；所以即使台灣真正獨立50年後，還一樣會有一堆易虐的下民。他們不敢承認自己的東西是好的，一定要等到國際的肯定以後才敢大聲肯定自己。為什麼中國的孫悟空頭上戴了金箍，台灣的彌猴就得要跟著戴呢？「下民易虐，上天難欺」不就是讓人頭痛的緊箍咒嗎？司法人員喜好引用封建時代廟堂上的用語也就罷了，還引據失義，實在不可思議。難怪梭羅會懷疑人到底能不能幫忙弄點真正單純而誠摯的東西出來。他說：要產生真正單純而誠摯的東西（譬如海角七號），必須要用力的壓過去，把那些舊觀念全擠出來，讓它們沒有機會再站起來；問題是這個時候就會有一些腦袋長蛆的人在旁邊（譬如金馬獎評審），在你的周圍下蛋，使你的一切努力都付東流。

袈 裟

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.


聖經馬太福音第九章：
16.沒有人把新布補在舊衣服上；因為所補上的反帶壞了那衣服，破的就更大了。
17.也沒有人把新酒裝在舊皮袋裡；若是這樣，皮袋就裂開，酒漏出來，連皮袋也壞了。惟獨把新酒裝在新皮袋裡，兩樣就都保全了。

梭羅寫這段文字時想必正讀著聖經；他說：除了像蛻變的蝴蝶一樣換了個人，否則是沒有必要換新衣的；若只是為了包裝而換衣服，那如同掛著綠色的旗子航向對岸，最後無可避免的被自己放棄，也被別人放棄。

法句經有：不吐毒態，欲心馳騁，未能自調，不應法衣；能吐毒態，戒意安靜，降心已調，此應法衣。或者如 Acharya Buddharakkhita 的英譯：

Whoever being depraved, devoid of self-control and truthfulness, should don the monk's yellow robe, he surely is not worthy of the robe.

But whoever is purged of depravity, well-established in virtues and filled with self-control and truthfulness, he indeed is worthy of the yellow robe.

一個真正解脫了的人，即便身不著袈裟，也會比欲心馳騁的出家人更為人所重；或者不為人所重，但春服既成，景物斯和，偶影獨游，亦欣慨交心。正如陶潛的《時運》一詩：

邁邁時運，穆穆良朝。襲我春服，薄言東郊。

山滌餘靄，宇曖微霄。有風自南，翼彼新苗。

想起小時候過年時穿新衣服的感覺，不正像蝴蝶破繭而出嗎？

台客宅男敗犬

Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this — Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.

我們這個地方的多樣性是朝著梭羅的思考在走的 -- 除了政治人物和老人家以外；只是步調稍嫌慢了一點。政論節目是銀髮族的最愛，這是有民調根據的；所以那些在電視上評論政治的名嘴才是名符其實的啃老族。梭羅所熟識的人認為如果穿著有補丁的褲子在街上走被看到，那麼一輩子就毀了。我們現在不會這樣了；雖然不是每個人都敢於自稱是台客宅男敗犬，但大部份的人並不怕被歸類於哪一族，有些人還自詡為某一族類代表。什麼時後從中國來的住民也能像台客原住民那樣，自豪於自己的根源，而不因自身是少數族類而自妄呢？既然台灣已是一個國家，那應該是沒有省這個行政區域的，但台派的老人家總是把外省人掛在嘴上罵個不停，一點不覺得有什麼矛盾的地方；他們老糊塗不是很明顯嗎？但是他們總是喜歡說我們已經老了，這麼上街頭拼是為了下一代，可是年輕人都還不曉得覺醒。如果是這樣，他們的"下一代"怎麼感受不到，不陪著他們一起出來，讓"家中的寶"這麼日曬雨淋？可是當要這些老人家少用一個塑膠袋，為後代的人想一想，他們卻死也不肯！從來沒想到他們下一代最大的問題正是他們自己。