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？