最甜的生活

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

梭羅說：『當你為貧窮所困，那也只是被困在最有意義也最富生機的經驗之中，你被迫面對的是能產生最多的糖和最多營養的材料。那一種生活，最是刻骨的甜。』

不要為了不夠潮而心中不安，別因為沒有買到最新的 iPad 而焦慮，不用急著去結交新的朋友或買新的名牌包。翻翻舊的東西，找找老朋友。他們沒有變，是我們變；無常的是自己，而非世事。賣掉你的衣服，保留你的思想！只要能夠思考，不論身陷何等困境，我一樣可以活得安適自在。子曰：「三軍可奪帥也，匹夫不可奪志也。」多餘的錢財只能用來買多餘的東西；靈魂需要的東西，用不著錢。

『不論你的生活何等低卑，都要去面對它，去安生；不要躲避，不要用難聽的名字咒罵它。』《經集．義品》中佛陀告誡修行的比丘們，既然已經選擇了出世的生活，要如何超越恐懼，如何消滅心中的黑暗勢力？

我得何食何處食，今實苦臥何處臥；
此等諸尋導悲泣，無家有學應調伏。

食物衣服有時得，少許滿足應知量；
護持此等村慎行，雖受污辱無麤語。

He should conquer these four thoughts of lament: 'What will I eat, or where will I eat. How badly I slept. Tonight where will I sleep?' These lamenting thoughts he should subdue — one under training, wandering without home.

Receiving food & cloth at appropriate times, he should have a sense of enough for the sake of contentment. Guarded in regard to these things going restrained into a village, even when harassed he shouldn't say a harsh word.