If you reach accord with a certain mystic power of the universe, you can enter into a whole new state of living, a state of independence of body and mind, without any concerns. So then, what is this certain mystic power of the universe? Is it the spirit of great goodness and great beauty? Is in great love? It is, but it is not only this.
渴望自由的我们，如何才能迎来智慧的觉醒呢？这需要与宇宙中的某种伟大精神“相应”。什么叫“相应”？相应，就是“心心相印”。唐代诗人李商隐的《无题》，就是“心心相印”最灵动的注脚：“身无彩凤双飞翼，心有灵犀一点通。”多么美的诗，它道出了爱情里面最难以言喻但又最为美妙的一种东西。它是一种神秘，也是一种来自灵魂深处那说不清道不明的共振。
How can we who yearn for freedom welcome the awakening of wisdom? This requires that we “reach accord” with a certain great spirit of the universe. What does it mean, to “reach accord”? Reaching accord is “mind in accord with mind.” The untitled verse by the Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin gives the most spiritually alive footnote to the phrase “mind in accord with mind.”
Body without colored wind, a pair of flying wings
Mind with a spirit unicorn instantly penetrating through
What a beautiful poem. It expresses what, in love, is hardest to describe in words, and is also something beautiful and wondrous. It is a kind of spiritual mystery, and it is also a kind of indescribable, unexplainable resonance that comes from the depths of the soul.
当两个相爱的灵魂达到了共振，一个眼神就能连接彼此，于是万籁俱寂了，整个世界都化为虚设，茫茫宇宙间只剩下两颗相连的心，你仿佛能听到对方的呼吸、心跳、每个细微的念头。她内心的声音，也在你的内心响起，你的心中因灵魂的契合而感到轻松、和谐，充满了难以言喻的喜悦。与此同时，在你的眼中，这个道具般的世界也不再是死物，它有了脉搏，它的身体发肤——土地、植物、山峦、湖泊，一切的一切——都变成了真正的活物，你能听见它们的轻声笑语，能看见它们的喜悦与静默，能感受到它们的哀伤与失落。你不再感到空虚无聊，因为你与你的爱在内心深处完全相融了，你中有她，她中有你，你即是她，她即是你，时间与空间不再成为问题，灵魂的电波会让你们穿越时空、感受到彼此。这种灵魂的水乳交融，甚至比肢体的接触更加令人神往。你甚至觉得，你的爱人，是你联通宇宙之心的一把钥匙。你通过与她的灵魂共振，体验到爱情最美丽的部分，你觉得自己愿意奉献一切——包括你的生命——来让她感到幸福与快乐，你感到这份爱的高尚，让你甚至爱上了整个世界，你感受到一种前所未有的“圆融”。这就是达到了“相应”的爱情。
When two souls that love each other reach resonance, one moment of eye contact can connect the two of them, and then all is quiet, and the whole world becomes something empty that exists in name only, and all that is left in the boundless universe are the two joined minds. It is as if you can hear your partner’s breathing, her heartbeat, and every subtle thought. The sound of her inner mind resonates in your inner mind, and because of the merging of spirits, in your mind you feel relaxed and in harmony, and filled with an indescribable joy. At the same time, in your eyes, this world that has been like a stage set is no longer something lifeless, it has a pulse, and its body is growing – the earth, the plants, the mountains, the lakes, everything has all become alive. You can hear the quiet voices and laughter of all things, you can see their joy and their silence, you can feel their grief and their losses. You will no longer feel empty and bored, because you and your love have completely merged in a place deep within your inner mind. She is there in you, and you are there in her. You are her, and she is you. Time and space no longer become a problem, and the electric current of the soul lets the two of you penetrate through time and space, and feel each other. This complete harmony of souls, this mixing like water and milk, sends people into rapture even more than physical contact. You will even feel that your lover is the key that links you to the mind of the universe. Through you spiritual resonance with her, you experience the most beautiful part of love, and you will feel that you are willing to give everything, including your life, to let her feel good fortune and happiness. You will feel that the grandeur of this love will even let you love the whole world, and you will feel a “perfect fusion” such as you have never had before. This is arriving at the love of “reaching accord.”
这样的一份爱情，将实现人类对真爱的最高渴望，它比肉体欲望的满足——例如占有欲、控制欲等等——更能使人感到快乐。因为欲望是无穷无尽的，求之不得将带来锥心的痛楚，拥有的同时，你又会害怕失去。世俗之爱，难免会给人带来痛苦。你误以为满足欲望比灵魂的契合更加重要，因此难以定格，甚至难以达到爱的“相应”。你不得不为那相思而烦恼，为使“爱情”达到永恒而不择手段，你不知道，肉体终将腐坏，建筑在肉体之上的一切，又如何能够永恒？你因期待与现实之间的落差而感到失望，欲望的满足带给你的虚荣，也像叶子上的露珠一样，片刻就蒸发得一干二净。有时，你的心里只剩一片茫然，空荡荡的，非常寂寞，你叩问这个世界，为何爱情带来甜蜜，又会带来痛苦？难道这才是爱的真谛？其实你不该叩问世界，你该问的是你的心灵：你所体验过的天堂般的觉受，难道不是来自一种彻彻底底的契合？是这种契合，让你觉得她就是你寻觅了一生的那个人，她是你的知己，也是你灵魂的互补。她激活了你的勇气、你的坚定、你对生命的所有激情，你甚至觉得，因为她，你才变成了一个完完整整的人，而非一具空虚的躯体，更不是一只仅仅知道觅食、寻欢的动物，她令你有了更高的向往，使你明白了生命的真谛。
This kind of love will realize the highest aspirations of the human race for true love. It can make people feel happiness even more than the satisfactions of physical desire, like the desire to possess, the desire to control, and so on. Because desire is endless, seeking what you desire and not getting it brings a pain that bores into the mind, and when you have what you desire, you will be afraid of losing it. Worldly love unavoidably brings people suffering. When you mistakenly think that satisfying desires is more important than spiritual accord, then because of this it will be impossible to achieve stability, and even impossible to reach the “accord” of love. You will inevitably be afflicted by being lovesick, and to make this kind of “love” last forever, you will stop at nothing. Don’t you know that the physical body ultimately decays, so how can anything based on the physical body last forever? You will feel hopeless because of the gap between expectations and current reality. Satisfying desires will bring you empty glory, like dewdrops on the leaves, which will evaporate totally in an instant. Sometimes all that is left in your mind is a sense of loss and emptiness, and you feel very lonely. You ask the world how can love bring such sweetness, and also bring such suffering? Can it be that this is the truth of love? In reality, you should not ask the world about this – what you should ask about it is your own mind and spirit. Can it be that the heavenly feelings you experienced did not come from a complete merging? This kind of merging enables you to feel that she is the person you have been looking for your whole life, that she is the one who knows you, that she is your soulmate. She brought to life your courage, your resolve, all your positive feelings toward life. You may even feel that it was only because of her that you became a complete person, and not just an empty body, an animal that only knows how to find food and seek pleasure. She enabled you to have higher yearnings, and made you understand the truth of life.
当你明白了上面的所有比喻，也就明白了灵魂契合的美妙，你也许会向往这种无穷无尽的诗意。这份诗意是一种忘记实用后的陶醉的情绪，它跟真正的信仰是非常相似的。在这种诗意里面，没有小我，没有个人得失，没有了一切对立与分别。当你不仅爱一个女人，还爱上了整个人类、所有生灵甚至整个宇宙的时候，你的爱就从一份世俗的真爱，升华为一种信仰、一种大爱。什么叫大爱？大爱就是一种无私奉献的态度，它与小爱不同的地方在于，大爱的对象是整个宇宙、所有众生，而非一个特定的女人、男人，或者跟自己有血缘关系的亲人。所有的信仰中都有一种大爱的东西，只不过大家都有各自不同的叫法。比如，佛家把大爱叫做“无缘大慈，同体大悲”，西方则更喜欢把大爱叫做“博爱”。
When you have clearly understood all the metaphors above, then you have clearly understood the beauty and wonder of souls merging, and you may yearn for this kind of endless, infinite poetic feeling. This poetic feeling is an enchanting feeling that comes after you have forgotten about mundane practical concerns. It is very similar to genuine faith. Within this poetic feeling, there is no petty self, and no individual gain and loss, and no more dualism and discriminating thought. When you love not just one woman, but you love the whole human race, and all living spirits, and even the whole cosmos, your love ascends from the level of conventional worldly love and becomes a kind of faith, a kind of great love. Why do we call it great love? Great love is an attitude of selfless service. Its difference from petty love lies in the fact that the object of great love is the whole universe, all living beings, and not only one particular woman or man, or kinfolk related to you by blood. All faiths have something like great love, though everyone has a different name for it. For example, in Buddhism they call great love “unconditional great compassion that shares the same essence with all beings.” In the West they prefer to call great love “universal love.”
有一个女孩子写过一首脍炙人口的小诗，内容是这样的：“你见，或者不见我/我就在那里/不悲不喜//你念，或者不念我/情就在那里/不来不去//你爱，或者不爱我/爱就在那里/不增不减//你跟，或者不跟我/我的手就在你手里/不舍不弃。”好多人都以为这是一首情诗，但事实上，它说的是生生世世陪伴着我们的那个真心，是众生本具的智慧光明。我的一个学生对它有过一个很好的形容，他说，这首诗表达的是一种佛家的浪漫主义情怀。确实是这样的。佛家并不像好多人认为的那样，冷水泡石头，我们所说的真心、本元心，也不是无情之物。虽然佛家认为，一切都是虚幻，不值得在乎，但是佛陀却牵挂所有的众生，这是一种比男女间的牵挂更加博大的东西，也是佛家非常伟大的一种精神——慈悲利众的精神。当一个男人深爱一个女人的时候，可以为她牺牲自己的生命；但是，对于诸佛菩萨来说，任何一个众生的苦难，都比自己的生命更加重要，所以，历史上才会有佛陀“割肉喂鹰”、“舍身饲虎”的感人故事。这难道不是一道比小爱更加美丽的风景吗？
There was a girl who wrote a little poem that won universal praise. Its content was like this:
Whether you see me or not
I am there
Not sad, not happy
Whether you think of me or not
The feeling is there
It doesn’t come and it doesn’t go
Whether you love me or not
Love is there
It doesn’t increase and it doesn’t decrease
Whether you are with me or not with me
My hand is in your hand
Not letting go
Many people think this is a sentimental poem, but in fact what it speaks of is that true mind that accompanies us from lifetime to lifetime, the light of inherent wisdom in sentient beings. One of my students had a very good description of it. He said that what this poem conveys is the feeling of a kind of Buddhist romanticism. It truly is that way. Buddhism is not like so many people think it is, cold and lifeless. The true mind we speak of, the inherent original mind, is not something heartless. Although Buddhism recognizes that everything is empty illusion, and not worth caring about, nevertheless Buddha was concerned for all living beings. This is something on a grander scale than the concernsmen and women have for each other; it is the very great spirit of Buddhism, the spirit of compassion that benefits living beings. When a man loves a woman deeply, he can sacrifice his life for her. But when it comes to the buddhas and bodhisattvas, they consider the suffering of any living being to be more important than their own lives. This is why there are stories in the histories of the Buddha “cutting off pieces of his own flesh to feed the eagles, and sacrificing his body to feed the tigers.” We cannot deny that this is a more beautiful vista than some petty love.
佛家智慧认为，假如你与宇宙间的某种神秘力量相应，就能进入一种全新的生命状态，一种身心自在、了无牵挂的状态。那么，什么是宇宙间的某种神秘力量呢？是大善大美的精神吗？是大爱吗？是，但不仅仅是。除了大爱，也就是慈悲，这种力量当中还包含了一种终极智慧。当慈悲与这种终极智慧相融合的时候，就形成了“道”。佛家的八万四千法门，都是为了让你与“道”相应。只有与道相应，你才能管好自己的心，让它到达该到的地方，这也是禅的本义。
Buddhist wisdom recognizes that if you are in accord with a certain mystic power of the universe, then you will be able to enter into a whole new state of living, a state where body and mind are independent, and there you have absolutely no worries. So then, what is that certain mystic power of the universe? Is it the spirit of great good and great beauty? Is it great love? It is, but it is not only this. Besides great love, that is, compassion, this spiritual power also contains an ultimate wisdom. When compassion merges with this ultimate wisdom, this forms “the Path.” The eighty-four thousand teaching methods of Buddhism are all to let you reach accord with “the Path.” Only when you reach accord with the Path will you be able to manage your own mind, and enable it to reach the place it must reach. This is also the fundamental meaning of meditation.
