大部分人都习惯于忘记“变化”的存在，总是不能发现，整个世界都像梦境一样变化多端。我们总以为这些多变的景致会是永恒，才会为得到而沾沾自喜，为失去而充满忧伤，为未知而惴惴不安。当我们明白一切都犹如梦幻，还会有这么多的在乎吗？
Most people are used to forgetting about the existence of “change.” They can never discover that the whole world is like a dream, full of change. We always think that this scene that changes so often is permanent, and so when we get things, we are delighted, and when we lose things, we are full of sorrow, and when we face the unknown, we are fraught with anxieties. When we understand clearly that everything is like a dream or an illusion, will we still have all these cares?
生命像是一班无始无终的列车，你记不得自己什么时候上车，你只知道自己穿着什么样的衣服，哪些人跟你聊过天，哪些人与你擦肩而过。你知道沿途有过一些什么样的故事，但你难免忘却。突然，某个时刻你累了，于是，死亡出现了。仅仅一个刹那，一切好像又从头开始了。不过你不记得这是新的开始，你完全忘记曾经有过的另一段旅途，曾经穿过的另一件衣服，曾经遇到、记得、遗忘过的另一些人，曾经遭遇过、忘却过的另一些事，你只当这就是唯一的开始。
Life is like a train with no beginning and no end. You can’t remember when you go on the train, and all you know is that you are wearing some kind of clothes, and that some people are chatting with you, and some people are rubbing shoulders with you as they pass by. You know that you have gone through some kind of story on the way, but is it hard to keep from forgetting it. Suddenly, at a certain time you are tired out, and then death appears. In just an instant, everything seems to start all over again from the beginning. But you do not recall that this is a new beginning. You completely forget the other road you passed along before, the other clothes you wore before, the other people you met, you remembered, you forgot, the other events you had encountered and forgotten. You just take this as the one and only beginning.
这是佛家观点中的生死轮回，它是活在艺术中的美，真正的轮回却只有苦。但轮回真的存在吗？或许它只是一种意象，或许真的存在。可以肯定的是，我们每个人、每一天，都不断在经历着轮回：轻松快意的瞬间，是天人；仇恨愤怒的瞬间，是阿修罗；愚昧无知的瞬间，是畜生；痛苦不堪的瞬间，是地狱；充满欲望的瞬间，是饿鬼；欲望与良知苦苦纠缠，便是人。
This is the cycle of birth and death from the Buddhist point of view. It lives in the beauty in art, but real cycling just has pain. But does cycling really exist? Perhaps it is only an image, perhaps it really exists. What we can say for sure is that every one of us is continuously experiencing the cycle every day. In moments of relaxation and happiness, we are heavenly beings. In moments of hatred and anger, we are asuras, jealous spirits. In moments of stupidity and ignorance, we are animals. In moments of unbearable pain, we are in hell. In moments when we are full of desires and hopes, we are hungry ghosts. When we are tangled up in the travail of desire and conscience, we are human beings.
导致这情绪轮回的原因，也是“因缘”吗？可以这么说，但它更缘于我们的坏记性。大部分人都习惯于忘记“变化”的存在，总是不能发现，整个世界都像梦境一样变化多端。我们总以为这些多变的景致会是永恒，才会为得到而沾沾自喜，为失去而充满忧伤，为未知而惴惴不安。当我们明白一切都犹如梦幻，还会有这么多的在乎吗？
Is the basic cause that gives rise to this emotional cycling “causes and conditions”? We can talk this way, but it is more tied to our bad memory. Most people are accustomed to forgetting about the existence of “change.” They can never discover that the whole world is like a dream, full of change. We always think that this scene that changes so often is permanent, and so when we get things, we are delighted, and when we lose things, we are full of sorrow, and when we face the unknown, we are fraught with anxieties. When we understand clearly that everything is like a dream or an illusion, will we still have all these cares?
闭上眼睛，回忆过往的许多梦境，想象自己还在梦中：那些美妙或可怖或凄婉或荒谬的梦们，难道不像电影那样让你回味无穷吗？但是，你为何不贪恋梦的美妙，为何不为梦的凄婉而忧伤，为何不为梦的可怖而惶恐不已？因为你明白，梦中的得失，并不是真实的存在。假如你能进一步明白，现实也是一场以假乱真的梦，你就能活得非常自在。
You close your eyes and recall many dreams from the past and imagine you are still in the dreams: those beautiful or frightening or sadly moving or absurd dreams. Isn’t this like a movie that lets you savor it again and again? But why don’t you crave the beauty of dreams, why are you saddened by the moving sadness of dreams, why aren’t you frightened by the fearfulness of dreams? Because you clearly understand that what is gained and lost in dreams does not really exist. If you can take a step further and clearly understand that apparent reality is also a dream that mistakes the false for the real, then you will be able to live life very independently.
我曾经修炼过一种“梦观成就法”，它非常有趣且有效。修炼后，你会慢慢地掌握梦境的控制权。控制梦境的感觉非常美妙，因为你既是主角又是演员，既是参与者又是旁观者，你会因此体验到主宰心灵的快乐。当你体验过这种快乐的时候，就会发现，外部世界带来的所有快感，都比不上心灵的自主与自由。
I have cultivated “the method of achieving enlightenment by observing everything as a dream.” This method is very interesting and effective. After cultivating it, you will slowly take hold of the power to control dreams. The feeling of controlling your dreams is very beautiful because you are both the protagonist and the actor; since you are both a participant and a spectator, you will thereby experience the happiness of controlling the mind and spirit. When you have experienced this kind of happiness, then you will discover that all the happy feelings brought to you by the external world cannot compare with the independence and freedom of the mind and spirit.
举个例子，在梦里，你也许会遇见一个自己为之动心的人，并且毫无保留地奉上你的爱与真诚，因为你明知这是一场梦，无论失去还是得到都只是虚幻的存在，跟电影没有任何区别，你只管全心全意地饰演那主角，不必在乎恋情的结果。这样一来，你就会尽情享受恋爱的过程，微笑和眼泪都成了同一种诗意与浪漫；在梦里，你也许会遇见一只可怕的猛兽，它的牙缝里还塞着一些断手残肢，但是胆小的你竟不怕它，因为你知道，在梦里，生死都是假象，你一边逃跑，一边寻找反击的武器和机会，你捡到一支锋利的矛，然后在它向你咬来的那个瞬间，准确而迅速地用矛刺穿它的头颅，你成功地玩了一把心跳……
Let’s take an example. In a dream, you might encounter a person you are moved by, and who unreservedly honors your love and sincerity. Because you clearly know that this is a dream, no matter whether you lose or you gain, it all exists as an empty illusion, no different from a movie. All you can do is wholeheartedly play the role, and you do not have to worry about the results of your love. This way you can wholeheartedly enjoy the process of love, and the smiles and tears all become the same kind of poetic feeling and romance. In the dream, you may meet a terrifying wild beast whose fangs bite off your hand. You might be timid, but ultimately you are not afraid of the beast, because you know that in a dream, life and death are just false appearances. You may run away, or you may look for a weapon and an opportunity to counterattack. You pick up a sharp spear, and then the instant the beast goes to snap at you, you accurately and quickly pierce his skull with the spear, and your heart beats with a sense of success….
不计较结果，这就是梦境的好处。或许在被绝大多数人当做现实的这场梦里，我们不会遇上猛兽，也不会飞上天空，但我们绝对可以像在梦里那样，把得失看得很淡。如何看淡？顺因缘，不将闲事挂心头，也就是放下一切。
Not calculating the results – this is the advantage of dreams. Maybe in this dream that most people consider real, we will not meet wild beasts, and we will not fly into the sky, but we definitely can act as if we are in a dream, and look upon gain and loss as unimportant. How can we look upon them as unimportant? By following along with causal conditions, and not getting hung up on things that are not important – this is letting go of everything.
有的男女恋人之间一听到对方说“放下一切”，就觉得非常可怕。因为他们衡量对方是否重视自己的标准，往往是看对方会不会因自己产生剧烈的情绪波动。这对吗？当然不对，会因为你而产生一种强烈的情绪波动，这仅仅说明你能够激起他的某种欲望，比如情欲、占有欲、控制欲等等。真正的爱情是更加博大的。如果一个人真的爱你，他就会像对待自己的生命一样尊重和珍惜你，为了让你幸福、快乐，他可以忽略自己的感受，甚至奉献自己。真正的爱，是一种无我，它与宗教精神是非常相似的。
When some men and women are in love, as soon as they hear their partner speak of “letting go of everything,” they feel very frightened. This is because they are assessing things by the standard of whether or not their partner values them, and they often look at whether their partner is generating strong emotions toward them. Isn’t this right? Actually, it is not right. Whether they are generating strong emotions toward you just shows that you can arouse their desires, like emotional desire, like possessive desire, like the desire to control, and so on. Genuine love is something grander. If a person genuinely loves you, that person will honor you and value you as he or she would honor and value his or her own life. The person will ignore his or her own feelings, and even sacrifice himself or herself, for the sake of making you blessed and happy. Genuine love is a kind of selflessness: it is very similar to the religious spirit.
可惜，有的人总是执著于男女间的一种好感，总是想千方百计地留住它。有的人在不能占有倾慕对象的时候，不惜将其毁掉，也不愿让别人拥有她。比如，一个学生曾经告诉我，他们单位的一个人喜欢上同单位的一个女孩，但表白之后遭到了拒绝，于是有一天他强奸了那个女孩，还把她杀害了，埋尸于大楼顶层。那个学生问我，这是爱吗？我告诉她，这绝对不是爱！世界上绝对没有一种爱情，会让人们去伤害自己所爱的人。这种所谓的“爱”，只是一种看起来很像爱情的欲望。好多人都把情欲当成了爱情，所以这世上才出现了好多以“爱”为名的凶手。正是因为好多人在能够相爱的时候不懂爱情，明白爱情的时候往往失去了爱的机会，所以，一些人在看破红尘之后，才会将建立在某个人身上的爱情，转化为一种以众生为对象的大爱，一种与爱情非常相似的宗教精神。
Unfortunately, some people always cling to a good feeling between a man and a woman and are constantly scheming to hold onto it. Some people, when they cannot possess and adore their partners, do not hesitate to destroy them, and are unwilling to let someone else possess them. For example, a student once told me that someone in her class liked a girl in the same class, but after revealing his feelings to her and being rejected, one day he assaulted that girl, and killed her, and buried her corpse on the top floor of a high-rise building. The student who told me the story asked, was this love? I told her, this is absolutely not love! There is absolutely no kind of love in the world that would let people harm the people whom they love. This kind of so-called “love” is just a kind of desire that at first glance resembles the emotion of love. Many people take emotional desire like love, and that is why so many murderers appear in the world acting in the name of “love.” This is because many people when they can love, do not understand love, and when they are finally able to understand love, they have often lost the opportunity for love. This is why it is that, only after seeing through the red dust of the sensory world, can some people take the love which they have built on a certain person and transform it into a great love that takes all living beings as its object, a kind of religious spirit that is very similar to love.
诸如此类的误解，在人生中还有好多，所以佛家认为，人类之所以痛苦，归根结底，还是因为愚痴。因为愚痴，所以认假成真，执幻为实。把明明虚幻无常的东西看得非常实在，我们就会在它消亡时感到痛苦。这就像你明明不可能抓住掌心里的水，却不肯面对这一点，反而一直纠结于握拳的时间与方式，那又有什么真正的意义？当你明白，连生命都是一个巨大的幻觉时，对一切都会变得没那么在乎。
There are many misunderstandings like this in human life. This is why Buddhists think that the reason why humans suffer if we trace it back to its root, is because of ignorance. Because they are ignorant, they mistake the false for the true and cling to illusion as reality. We take things that are clearly empty and illusory and impermanent and view them as very real, and then when they dissolve away and perish, we feel pain and suffering. This is like clearly knowing in your mind that you cannot hold onto water, but being unwilling to face this, and instead always being tangled up spending time thinking of ways for holding onto it. What real meaning is there in that? When you clearly understand, then even life is all a great illusion, and you will change over to not caring so much about everything.
我们认为，生是生命的开始，死是生命的终结，但这并不是生命的真相。因缘是不断流转的，生命也是不断流转的。你一定见过孩子们在沙滩上砌出来的小城堡，它有固定不变的自性吗？它是沙，是城堡，还是两样都是，抑或两样都不是？实际上，它只是一些元素聚合而成的一种现象，当旧因缘消散，新的因缘加入——比如海风和大浪的侵蚀——它就会变成另外一种东西，它没有不变的自性。人类也是如此，世界上所有的现象都是如此，包括生与死。生和死，意味着状态的切换，意味着特征更加明显、更容易被肉眼和意识所捕捉的改变。改变，并不仅仅发生在生与死的瞬间，就像楼房会折旧一样，人也不断在衰老着，还有很多更细微的改变每时每刻都在发生，比如细胞的新陈代谢与想法的日新月异等等。
We think that birth is the beginning of life, and death is the end of life, but this is not the true characteristic of life. Causal conditions are constantly flowing along and transforming, and life to is constantly flowing along and transforming. You have surely seen children at the beach building sandcastles – do they have a solid immutable inherent nature? They are sand, they are castles – are they both that, or are they both not that? In reality, a sandcastle is an apparent form made by its elements coming together, and when the causal conditions dissolve, and new causal conditions are added – like the ocean wind and the encroachment of waves – it then changes into something else, it does not have an unchanging inherent nature. Humans are like this too; all apparent phenomena in the world are all like this, including birth and death. Birth and death imply switching states, they imply that the distinction is even clearer, that the change is even easier for the physical eye and the consciousness to grasp. The change does not only take place at the instant of birth or death. It is like an apartment building depreciating: people are constantly in the process of aging. There are many even more subtle changes going on all the time, like cellular replacement and the constant change of thinking patterns, and so on.
明白了这一点，你就会明白，生命其实只是一个巨大的梦境。
When you have understood this point, then you will understand that in fact, life is just a giant dream.
