When you recognize the true mind, and you can preserve the true mind, and you reach the level where you do not waver, this is nirvana. When you do not clearly understand the true mind, and you are confused about the here and now, and confused about the external world, and always worried about external things, this is samsara.
何为不明白？看不清世间的真相，认假成真，执幻为实，被忽生忽灭的现象所迷惑、所误导，这就是不明白。因为不明白，所以会产生欲望；因为有欲望，所以会产生执著；因为执著，所以会产生烦恼。
What does it mean not to clearly understand? It means being unable to clearly see the true characteristic, to accept the false as true, to cling to the illusory as real, to be deluded and confused and led astray by apparent forms which suddenly appear and suddenly disappear – this is not clearly understanding. Because we do not clearly understand, we produce desires; because we have desires, we produce clingings and attachments; because we have clingings and attachments, we produce afflictions.
我们无论做什么，无论选择什么样的生活方式，都是为了得到快乐、安宁、坦然与自在，但这些都是心的感觉。即使楼房、小车、钞票等东西能让我们过得非常舒服，还能得到一些虚荣上的满足，但是它们不可能让我们得到永恒的快乐。为什么？因为它们本身不会永恒。虚荣的满足是一种很快就会消失的情绪。过得舒不舒服，也要看我们对生活有啥要求，而且楼房、小车、钞票等所有的一切都在不断变化着：楼房会变旧，而且使用期只有七十年，说不定什么时候就会遭到拆迁，更别提一场地震、水灾就能将它化为乌有；小车的寿命更短；钞票的寿命虽然相对长一些，也不会折旧，但用它买来的一切都有一定的使用寿命，何况货币价值也在不断变化。所以说，物质是无常的，建立在物质条件上的许多快乐、舒适，更是无常的。然而，我们不愿意追求一种无条件的快乐、自在、坦然与安宁，反而把那些虚幻不实的东西当做人生的目标，以快乐与健康为代价，不顾一切地追求它们。这里面的矛盾，显然预示了我们必将承受错误选择所带来的痛苦与烦恼。
No matter what we do, no matter what manner of life we choose, it is all in order to attain happiness, peace, a sense of ease and independence, but these are all perceptions of the mind. Even if our apartments and cars and money and all the rest of it can let us live very comfortably, and enable us to attain the satisfactions of empty success, these things cannot enable us to attain lasting happiness. Why not? Because they themselves do not last forever. The satisfaction of empty glory is a feeling that very quickly dissolves away. Whether you live comfortably or not depends on what demands you have on life, and apartment buildings, cars, money and all such things are always changing. Apartment buildings can get old. The period they can be used is seventy years, and we cannot say for sure when they will be demolished, not to mention wiped out by an earthquake or flood. The useful life of car is even shorter. Though the lifetime of money is comparatively longer, and it will not depreciate, everything you can buy with is has a limited useful lifespan, and the value of currency is constantly changing. That’s why we say that material things are impermanent, and all kinds of happiness and comfort based on material conditions are even more impermanent. Despite this, we are not willing to seek unconditional happiness, independence, ease and peace. On the contrary, we take those empty, illusory, unreal things as the goal of human life, at the price of happiness and good health, and heedlessly pursue them. The contradiction in this indicates clearly that we will have to accept the sufferings and vexations which these mistaken choices bring us.
为什么我们会弄不清自己需要什么，认假成真地活着呢？因为我们对生命、对世界都有太多的误解。如果你仔细观察生活中的每一个细节，就会发现许多矛盾都是由误解引起的，连最亲近的人，包括父母和伴侣之间，都会因误解而产生隔阂，甚至老死不相往来。可见，误解确实非常可怕。
Why can’t we be clear about what we need, why do we go on living mistaking the false for the true? It is because we have too many misunderstandings of life and the world. If you carefully observe every detail in life, then you discover that many contradictions are brought about by misunderstandings. Rifts produced by misunderstandings can come about even between the people we are closest to, including parents and companions, and may even get to the point where we have nothing more to do with them until they grow old and die. It is obvious that misunderstandings are really very much to be feared.
误解是什么？就是妄念。我们的妄心是从什么地方来的呢？妄心由根、境、识三者因缘和合而成。我们的身体有六根，眼睛是眼根，耳朵叫耳根，鼻子叫鼻根，舌头叫舌根，身体叫身根，意叫意根。有了这六根，就会生出六识，进而生出色、声、香、味、触、法。那妄心，就是你的六根六识和外部世界因缘和合而生的。你的眼睛看到一个女孩子漂亮，就生起了妄心，想去跟她认识，这就是眼根眼识和外部环境发生作用的结果。
What are misunderstandings? They are false thoughts. Where then does our false mind come from? False mind is formed by the coming together of the three causal conditions: sense faculties, sense objects, and consciousness. Our bodies have six sense faculties: [in Buddhist terms,] the eyes are the sense faculty of the eyes, the ears are the sense faculty of the ears, the nose is the sense faculty of the nose, the tongue is the sense faculty of the tongue, the body is the sense faculty of the body, the conceptual mind is the sense faculty of the conceptual mind. Given these six sense faculties, six kinds of consciousness are produced, and then this gives rise to the six sense objects: form, sound, scent, flavor, touch, conceptualized things. The false mind is something that is produced by the coming together of the causal conditions of your six sense faculties and six sense consciousnesses with the external world. When your eyes see that a woman is beautiful, it gives rise to false mind, and you want to get to know her. This is the result of the functioning produced by the sense faculty of the eyes, and the visual consciousness, and the external environment.
我们中的绝大部分人都没觉醒，没有认知真心，因此总是把因缘聚合产生的现象，当成永恒的真实存在，甚至糊里糊涂、一厢情愿地把自己对事物的解读与猜想当成事实的全部，误解由此而生，最后往往伤害自己又伤害他人。
The great majority among us have had no awakening yet, and have not recognized the true mind. Because of this these people always take the apparent forms produced by the coming together of causal conditions as things that really exist and will last forever. They are in a fog, caught in their own wishful thinking, and they take their own interpretations and suppositions about things as the whole of reality, and their misunderstandings arise from this. In the end they often hurt themselves and hurt other people too.
当我们贪恋色、声、香、味、触、法所带来的虚幻感觉之时，就会产生各种妄念与贪欲。当贪欲得到满足的时候，我们会沉浸在那种虚幻易逝的快感中不能自拔，误以为这种感觉便是幸福。可惜欲壑难填，追求欲望的人往往像喝海水解渴的人一样，越喝越渴。比如，对一个没见过玩具的孩子来说，一块小石子就能让他非常快乐，但是当他发现世界上原来有许多新奇有趣的玩具且自己却不能拥有的时候，他就失去了那份简单的快乐。而且，即便他拥有了一个玩具，很快又会惦记起那些自己还未拥有的玩具。我们中的绝大部分人也是这样。我们看不清世界的真相，失去对善的向往，多近诸恶，久久入迷，贪恋世间万象，心就被花花世界牵着到处乱跑。我们眼观妙色，耳听美声，舌尝美味，鼻嗅各种香气，身体贪恋各种美妙的触觉，比如恋人间的亲吻与拥抱等等，于是随着那些多变的现象，不住地胡思乱想，渐渐离真心、真相越来越远。越是被花花世界所迷惑，我们就越是贪恋世俗那不会永恒的一切；越是贪越是贪恋世上一切，我们就越是看不清世界的真相。所谓“由迷而贪，因贪更迷”，我们渐渐难以自拔，于是就陷于这个恶性循环当中，痛苦轮回。
When we have the empty illusory perceptions brought on by greedy cravings for forms, sounds, scents, flavors, touches, conceptualized things, this will produce various kinds of false thoughts and greedy desires. When our greedy desires get satisfied, we sink into that kind of empty, illusory, evanescent happiness and cannot pull ourselves out of it, and we mistake this feeling for good fortune. Unfortunately, desires are insatiable, and people who pursue desires often end up like people drinking salt water to relieve their thirst: the more they drink, the thirstier they get. For example, for a child who has never seen a toy, a little stone can make him very happy. But when he discovers that there are actually so many new and fascinating toys in the world, but he cannot have them, then he loses that simple happiness. What’s more, even if he has one toy, soon he will be thinking about those toys he does not have yet. The great majority of us are also this way. We cannot see clearly the true characteristic of the world, and we lose our yearning for good, and we often enter into evil ways, and after a time we become deluded, and we crave the myriad worldly forms, and our minds are dragged in by the colorful world, and we are running around everywhere in confusion. Our eyes see wondrous forms, our ears hear beautiful sounds, our tongues taste delicious flavors, our noses smell all kinds of fragrances, our bodies crave all kinds of beautiful wondrous touches, like the intimate kisses and embraces between lovers, and so on. From then on, following these always changing apparent forms, our thoughts in constant confusion, we gradually get farther and farther away from the true mind and the true characteristic, and more and more deluded and confused by the colorful world. Then the more we crave everything in the conventional world which cannot last, the more we crave everything in the world, the more we are unable to see clearly the true characteristic of the world. As it is said, “From delusion comes craving, and based on craving, more delusion.” We gradually become unable to extract ourselves from this, and so we fall into this evil cycle, revolving in pain and suffering.
更可怕的是，一旦我们进入了这样的恶性循环，不反思自己的行为，不追求精神上的进步，不辨是非，仅仅听从欲望的声音，不断以各种借口放纵自己的贪欲与嗔恨，就会做出许多罪恶的行为。比如，你觉得自己很爱一个人，但有一天她却要与你分手，你失去了所有爱的感觉，于是开始恨她，恨她的抛弃，恨她的改变，甚至忘记她曾经的付出，忘记你曾说过自己有多么爱她、多么希望她能幸福。你为自己编织着各种理由，包括她的行为有多么可恶、你有多么受伤、她违背了曾经的诺言等等，然后你觉得自己可以合理地恨她，于是你用恶毒、刻薄的话去伤害她、恐吓她，甚至真的去报复她。这是爱吗？这仅仅是贪欲得不到满足时产生的恨。它也是一种虚幻无常的东西，但人们却总是在这些幻象的操纵下，做出一些会令良心不安的事情。良心是什么？良心就是你的真心，是知道你因执幻为实而做出许多愚痴行为的那种自觉。当你认知真心，并能保任真心，达到不动不摇的时候，就是涅槃；当你不明白真心，迷乱于当下，迷乱于外部世界，时时牵挂外物的时候，就是轮回。世界上的很多悲剧，例如谋杀、抢劫、贪淫等等，都因为人们的无知与对无知的放纵。所以说，六道轮回之说，对一些人来说，确实存在。因为解脱的本质是心的明白，当你的心限于愚昧时，你是无法解脱的。
Even more to be feared is that once we enter into this kind of evil cycle, we do not reflect on our own behavior, and we do not seek to make spiritual progress, and we do not distinguish right from wrong, and we only obey the voice of desire. We constantly use various pretexts to excuse our greed and anger, and we do many evil deeds. For example, you feel that you love someone very much, but one day she wants to break up with you, and you lose all feeling of love, and then begin to hate her: you hate her abandoning you, you hate her changing, and you even forget what she paid, and forget that you told her how much you loved her, and how much you hoped she would enjoy good fortune. You fabricate all kinds of rationalizations for yourself, including how detestable her behavior was, and how much your were hurt, and how she went back on what she had promised you, and so on. So then you feel you are justified in hating her, and so you hurt her and frighten her with loathsome bitter words, and you may even try to take revenge on her. Is this love? This is just hatred produced by desires not getting satisfied. It is something empty and illusory and impermanent, but when people are always under the control of these illusions, they do things that make their consciences uneasy. What is the conscience? The conscience is your true mind, it the awareness that knows you have taken many stupid actions because you cling to the illusory as real. When you recognize the true mind, and you can preserve the true mind, and you reach the level where you do not waver, this is nirvana. When you do not clearly understand the true mind, and you are confused about the here and now, and confused about the external world, and always worried about external things, this is samsara. So many tragedies in the world, like murder, robbery, lewd behavior, and so on, are all because of people’s ignorance and their indulgence in ignorance. Thus we say that the teaching of samsara, the cycle of revolving in the six planes of existence, really exists for most people. Because the basic substance of liberation is the mind’s clear understanding, when your mind is limited to ignorance, there is no way for you to be liberated.
