1. Love and Hate In
the dark and cramped stone room, Adesso met the unknown girl and asked himself: Faith makes us love others, but is there a conflict between fraternity for others and love for a special person? While faith teaches us to love everyone, can it allow us to pour a little more love into one particular person than others? If such a little more pains us, then should we hold on to such a belief? He asked Reverend William this question, and there was still no definite answer. Similarly, Tsangyang Gyatso once had the same doubt: the world is safe and secure, and it is not the same as the Tathagata and the Lord. This is probably not a question that can be answered by a certain religion, because as long as people exist, there will be differences. On the one hand, people need to obtain a sense of belonging and identity through "deference", thereby overcoming the identity crisis. ), on the other hand, it is precisely because of the existence of "difference" that people have never been able to give equal fraternity to all people, and this has an eternal contradiction.
In the medieval monastery, love was just a small flame, but hatred and terror pervaded more: the responsibility of the tortured to the torturer, the fear of those who violated the taboo but dared not admit it, and the fear of the unknown to everyone around him. Personal jealousy, admiration and envy for good things, to destructive desires, all come together into hatred. People have always been used to seeing hate as the opposite of love, but I prefer to see hate as the absence of love rather than the opposite. Because the opposite always exists or disappears at the same time, in other words, when hatred is eliminated, there is no love. But treating hatred as the lack of love can slowly inject love into the emotion and increase the proportion of love. When the proportion of love is much greater than hatred, hatred becomes negligible, so love is fulfilled and retained.
Love has no unit, no size. Love for a friend is no less than love for an enemy. But the wisdom needed to give love is different. A Tibetan monk who has been imprisoned for years as a "separatist" has escaped to Dharamsala, a center for Tibetans in exile. He told the Dalai Lama that his most horrific experience in prison was not being beaten, but that he nearly lost mercy for the vicious guards when he was beaten. To love the enemy out of pity for their ignorance and suffering is undoubtedly a great wisdom.
2. Good and evil
Pride, greed, rage, lust. In a small monastery, there are more than seven sins. The depth of one's desires means so many sins - homosexuality in the library, sex trafficking in the wine cellar, high-sounding indirect murder, full of crime and violence, making this remote monastery no different from the City of God. So who will bear the sins of everyone? In ancient Roman law, hitting the left cheek was allowed in many cases, such as between masters and slaves, but hitting the right cheek was prohibited. So another reading of what the Bible says is to let the "system" bear the collective evil. But isn't this system the violence of the majority? Violence only breeds violence. Well, that still doesn't solve the sin of the individual.
What is the dividing line between good and evil? Conflict and change, I thought. In astrology, Neptune represents beauty and goodness, Pluto represents destruction and evil, and Uranus represents change. Similarly, in Notre Dame de Paris, Esmeralda is the positive symbol of good, Archdeacon Frollo is the negative symbol of evil, and Quasimodo is the conflict between good and evil. However, conflict and change, there are too many uncertainties.
"After the May Fourth, China has mostly come through turmoil and change. I can't understand why China, which has always been based on the 'moderate way', in this history, people are always prone to restlessness and extremes. Why did millions of educated young students become Red Guards overnight, and where did Confucius go?"
Facing such questioning, I felt deeply ashamed and disturbed. How far can people indulge their sins? Can an animal that is cruel to the same kind be expected to be kind to other creatures that are not of the same kind? "Everything is forgiven in advance"?
No matter how difficult it is, it can revive the state, and it can also make people numb. The former is like the Jewish nation, and the latter is self-evident. The most unforgivable thing for every nation that has endured deep pain, trampling and humiliation is self-hypnosis. Like it or not, each of us is gradually becoming more and more similar to the world, calm and insensitive. Until one day, I vaguely felt that I might look like a paranoid psychopath, but everyone said it was just me becoming normal.
Cut the wound open, rinse it carefully, and wrap it up slowly. Although it hurts, at least it won't get infected.
3. The old dean of Faith and Madness
, Jojie, regarded laughter as a heresy, even to the point of hating all happiness. He said that laughter can eliminate fear, and without fear, there will be no faith. ——For him, belief and madness are only one step away, which is just his one-sided understanding and over-interpretation. There may be no difference between the firmest beliefs and the deepest fears. Because of his extreme fear that laughter will make people no longer need the gospel of God and the redemption of Christ, he makes his faith extremely stubborn and firm. This is even scarier than fundamentalists. Because, he regards his own cognition as an authority and his own interpretation of the Bible as a criterion, on behalf of God, he directly makes decisions for other people in the monastery, and hides drama and poetry in the library as forbidden books, prohibiting others from reading. This is the movement from faith to madness. The so-called one thought becomes a Buddha, one thought becomes a devil, and one foot away from the devil is a Buddha. Whether it is a Buddha or a demon, it is all in the mind of a human being.
Let's leave aside for the moment whether he really hates the books that make people laugh so much, and whether he himself derives pleasure from those books, and only analyzes his behavior. When it comes to "doing what you don't want", everyone knows that you should "don't do it to others." For example, parents think that something is beneficial, and they will do everything possible to get their children to learn. And get used to this compulsion in the name of love. In my opinion, the act of imposing one's will on others is madness, "ego". A person's personality begins with questioning, not submission to all authority. And we should have the right to know from the beginning of the question. Maybe some people will argue that although everyone has the right to know the truth, perhaps it is better not to know the truth than to know - so what? Either continue to cover up, or tell the world, but which one is better for people is still unknown. Whether it's good or not is a value judgment, you can't replace me, you can't make a judgment for me. So I have to hear different voices and judge for myself. If a person thinks that others will suffer when they know it, then he is too arrogant and regards himself as a god. So as a liberal, I will use the right to know to torture him: "Why do you make decisions for me?" As for those who "do what you want", you can say it to others, but you should also "don't do it to others." ”, which is not only a respect for the free will of others, but also an empathetic understanding. No one has the right to impose their personal preferences, inclinations and beliefs on others, whether in the name of God or not.
4. Science and religion
Chinese, or people without faith (including self-proclaimed atheists), always habitually equate religion with superstition, backwardness, and consider it the opposite of science. But how does this explain that many great Western scientists are also devout religious believers? I agree that religion should be the ultimate concern for human beings. Even in today's West, Christianity is no longer a simple matter of belief, it has become a culture that has penetrated into people's daily life and public life. In this sense, we cannot simply treat Christianity, or any other religion, directly as foolish superstition. Nor can we say that they are illiterate, because in fact their education, their level of scientific development, is much higher than ours.
"We have been taught this since childhood: Religion is a manifestation of ignorance and backwardness. With the increase of scientific knowledge, a person will become an atheist from a religious believer."
This truly reflects the majority of people in China today . misunderstanding and cult of science. In the West, many people just think that the world is unified by the spirit, and they think that the root of the world should be found from God. I think that religion and science are both ways to seek the truth of the universe, and the two complement each other, but the former appeals to the authority of revelation, while the latter appeals to human reason. Science and religion have the same goal, both can approach and ultimately reach the truth. The attitude I am more in favor of is that science and religion confirm each other, and I am skeptical but respectful when neither is mentioned or only one is involved. This also helps reduce conflicts caused by human limitations and differences in understanding.
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