來自善行和默想中心 - [基督宗教和佛教系列]
練習覺醒
(譯者：安多尼 神父)
理查神父認為基督徒默觀和佛教冥想分享共同目標的想法。兩者不再以頭腦為中心，而去深刻地體驗真理、博愛、和同理心。
佛陀這字的意思是「我醒著」。耶穌曾在不同的地方要我們保持清醒和覺醒（瑪廿四42；谷十三33-37；路廿一36）。但覺醒並不只是仔細去想或去意識。佛教徒談到空無一物的意識，我們不再去意識任何特別的事物。它是全然接受的覺醒，包括我們所有的情境、時刻、事件，不遺漏任何東西。那對我們來說並不是天生的。我們得努力去做的。所有的冥想和默觀教我們許多隔絕念頭的方式。有人甚至稱它為「心猿意馬」，因為它會不停地觀察，念頭接著念頭，感受接著感受，大部分都毫無意義。我們與它相處多年，將它視為理所當然。
像佛教這樣偉大的傳統告訴我們只要碰到真理、博愛、自由、無限、永恆、以及天主的時候，分門別類的思維實在毫無用處。分門別類想不通這些事情，也無法深刻。我們得學習不同的思維，我們基督徒稱它為默觀。默觀並不是遵守教條、熱心虔誠、和安安靜靜。它與個性內向無關。它不是去想，實在是不同的思維，我們稱為空無一物的覺醒。我們不關注任何特殊的意識／意識任何的特殊東西。
有點自相矛盾，空無的覺醒的途徑竟然是從一個東西，一個物件開始。我們甚至稱它為練習覺醒。我誠摯地邀請，鼓勵大家今天花點時間只關注在一個東西上。與其說用腦袋去關注，不如說是用感官去關注。觀察那件東西，它的質地、它的形狀、它的天賦、它的酬庸、它的顏色、它的反光，它的存在。關注它直到你的思維或自我停止戰鬥無止，並且停止說這類的話：「這很蠢。相當笨。這沒有意思。這沒有影響。」
如果我們真正地愛上它，不論是甚麼東西，它就成為通往一切的門徑。我們如何愛一件事物最後成為我們愛所有事物。我們並須找到我們看到、愛上、接受、原諒、和喜歡上一件東西的能力。如果我們不喜歡一隻蜥蜴和一片葉子，我們就不會喜歡上天主。我們如何看就是我們如何看。我們如何做任何事就是我們如何做每件事。
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
[Week Forty-Five: Christianity and Buddhism]
Practicing Awareness
Father Richard offers his understanding of how Christian contemplation and Buddhist meditation share a common goal. Both seek to de-center the thinking mind to allow a deeper experience of truth, love, and compassion to emerge.
The word Buddha means “I am awake.” Jesus told us in a number of places to stay awake and aware (Matthew 24:42; Mark 13:33–37; Luke 21:36). But awareness is not something that just means thinking about things carefully or being really conscious. The Buddhists speak of objectless consciousness, where we are not conscious of anything in particular. It is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby we take in all that the situation, the moment, the event offers, without eliminating anything. That really does not come naturally to us. We have to work at it! All forms of meditation and contemplation are teaching us some way to compartmentalize our thinking mind. Some have even called it the “monkey mind,” because it keeps jumping from observation to observation, thought after thought, feeling after feeling, most of which mean very little. We have lived with it for so many years that we take the monkey mind as normative.
What the great traditions, such as Buddhism, teach us is that the monkey mind really is rather useless when we get to things like truth, love, freedom, infinity, eternity, and God. The monkey mind can’t access such things and has no ability to take them in at any depth. What we have to do is learn a different mind, which we Christians call contemplation. Contemplation is not churchy, pious, or quiet. It has little to do with having an introverted personality. It really is a different mind—it’s not thinking, which is what we mean by calling it objectless awareness. We don’t focus on any particular object of consciousness.
Paradoxically, the path to get to objectless awareness is to start with just one thing, one object. We could even call it practicing awareness. Here is an invitation: I encourage you to take some time today to focus on one single object. Focus on it not so much with your mind, but with your senses. See it for what it is—its texture, its shape, its giftedness, its gratuity, its color, its reflection of light, its isness. Focus on this object until your mind or ego stops fighting the moment and stops saying something to this effect: “This is silly. This is stupid. This doesn’t mean anything. This doesn’t make a bit of difference.”
If we can truly love this, whatever this is, it becomes the gateway to everything. How we love one thing is finally how we love everything. We have to find our capacity to see, to love, to accept, to forgive, and to delight in one thing. If we can’t delight in one lizard or one leaf, we are not going to delight in God. How we see is how we see. How we do anything is how we do everything.
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