..续本文上一页the serene azure of deliverance. As the Master says:

　　For one who is virtuous, bhikkhus, endowed with virtue, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let freedom from remorse arise in me." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that freedom from remorse arises in one who is virtuous, endowed with virtue.

　　For one who is free from remorse, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let gladness arise in me." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that gladness arises in one free from remorse.

　　For one who is gladdened, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let rapture arise in me." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that rapture arises in one who is gladdened.

　　For one filled with rapture, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let my body become tranquil." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that for one filled with rapture the body becomes tranquil.

　　For one tranquil in body, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I experience bliss." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one tranquil in body experiences bliss.

　　For one who is blissful, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let my mind become concentrated." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that for one who is blissful the mind becomes concentrated.

　　For one who is concentrated, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I know and see things as they really are." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one who is concentrated knows and sees things as they really are.

　　For one knowing and seeing things as they really are, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I become disenchanted and dispassionate." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one knowing and seeing things as they really are becomes disenchanted and dispassionate.

　　For one who has become disenchanted and dispassionate, no deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I realize the knowledge and vision of deliverance." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes the knowledge and vision of deliverance...

　　Thus, bhikkhus, one stage flows into the succeeding stage, one stage comes to fulfillment in the succeeding stage, for crossing over from the hither shore to the beyond.

　　Anguttara Nikaya, 10:2

　　Mind and the Animate Order

　　As we cast our gaze out upon the landscape of animate nature, it does not take long before our attention is struck by the tremendous persity of forms the animate order displays. The folds of nature”s lap, we find, teem with a multitude of living beings as staggering in their range of specific differentiation as in the sheer impression of their quantitative force. Before our eyes countless varieties of creatures — insects and reptiles, fish and birds, mammals domestic and wild — turn the earth With its seas and skies into a complex metropolis, throbbing with the pulse of sentient life. But realms of being beyond sight — vouched for by spiritual cosmology, folklore, and the reports of seers — are no less crowded, and no less persified in their composition. According to this testimony, gods, Brahmas, angels and demons populate boroughs of the city of life invisible to fleshly eyes, while other creatures, such as fairies, ghosts and goblins, fill up unfamiliar pockets of the same borough.

　　The human world, again, is itself far from homogeneous. The family of man breaks down into a great persity of types — into people black, white, brown, yellow and red, piding still further, according to their fortunes and faculties, into the long-lived and the short-lived, the healthy and the sickly, the successful and the failures, the gifted and the deprived. Some people are intelligent, others are dull-witted, some are noble, others ignoble, some are spiritually evolved, others spiritually destitute. Human beings range all the way from mental retards who c…

《Nourishing The Roots - Essays on Buddhist Ethics》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…