第十七世大寶法王嘉華噶瑪巴泰耶多傑對反思人身的開示
暇滿此身極難得，既得成辦人生利
倘若此生利未辦，往後怎得此圓滿
猶如烏雲暗夜中，剎那閃電明亮顯
如是因佛威神力，世間偶生福與慧
— 寂天菩薩《入菩薩行論》
寂天菩薩的形象總是令人著迷。他第二段用閃電作比喻的偈頌，可以與我們自身經驗聯繫起來。他引用漆黑一片暴風雨之夜的形象，在黑暗中無法找到你的路，甚至無法看見在你眼前的手掌。突然，一道閃電照亮了這個漆黑的夜空，僅僅一瞬間，你就可以清楚地看到周圍的環境，好像白天一樣。
寂天菩薩在這裡用這個比喻來描述我們腦海中在瞬間浮現的美德、功德的念頭，他將它們形容為極其罕有和難以獲得的。為什麼？因為我們的生活中有太多的干擾，那麼多看似重要的事情，日復一日，時時刻刻在發生，隨之而來煩惱情緒也不斷湧現。
由於這種永無休止的煩躁，我們的心幾乎沒有任何一剎那可以讓善念生起。即使有機會瞥見善念，發生的機會只是百萬分之一！但是，如果能排除萬難，讓善念生起的一刻，寂天菩薩告訴我們，這都是由於諸佛願力、慈悲和加持。
所以這就是偈頌明顯的含義，但是今天早上我閱讀和思惟這兩段偈頌時，我心裡想：「如果我們將寂天菩薩的比喻更進一步帶到另一個空間，另一個範籌會怎樣？如果我們把它運用到我們整體人類的存在會怎樣？」
我並不是要暗示寂天菩薩沒有提及人身的珍貴，而事實上，在介紹的偈頌中的一開始就談到了身依難獲的道理，以及好好善用暇滿人身的重要。
儘管如此，我還是想分享一些我對閃電的譬喻與我們的人身怎樣可以聯繫起來，希望它對你們有所啟發。
如果我們將人類的存在與其他時間尺度和維度進行比較，我們不禁會震驚我們的存在是多麼短暫渺小。
讓我們以星系及其壽命為例，它是多麼令人震撼、多麼神奇、多麼浩瀚！
相比之下，即使我們將整體人類歷史作比較，都是多麼微乎其微。那還有什麼必要談論一個人的生命，談論他或她的成就？從宇宙尺度上看，它們根本沒有任何意義。他們沒有任何重要性。它們是如此短暫和微不足道，就好像它們從未發生過一樣。無論他們取得什麼成就，無論是攀登過珠穆朗瑪峰、消除飢荒，還是成為一位普世君主，這些都是沒有任何意義。
從這個角度看，人的一生不過是一瞬間；實際上，甚至不是片刻，甚至都稱不上是一納秒，它是如此短暫，以至我們根本無法稱它曾經發生過。
談完我對人類存在的看法後，讓我們先回到寂天菩薩的閃電譬喻。確實，由於我們的人身條件所限，我們的眼根和眼識能力都是有限制的，所以，我們對閃電的體驗都是非常短暫的。但是，如果我們的眼根作用有所不同，如果我們能夠像一部超級慢動作相機一樣，放慢閃光燈的速度，我們也許可以將這一瞬間分割成數百萬幀，我們可以拍攝那一刻的閃電，並重播成一分鐘甚至一小時（如果我們有所需的超級工具），我們所看到的不是靜態照片而是一個動態的圖像。
因此，我認為我們能獲得人身是非常奢侈且殊勝的事情。而這種奢侈是由於兩個因素：一方面是諸佛的加持，另一方面是我們自己積累的功德。
正是由於這兩個原因，儘管事實上人類的生命只是片刻的短暫，不比一道閃電的時間長，但我們實際上並不認為它是短暫的。我們能夠放慢速度，以慢動作生活，看待它就像可以分成幾個部分：年、月、週、日、小時，我們能夠感覺到我們在生活和呼吸，我們能夠感覺到我們有諸如此類的經歷，各式各樣的體驗。我們理所當然地認為我們將有 80 或 90 歲的平均壽命。
我們經歷漫長而驚險刺激的生命，這簡直就是一個奇蹟。而這個奇蹟正是由於自我累積的功德和諸佛的加持。
而且我認為，如果我們可以經常從以下兩個角度去反思我們寶貴的人身，這是一件很有趣的事情。
一方面它是如此渺小短暫，如此微不足道，以至於我們甚至不能說它真的發生過、出現過。
但是，另一方面，它又是如何令人難忘和奇妙，就算明白到它的微小，但我們卻又可以體驗到它是漫長而刺激的，甚至感覺「比生命更偉大」。
首先，我覺得從這方面作反省很有意思，再者，如果你覺得我們需要有一個理由，解釋為何發生這種情況，那麼你可以根據過去諸菩薩所說的，唯有諸佛加持與自己的功德或努力這雙重原因，才有可能這樣子。
因此，如果你專注並反思這兩點有關人類生命的有趣本質，以及它發生的原因，那麼一旦你能夠用相當的時間細心思維，你就會自然而然地有意樂善用人身精進修行。
而充分利用它的方法是進一步積累功德。你會好奇和去探索：「如果我繼續積累功德，會發生什麼？它將把我引導到何方？」
換句話說，你將有動力提升你的生活素質，你會自然而然地樂於修行，無論是正式和非正式的。修行不一定是在閉關房裡面，而是在你的日常生活中，從舒適的家中或工作場所。
總之，請明白我分享這些看法，並不是要你做任何事情，我不是給你任何功課，所以不要覺得有任何責任。
我給你的唯一課題是，對你的人生懷著好奇心，並親證你的好奇心會把你引向何方。
Thaye Dorje, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, shares the following reflections on human life:
“These leisures and endowments, which are so difficult to obtain, have been acquired, and they bring about the welfare of all. If one fails to take this favourable opportunity into consideration, how could this occasion occur again?
Just as lightning illuminates the darkness of a cloudy night for an instant, in the same way, by the power of the Buddhas, occasionally people’s minds are momentarily inclined toward merit.”
– From A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (Bodhicaryāvatāra) by Śāntideva.
The imagery of Śāntideva is always captivating. His analogy of lightning in the second Śloka is something that we can all relate to from our own experience. He’s evoking the image of a pitch-black, stormy night, so dark that there is no way of finding your path, no way of even seeing your palm in front of your eyes. And then suddenly, a flash of lightning illuminates this dark night, and just for a fraction of a second you can see your surroundings as clearly as if it were bright day.
Śāntideva uses this analogy here to describe the tiny moments of virtuous, meritorious notions that come up in our mind, and he portrays them as being extremely rare and hard to come by. Why? Well, there are so many distractions in our lives; so many seemingly important things, occurring day after day, moment after moment, and, along with them, disturbing emotions constantly arise.
Due to this endless agitation, there is hardly any instant where there is space in our mind for even the tiniest glimpse of a virtuous thought to arise; the chances of such a moment occurring are one in a million! But if, against all odds, such a moment does occur, Śāntideva tells us that this is due to the aspirations, the kindness, and the blessings of the Buddhas.
So this is the obvious meaning here, but when reading and contemplating these two Ślokas this morning I thought, “What if we took Śāntideva’s analogy further, into another dimension, onto another scale? What if we applied it to our entire human existence?”
I don’t mean to imply that Śāntideva doesn’t talk about the preciousness of this human existence – in fact, the first of the two Ślokas in the introduction talks about the unique opportunity such a rebirth represents, and how important it is to make good use of it.
Nevertheless, I would like to share some of my own reflections on how we might relate the image of the flash of lightning to our human life, in the hope that it might be meaningful to some of you.
If we consider our human existence by comparing it to other timescales and dimensions, we can’t help being struck by just how short and temporary it is.
Let’s take the example of a galaxy and its lifespan: how impressive, how amazing, how enormous it is!
By comparison, how insignificant are the lives of human beings, even if we look at all of humanity as a collective? And what need then to even talk about one individual’s life, of his or her achievements? Seen on a cosmic scale they mean nothing at all; there is nothing significant about them. So short and insignificant are they that it’s as if they never even happened. Whatever their achievements – whether they climbed Mount Everest, put an end to hunger, or became a universal monarch – none of them mean anything.
From that perspective, the entire lifespan of a human being is nothing but a fleeting moment; actually, not even a moment, not even a nanosecond – it’s so brief that we can’t even declare it to have occurred at all.
Having talked about that perspective of human existence, let’s go back to Śāntideva’s flash of lightning for a moment: it is true that due to our human condition – the limitations of the capacity of our eye faculty and the state of our consciousness that goes with it – the experience that we have of a flash of lightning is very momentary. But if our eye faculty were somewhat different, if we were able to slow down the flash, like a super slow-motion camera, we might be able to divide up that one split second into millions of frames. We could film that moment of lightning and play it back for a whole minute or even for a whole hour (in case we had the required super-gadgets for it), and still get the sense that what we are seeing is not a still photograph but a moving image.
And this, I feel, is the very luxury that we have with our human lifespan, and this luxury is due to two factors: the blessing of the Buddhas on the one hand, and our accumulation of merit on the other hand.
It is thanks to these two causes that even though in truth this human life lasts only for a moment – no longer than a flash of lightning – we do not actually perceive it as being momentary. We are able to slow it down, live it in slow motion, as it were, divide it into fractions: years, months, weeks, days, hours… We are able to feel that we are living and breathing, we are able to feel that we have this and that experience, this and that adventure. We take it for granted that we will have a certain number of years to live, that we will have an average lifespan of 80 or 90.
We experience our life as long and adventurous, and that’s nothing short of a miracle. And that miracle is due to none other than these two causes of merit and blessing.
And I think that it might be really interesting if, from time to time, we could reflect on these two perspectives of the precious human existence that is ours.
How on the one hand it’s so minute, so momentary, so insignificant that we cannot even say it actually happened, that it really took place.
But how, on the other hand, it’s so impressive and miraculous – especially in view of its minuteness – that we can experience it as long and adventurous, as significant and even ‘larger than life’!
I feel that first of all it’s very interesting to reflect on these aspects, and then furthermore, if you feel that we need a reason for this occurrence, then you can rely on what the Bodhisattvas of the past have said: that such an occurrence is only possible thanks to the double cause of the Buddhas’ blessings and your own merit or effort.
And so, if you focus and reflect on these two points – the interesting nature of this human life, and the causes for its occurrence – then once you have spent enough time reflecting on it, you will be naturally motivated to try and make the most of it.
And the way to make the most of it is by furthering the accumulation of merit. You will become curious and want to explore for yourself: “If I continue to accumulate merit, what will happen? Where will it lead me?”
In other words, you will be motivated to improve the quality of how you live your life. You will be naturally inclined to practice, both formally and informally. Not necessarily in retreat, but in your everyday life, from the comfort of your home or your workplace.
In conclusion, please understand that having shared these reflections, I’m not asking you to do anything; I’m not giving you any homework to do, so don’t feel under any obligation.
If I’m asking anything of you it’s only this: be curious about your human life, and see for yourselves where your curiosity might lead you.
https://www.karmapa.org/some-reflections-on-human-life/
中文翻譯由本中心翻譯小組負責。若有錯漏，請見諒。節錄或載列文章內容以原文為準。）
