佛國奔波 – 七言絕句贈友人

友人把他的美妻(友人自己在電郵上對他妻子的背稱—my beautiful wife)留在家裏，自己到印度北方喀拉崑崙山麓的佛國去，「每日奔波於高山寺廟，不亦樂乎」。
他寄來了明信片，片上寫的竟是中文，我也就用中文給他回郵了。
可他也許還在那古老的佛緣之邦，流連忘返。 就怕那裏上網用的電腦比較年邁，未必學懂了顯示中文，為了保險，我把文字內容放在JPEG裏，給他寄送。
我說：

酒食經文皆在口，嬌妻活佛並留心。
今生樂逸來生悟，法海森深八萬尋。

我還說：
人生之美，莫過於此嘍！可喜可賀，可喜可賀！
至於我，不怎麼樣了呀！
固然說不上鍾情於這區區一隅的香港荒野，而此地也實在沒有你說的江南山水。再美，那也不過只是嶺南的丘陵谿澗，小山細水罷了。
我也並非不想稍學賢兄，一年到頭，儘去攀偉嶽，探深淵。奈何人窮走不遠，不比賢兄鳳瘦飛得高哇！

後來友人回到了他美妻的家，我們就談到了「悟」。可他明信片上能寫幾個漢字，一旦要打電郵，中文就從來沒有派上過用場了！ 這位曾受業於白人師傅的朋友真是！
以下是我的其中一個回郵：

Oh, you just don't need to overpraise me too much like that!
I know all too well that to think like a so-called sage or guru in whatsoever religious domain is still light-years beyond my imagination.
Yet I would like to talk about that even at a rather high point of view.

Buddha had lived his early life as a prince full of lust, gluttony, extravagancy, and squander. Such lifestyle in time wore away many of his desires derived from human instincts, just as water and carbon dioxide corrode the finest killing swords' blades. His physical desires reached an old age and got tired while his body was still in its prime. Satisfaction of desires no longer brought about more pleasure than pain as a by-product. By then he could have no happiness of whatsoever nature unless he enjoyed pain, including seeing other humans and beings suffer, at the same time. He sought emptiness. Deep in his brain the images depicting how he spent every single minute of his youthful days could not be erased. Yet the vivid images had no meaning in terms of passion and happiness just as a 100 year-old dying man's memory of his first night with his first love. Buddha would enter the state of nirvana with all those vivid images according to the way his brain worked, just like that of any other wise human. Without the youthful life experience of a wealthy prince, there would be no Buddha.
One cannot be truly enlightened without something corrosive enough to devastate the natural human soul of mainly animal nature. Thus Hitler the evil killer had a very high potential to be enlightened and transformed into a Bodhisattva, or even a Buddha, if given the chance; but a little lovely innocent Jewish girl gassed by him didn't, simply because she had done nothing evil enough to trigger the process towards the state of bodhi. If there has been no possessing in the first place, there cannot be any losing. If there has been no fullness in the first place, there cannot be any emptiness. If there has been no emptiness arrived at, there cannot be any enlightenment.
Yet I do hold a belief that certain type of pseudo-enlightenment can be arrived at by certain secular means other than the Buddhist ways.
And every smart man may be enlightened to a certain extent to live a less painful life, or become a sage, or just a guru.

In an early naive stage of my wisdom development, only if I do possess any, I took enlightenment as a sort of religious de-humanization of certain consciousness and sub-consciousness, or mal-direction of human instincts.
I then thought, if a mentally and physically normal man sees a lovable beautiful young lady as an object of sexual love, and sees a lovable pretty baby as an object of parental love, he is not the least enlightened.
After a couple of years' study, training and meditation, he then sees a shapely young beauty as he does a plain chubby middle-age lady, and sees a fine nice baby as he does an ugly stupid naughty kid, he is partly enlightened. And later still he sees a sexy young beauty or a lovely nice baby exactly as he does an ugly prisoner convicted of serial rape and murder, a flamboyant lotus blossom in the water garden with visiting honey bees exactly as a black-and-white painting of the same by a beginner of the art, then he is going to be totally enlightened.
But now I think it could be much more complicated.