達賴喇嘛“心路”摘錄

My Spiritual Journey

正在閱讀達賴喇嘛尊者的“我的心路”（My Spiritual Journey）一書。摘錄部分，以便珍藏。

1.       I am no one special. I am just a human being.

2.       We are all alike. No matter what part of the world we come from, fundamentally we are all the same human beings. We all seek happiness and want to avoid suffering. We all have essentially the same needs and similar concerns.

3.       When I speak of kindness and compassion, I am not expressing myself as a Buddhist, or as the Dalai Lama, or as a Tibetan, but rather as a human being. And I hope that you also consider yourselves as human beings, rather than as Americans, Westerners, or members of one group or another. Such distinctions are secondary.

4.       We can do without religion, but not without spirituality.

5.       Spirituality, in my view, consists of transforming the mind.

6.       Although our tradition and contemporary science have evolved from different historical, intellectual, and cultural roots, I believe that at bottom they share a similar philosophical outlook and methodology. On the philosophical level, Buddhism and modern science both question any notion of the absolute, whether it presents itself as a transcendent being, an eternal, unchanging principle, such as the soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. Buddhism and science prefer to take into account the evolution and emergence of the of the cosmos and of life, in terms of complex interrelations stemming from the natural law of causality.

As for their methodology, both traditions insist on the role of empiricism. Thus, in Buddhist investigation, out of the tree sources of knowledge - experience, reason, and testimony, it is experiential proof that takes precedence, with reason coming second and testimony last. That means that, in Buddhist questioning of reality, at least in principle, empirical proof holds sway over scriptural authority, no matter how venerated a scripture may be. Even in the case of knowledge deduced by reasoning or inference, its validity must ultimately be confirmed by factual experience.

Because of this methodological viewpoint, I have often pointed out to my Buddhist colleagues that the empirically verified discoveries made by modern astronomy should compel us to modify and, in some cases, reject many aspects of traditional cosmology expounded in ancient religious treaties.