A40 · Questions for Today 今天的問題
What Makes a Life Meaningful? 什麼讓人生有意義？
At fifty, rich and famous, Tolstoy found that he could not answer a question a child might ask. Camus and the stone that rolls back down, the view from far away, three theories of what makes a life count, the three things that do not decay, and a cook whose knife stayed sharp for nineteen years.
五十歲、富有而出名的托爾斯泰，發現自己答不出一個小孩都會問的問題。卡繆與那塊滾回山下的石頭；從很遠的地方看過來的那個視角；關於「什麼使一個人生算數」的三種理論；三不朽；以及一位十九年刀刃如新的廚子。
This is the last of the forty questions. The others asked what we can know, what is real, and what we should do. This one asks what all of it is for. It is the question people most often expect philosophy to answer, and philosophers were slow to take it up.
這是四十個問題的最後一個。其他的問題問的是：我們能知道什麼、什麼是真實的、我們該做什麼。這一個問的是：這一切是為了什麼。這是人們最常期待哲學回答的問題；而哲學家卻很晚才著手處理它。
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
The essay · 課文
What Makes a Life Meaningful? 什麼讓人生有意義？
01And what then? 然後呢？
In the late 1870s Leo Tolstoy was about fifty. He had written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, owned a large estate, and had a family he loved. Then, he wrote, something strange began to happen. In the middle of ordinary business a question would stop him. “Well, you will have 6,000 desyatinas of land in Samara Government and 300 horses, and what then?” Thinking of his fame, he would say to himself: “Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Molière, or than all the writers in the world—and what of it?” He could find no reply. “I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet.” He hid the rope and stopped carrying a gun.
1870 年代末，列夫・托爾斯泰大約五十歲。他已經寫出了《戰爭與和平》與《安娜・卡列尼娜》，擁有一大片莊園，還有他所愛的家人。然後，他寫道，某件奇怪的事開始發生了。在尋常事務的當中，一個問題會使他停下來。「好吧，你將在薩馬拉省擁有六千俄畝的土地與三百匹馬；然後呢？」想到自己的名聲，他會對自己說：「很好；你將比果戈里、普希金、莎士比亞、莫里哀，比世上所有的作家都更有名；那又怎樣？」他找不到任何回答。「我覺得我一直站在上面的那個東西塌了；我腳下什麼也不剩。」他把繩子藏了起來，也不再帶槍出門。
Tolstoy’s crisis shows the shape of the problem. Nothing in his life had gone wrong. Each of his activities had a purpose, and each purpose served a further one. The question arose when he looked at the whole chain and asked what it hung from. Philosophers now separate two questions that he ran together. One asks about the meaning of life: whether human existence as a whole has a point. The other asks about meaning in life: what makes one person’s life more worth living than another’s. The first may have no answer. The second plainly has some, since nobody thinks all lives equal in this respect.
托爾斯泰的危機，顯示了這個問題的形狀。他的生活並沒有出任何差錯。他的每一項活動都有目的；而每一個目的，又為更進一步的目的服務。問題是在他看著整條鏈子、問它掛在什麼東西上面的時候出現的。哲學家現在把他混在一起的兩個問題分開了。一個問的是「人生的意義」：人類的存在作為一個整體，有沒有一個目的？另一個問的是「人生裡的意義」：是什麼使一個人的人生，比另一個人的更值得活？第一個問題也許沒有答案。第二個顯然有一些答案；因為沒有人認為，在這一點上所有的人生都相等。
02The stone 那塊石頭
Albert Camus took up the first question in 1942, in occupied France. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide,” he began. “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Human beings demand reasons, and the world gives none. Camus called the meeting of these two facts the absurd. He rejected two ways out. One is suicide. The other he called philosophical suicide, the leap into a faith that restores the missing reason. What remains is to live with the absurd in full view. His image is Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to roll a stone up a mountain forever and watch it roll back. Sisyphus knows his condition and goes back down to the stone. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
阿爾貝・卡繆在 1942 年、在被佔領的法國，著手處理第一個問題。他開頭就說：「真正嚴肅的哲學問題只有一個，那就是自殺。判斷人生值不值得活，就等於回答哲學的根本問題。」人類要求理由；而世界一個也不給。卡繆把這兩項事實的相遇，稱為「荒謬」。他拒絕了兩條出路。一條是自殺。另一條他稱為「哲學上的自殺」：跳進一種信仰，讓它把缺少的那個理由補回來。剩下的，是在看清荒謬的情況下活著。他用的意象是薛西弗斯：諸神罰他永遠把一塊石頭推上山，再看著它滾下來。薛西弗斯知道自己的處境，並且走回山下去推那塊石頭。「朝向高處的奮鬥本身，就足以充實一個人的心。我們必須想像薛西弗斯是快樂的。」
Thomas Nagel thought that Camus had misdescribed the absurd and overdramatized the response. The trouble does not come from the size of the universe or the shortness of life. A life of seventy years that is absurd would be no less absurd if it lasted forever, and we would matter no more if we were larger. The source is in us. We take our lives seriously, as we must, and we are also able to step back and see them from outside, where the seriousness looks arbitrary. Nagel proposed irony in place of defiance. If nothing matters from the point of view of the universe, then that does not matter either, and we may return to our lives with a little less solemnity.
湯瑪斯・內格爾認為，卡繆把荒謬描述錯了，也把回應弄得太戲劇化了。麻煩並不是來自宇宙的大，或者人生的短。一個七十年的、荒謬的人生，就算延續到永遠，也不會比較不荒謬；而我們就算體積大一些，也不會比較重要。來源在我們自己身上。我們認真看待自己的人生，也非如此不可；而我們又能夠退後一步，從外面來看它；從那裡看，那份認真就顯得沒有根據。內格爾提議用反諷來取代反抗。如果從宇宙的觀點看，沒有任何事是要緊的；那麼這件事本身也不要緊；而我們可以帶著少一點的鄭重，回到自己的人生裡去。
03Three theories 三種理論
On the second question there are three main views. The first is subjective. A life is meaningful if the person living it finds it so, if she is absorbed in it and cares about what she does. The philosopher Richard Taylor asked us to imagine that the gods, as an act of mercy, gave Sisyphus a strong desire to roll stones. Nothing outside him has changed, and on Taylor’s view his life now has all the meaning a life can have. The second view is objective. A life is meaningful to the degree that it is given to things of real worth, such as knowledge, beauty, justice, and the good of others, whatever the person feels. A nurse who saves lives and takes no pleasure in it has a meaningful life. The contented stone-roller does not.
關於第二個問題，主要有三種看法。第一種是主觀的。一個人生是有意義的，只要過這個人生的人覺得它有意義：只要她投入其中，並且在乎自己所做的事。哲學家理查・泰勒請我們想像：諸神出於憐憫，給了薛西弗斯一股強烈的、想推石頭的欲望。他身外的一切都沒有變；而照泰勒的看法，他的人生現在已經有了一個人生所能有的全部意義。第二種看法是客觀的。一個人生有多少意義，要看它在多大的程度上獻給了真正有價值的東西，例如知識、美、正義，以及別人的好處；不管那個人自己感覺如何。一位救了許多人命、卻從中得不到任何樂趣的護士，擁有有意義的人生。那位心滿意足的推石者沒有。
Susan Wolf has argued that each view is half right. A life spent happily on something worthless lacks meaning, and so does a life spent dutifully on something valuable that leaves the person cold. Meaning, she says, arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, when a person loves something that is worth loving and engages with it actively. William James had said nearly the same in a lecture to students in 1899. Neither an ideal alone nor effort alone makes a life significant. “The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,—the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man’s or woman’s pains.”
蘇珊・沃爾夫主張，這兩種看法各對了一半。一個快樂地花在毫無價值的東西上的人生，缺乏意義；一個盡責地花在有價值的東西上、而當事人卻無動於衷的人生，也是。她說，意義出現在「主觀的吸引」遇上「客觀的值得」的時候：當一個人愛著一樣值得愛的東西，並且主動地投入其中。威廉・詹姆斯在 1899 年對學生的一場演講裡，說過幾乎一樣的話。單有理想，或者單有努力，都不足以使一個人生有份量。「人生堅實的意義，永遠是同一樣恆久的東西：也就是某個不尋常的理想，不管它多麼特別，與某種忠誠、勇氣和堅忍的結合；與某個男人或女人所付出的辛勞的結合。」
04What does not decay 不朽的東西
The oldest Chinese answer looks to what a person leaves behind. In 549 BCE a minister of Jin asked a visitor from Lu what the ancients meant by “dying without decaying.” He supposed it meant an unbroken family line. The visitor, Shusun Bao, said that was only hereditary salary. “I have heard that the highest is to establish virtue, the next is to establish achievement, and the next is to establish words. When these are not abandoned with time, this is called not decaying.” On this view a life has meaning through its lasting effect on others. It is an objective theory with a test attached, and it explains why Tolstoy’s question about fame was a serious one. Its weakness is that it makes meaning depend on memory, which is unreliable, and it has little to say to the person no one will remember.
中國最古老的答案，看的是一個人留下了什麼。公元前 549 年，晉國的一位執政大臣問一位來自魯國的客人：古人所謂「死而不朽」是什麼意思？他猜想，那是指家族世代不絕。那位客人叔孫豹說：那只是世祿。「豹聞之，大上有立德，其次有立功，其次有立言。雖久不廢，此之謂不朽。」照這個看法，一個人生是透過它對別人持久的影響而有意義的。它是一種附帶了檢驗方法的客觀理論；而它也解釋了，托爾斯泰關於名聲的那個問題為什麼是一個嚴肅的問題。它的弱點是：它使意義取決於記憶，而記憶並不可靠；而且，對那個不會有人記得的人，它沒有什麼話可說。
Zhuangzi gave an answer of a different kind, in a story about a cook. Cook Ding is cutting up an ox for his lord, and every movement of hand, shoulder, foot, and knee falls in rhythm, like a dance. The lord admires his skill. The cook puts down his knife: “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill.” When he began he saw nothing but the ox. After three years he no longer saw the whole ox. Now he meets it with his spirit and does not look with his eyes. A good cook changes his knife once a year, because he cuts. An ordinary cook changes it every month, because he hacks. Ding has used his for nineteen years and it is as sharp as if fresh from the whetstone, since the blade has no thickness and the joints have space. The lord says: “Excellent. I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to nourish life.”
莊子給了一個不同種類的答案；是在一個關於廚子的故事裡。庖丁正在為他的國君解牛；手、肩、腳、膝的每一個動作都合著節拍，像一支舞。國君讚賞他的技術。廚子放下刀：「臣之所好者，道也，進乎技矣。」他剛開始的時候，眼裡看到的無非是牛。三年之後，他已經看不到整頭的牛了。現在他「以神遇而不以目視」。好的廚子一年換一把刀，因為他用割的。普通的廚子一個月換一把，因為他用砍的。庖丁的刀用了十九年，「而刀刃若新發於硎」；因為刀刃沒有厚度，而骨節之間有空隙。國君說：「善哉！吾聞庖丁之言，得養生焉。」
The story does not mention the meaning of life, and it answers Tolstoy all the same. The cook’s work is humble and will be forgotten. He asks for no justification from outside it. What he has is complete attention to a task done well, in a way that follows the grain of things and does not wear him out. Zhuangzi suggests that the question “and what then?” arises for a mind that stands outside its own activity and demands that it lead somewhere. The cook is not standing outside. Whether that is wisdom or a refusal to face the question is the last thing this series leaves you to decide.
這個故事沒有提到人生的意義；它卻照樣回答了托爾斯泰。廚子的工作是卑微的，而且會被遺忘。他並不向這份工作之外要求任何辯護。他擁有的，是對一件做得好的事的全然專注；用一種順著事物紋理、也不把自己磨損掉的方式。莊子暗示：「然後呢？」這個問題，是對這樣的一顆心才出現的：它站在自己的活動之外，要求那個活動通往某個地方。庖丁並沒有站在外面。這究竟是智慧，還是拒絕面對那個問題，就是這個系列留給你去決定的最後一件事。
Thought experiment · 思想實驗
Try it: eight lives 親手做一次：八個人生
Here are eight lives, each described in a few lines. For each, say whether it was a meaningful life. When you have judged all eight, you will see which theory of meaning your answers come closest to.
這裡有八個人生，各用幾行字描述。對每一個，說說它是不是一個有意義的人生。八個都判斷完之後，你會看到，你的答案最接近哪一種關於意義的理論。
Standard form · 標準形式
The argument, laid out 論證攤開來
The argument that life is absurd, in the form Nagel examined. Click a step to see what can be said against it.
主張「人生是荒謬的」的論證；用的是內格爾檢視過的那個形式。點任何一步，看看別人可以怎麼反對它。
Primary text · 原典
In their own words 原典怎麼說
The man who had everything and could not go on, and the cook who had a knife.
那個什麼都有、卻活不下去的人；以及那個有一把刀的廚子。
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (1882), chapter 3; Zhuangzi, chapter 3, “The Secret of Caring for Life” 托爾斯泰《懺悔錄》第三章；《莊子・養生主》 · Tolstoy translated by Aylmer Maude, public domain; Zhuangzi translated for this series
At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, as though I did not know what to do or how to live; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed, and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to? Before occupying myself with my Samára estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live.
起初，我經歷了一些困惑的、生命停頓的時刻；好像我不知道該做什麼、該怎麼活。我覺得迷失，變得消沉。但這過去了；我照舊活下去。然後，這些困惑的時刻開始越來越常出現，而且總是同一個形式。它們總是用這樣的問題表達出來：這是為了什麼？它通往哪裡？ 在我著手處理我在薩馬拉的莊園、我兒子的教育，或者寫一本書之前，我必須知道我為什麼要做這件事。只要我不知道為什麼，我就什麼也做不了，也活不下去。
Tolstoy found his way out through the faith of the peasants on his estate, who seemed to him to live and die without this torment. He concluded that the question cannot be answered by reasoning and is answered by a way of living. His later life as a moral teacher followed from this. Whether that was Camus’s “philosophical suicide” or a discovery is disputed.
托爾斯泰是透過他莊園上農民的信仰找到出路的；在他看來，他們活著、死去，都沒有這種折磨。他的結論是：這個問題無法用推理來回答；它是用一種生活方式來回答的。他後來作為道德導師的人生，就是由此而來。那究竟是卡繆所說的「哲學上的自殺」，還是一項發現，各方有爭議。
Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied: “What your servant cares about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, I saw nothing but oxen. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. Now I meet it with my spirit and do not look with my eyes. The senses know where to stop, and the spirit moves as it will. I follow the natural lines, strike into the great gaps, and guide the blade through the great hollows, going by what is already there. Even so, whenever I come to a knot, I see the difficulty. I grow wary and careful. My gaze settles, my movement slows, and I move the knife very slightly, until with a sound the whole thing comes apart like earth crumbling to the ground. I stand holding the knife and look all around, lingering, entirely content. Then I wipe the knife and put it away.”
庖丁釋刀，對曰：「臣之所好者，道也，進乎技矣。始臣之解牛之時，所見无非牛者。三年之後，未嘗見全牛也。方今之時，臣以神遇而不以目視，官知止而神欲行，依乎天理，批大郤，導大窾，因其固然。 雖然，每至於族，吾見其難爲，怵然爲戒，視爲止，行爲遲，動刀甚微，謋然已解，如土委地，提刀而立，爲之四顧，爲之躊躇滿志，善刀而藏之。」
The second paragraph is often left out, and it matters. Mastery in this story is not effortlessness. At the hard places the cook slows down and pays closer attention. The contentment comes after the knot is undone. The chapter’s title is about nourishing life, and its opening line warns that life has a limit and knowledge has none.
第二段常被略去；而它是要緊的。在這個故事裡，純熟並不等於不費力。到了難處，廚子慢下來，更加留神。「躊躇滿志」是在那個結解開之後才來的。這一篇的題目是「養生主」；而它開頭的那句話就提醒：「吾生也有涯，而知也无涯。」
Both sides · 正反兩面
Objections and replies 反駁與回應
Without God or an afterlife nothing we do can matter, because in the end it all comes to nothing.
沒有上帝或來世，我們做的任何事都不可能要緊；因為到頭來一切歸於無有。
The argument assumes that a thing matters only if it lasts forever, and that premise needs support. A kindness done to a child matters to the child then, and its having happened remains a fact whatever comes later. If only eternal things mattered, it is hard to see why an eternal life should matter either, since each of its days would also pass. Many religious thinkers agree that meaning must be found in how a life is lived, and they hold that faith gives a reason to live it that way.
這個論證假定：一樣東西只有在它永遠持續的時候才要緊；而這個前提需要支持。對一個孩子做的一件善事，在當時對那個孩子是要緊的；而不管後來發生什麼，「它發生過」始終是一項事實。如果只有永恆的東西才要緊，那就很難看出，一個永恆的生命為什麼要緊；因為它的每一天同樣會過去。許多宗教思想家同意：意義必須在「一個人生是怎麼活的」裡面去找；而他們主張，信仰給了人一個理由那樣去活。
Who is to say what is “worth” loving? The objective view just dresses up one class’s tastes as facts.
誰來說什麼是「值得」愛的？客觀論只是把某一個階級的品味打扮成事實。
The worry is fair, and lists of worthy pursuits have often been lists of what professors enjoy. The objective view does not need a list. It needs only the claim that some difference exists between caring for a child and counting the tiles on a roof, and almost no one who presses the objection really denies that. Where the line falls is a matter for argument, case by case, and the lesson on taste suggested how such arguments can be conducted without a rulebook.
這個擔心是公道的；而「值得追求的事」的清單，常常就是教授們喜歡的事的清單。客觀論並不需要一張清單。它只需要這樣一個主張：照顧一個孩子，與數屋頂上的瓦片，兩者之間存在著某種差別；而提出這個反駁的人，幾乎沒有一個真的否認這一點。線畫在哪裡，是一個要逐案爭論的問題；而講品味的那一課提示過，這樣的爭論可以怎樣在沒有規則書的情況下進行。
Asking whether your life is meaningful is itself the disease. Busy and loving people do not ask.
問自己的人生有沒有意義，這本身就是病。忙碌而有所愛的人不會問。
There is truth in this, and it is Zhuangzi’s point about the cook. James said that the question arises in a certain mood and that the mood has bodily causes. Still, people do ask, often at the turning points of a life, and a person who has never asked may be spending his years on what he would not choose if he did. The examined life that Socrates recommended in the first lesson includes this examination. The sensible conclusion is that the question should be asked now and then, and not all day.
這裡面有真理；而這就是莊子講那位廚子的用意。詹姆斯說過：這個問題是在某一種心境裡出現的；而那種心境有身體上的原因。然而，人們確實會問，常常是在人生的轉折點上；而一個從來沒有問過的人，可能正把歲月花在「如果他問過就不會選擇」的事情上。蘇格拉底在第一課裡推薦的那種「經過省察的人生」，就包括了這一項省察。合理的結論是：這個問題應該偶爾問一問，而不是整天問。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
The vocabulary of the subject 這門學問的用語
L. absurdus ‘out of tune’
In Camus, the clash between our demand for reasons and a world that supplies none.
在卡繆那裡：我們對理由的要求，與一個不提供理由的世界之間的衝突。
Whether existence as a whole has a point; what makes an individual life worth living.
存在作為一個整體有沒有目的；什麼使個別的人生值得活。
The view that a life is meaningful if the person living it finds it engaging.
一種看法：只要過這個人生的人覺得投入，它就是有意義的。
The view that meaning depends on the real worth of what a life is given to.
一種看法：意義取決於一個人生所獻身的東西真正的價值。
Wolf’s view that meaning requires loving something that is worth loving.
沃爾夫的看法：意義需要「愛著一樣值得愛的東西」。
Ch. 三不朽
Establishing virtue, achievement, and words, from the Zuo Commentary.
立德、立功、立言；出自《左傳》。
Ch. 養生
In Zhuangzi, living in a way that follows the grain of things and does not wear one out.
在莊子那裡：順著事物的紋理、不把自己磨損掉的活法。
Gk. pragma ‘deed’
The view, developed by Peirce and James, that the meaning and truth of an idea lie in its practical consequences.
由皮爾斯與詹姆斯發展出來的看法：一個觀念的意義與真，在於它實際上造成的後果。
Advanced English · 高級英文
Words and phrases worth keeping 值得帶走的字與片語
Two questions that he ran together.
他混在一起的兩個問題。
Camus took up the first question in 1942.
卡繆在 1942 年著手處理第一個問題。
To live with the absurd in full view.
在看清荒謬的情況下活著。
We are able to step back and see our lives from outside.
我們能夠退後一步，從外面看自己的人生。
Something valuable that leaves the person cold.
一樣有價值、卻使當事人無動於衷的東西。
Each view is half right.
這兩種看法各對了一半。
He left nothing that outlasted those who knew him.
他沒有留下任何比認識他的人活得更久的東西。
A way that follows the grain of things.
一種順著事物紋理的方式。
It does not wear him out.
它並不把他磨損掉。
It answers Tolstoy all the same.
它卻照樣回答了托爾斯泰。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What question stopped Tolstoy at the height of his success?
2. What does Camus mean by the absurd?
3. What is Susan Wolf’s view of meaning in life?
4. What are the three things that do not decay?
5. What does Cook Ding say he cares about?
Write · 你怎麼想？
Which of the eight lives did you find hardest to judge, and what does your hesitation show about your own standard? About 150 words.
八個人生裡，你覺得哪一個最難判斷？你的猶豫，顯示了你自己的標準是什麼？約 150 個字。
Describe an activity in which you have been, even briefly, like Cook Ding. What made the question “what is it for?” fall silent? Two short paragraphs.
描述一件你曾經（哪怕只是短暫地）像庖丁那樣投入的事。是什麼使「這是為了什麼？」這個問題安靜了下來？兩個短段落。
This is the last of forty questions. Choose the one that changed your mind most, name the lesson, and say in 200 words what you thought before and what you think now.
這是四十個問題的最後一個。選出最改變你想法的那一個；說出是哪一課；用 200 個字說明你以前怎麼想、現在怎麼想。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
A view from the Dharma 佛法怎麼看
The Buddha did not ask what makes life meaningful, and his teaching answers Tolstoy more directly than most philosophy does. Tolstoy’s “and what then?” is the discovery that every worldly aim, once reached, opens onto another, and that none of them holds. The Buddha called this the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned things, and he treated the discovery as the beginning of clear sight. He did not treat it as an illness. Where Camus advises living on in defiance and Nagel in irony, the Buddha says that the restlessness has a cause, craving, and that it can be brought to an end. The saying used of those who have done so is plain: what had to be done has been done.
佛陀並沒有問「什麼使人生有意義」；而他的教法，比大多數的哲學都更直接地回答了托爾斯泰。托爾斯泰的「然後呢？」，就是發現了這件事：世間的每一個目標，一旦達到，就通向下一個；而沒有任何一個是靠得住的。佛陀把這稱為有為法的「苦」（不圓滿）；而他把這個發現當作看清楚的開始。他並沒有把它當作一種病。卡繆勸人帶著反抗活下去，內格爾勸人帶著反諷活下去；佛陀說的是：那份不安有一個原因，就是渴愛；而它是可以止息的。用來形容做到這件事的人的那句話很樸素：「所作已辦。」
On meaning within a life the tradition is equally definite. A human birth is rare and is the one condition in which the path can be walked. The Buddha’s image is a turtle that surfaces once in a hundred years in an ocean where a single yoke with one hole drifts on the waves. The chance that it puts its neck through the hole is the chance of being born human where the teaching is heard. A life is well used when it is given to that work, and for the Mahāyāna when it is given to helping others do the same. This is an objective standard, and practice is meant to make it a loved one, which is Wolf’s marriage of the two. Chan adds a note that Zhuangzi would recognize. Asked what his miraculous powers were, the layman Pang answered: drawing water and carrying firewood.
關於「一個人生之內」的意義，這個傳統同樣明確。人身難得；而它是能夠修道的那個條件。佛陀用的意象是一隻海龜：牠每一百年浮出水面一次；而大海上漂著一塊只有一個孔的軛。牠的頭恰好穿過那個孔的機會，就是「生而為人、又聽聞到教法」的機會。一個人生若用在那件工作上，就是用得好；對大乘來說，若用在幫助別人也這樣做上，就是用得好。這是一個客觀的標準；而修行的用意，是使它成為一個被愛著的標準：那就是沃爾夫所說的兩者的結合。禪又添了一筆，是莊子會認得的。有人問龐居士他的神通妙用是什麼；他回答：運水與搬柴。
Go further · 延伸
People and reading 人物與延伸閱讀
- Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (1882), tr. Aylmer Maude ↗Sixteen short chapters. Chapters 3 to 5 state the problem. 十六個短章。第三到第五章陳述了問題。
- William James, “Is Life Worth Living?” (1895) and “What Makes a Life Significant” (1899) ↗The second is in Talks to Teachers, linked here. The first is in The Will to Believe. 第二篇收在《與教師談話》，連結在此。第一篇收在《信仰的意志》。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Meaning of Life” ↗Supernaturalist, subjective, objective, and hybrid theories. 超自然論、主觀論、客觀論與混合論。
- 《莊子・養生主》 ↗The whole chapter is short. Cook Ding is its second paragraph. 整篇很短。庖丁解牛是它的第二段。
- 《左傳・襄公二十四年》 ↗Shusun Bao on dying without decaying. 叔孫豹論「死而不朽」。
- The forty questions, in this series ↗Back to the shelf, to begin again or to go on to the history. 回到書架：從頭再來，或者接著讀哲學史。