Chapter 20 Chapter Eighteen
After the plane soared into the sky, it made a turn in the air and flew towards Shenzhen.
Xie Huiren was a little sleepy. He experienced an auction that he had never experienced the day before, a short trip to Japan, and more importantly, he was in a mysterious story full of Buddhist and historical codes that intersected in time and space. It kept him in a state of excitement all day long, and he didn't sleep well all night.
When the old man Fujiwara sent them out, it was already completely dark, and the huge manor suddenly fell into a lonely and cold atmosphere, the surroundings were pitch black, only the whistling of the mountain wind.The old man seemed to feel a little cold and shivered for a while, but he still kept his spirits up and insisted on watching them get into the car.
There were still the two Japanese in the car, Nakamura and Suzuki. It seemed that they were appointed or entrusted by the old man, or simply, they were the attendants of the Fujiwara family.The moment the car started, Xie Huiren looked out of the car window. The old man was sitting in a wheelchair, and behind him stood his personal assistant, Mr. Yamato, who hardly spoke but behaved well. The two stood at the gate of the manor. Even more lonely in the dark of night.
They lived in Tokyo for one night, Xie Huiren didn't have the heart to appreciate the night view of Tokyo at all, all his energy was completely absorbed by all the bizarre stories this afternoon, lying on the bed, his mind was always the group of silver bracelet patterns, they seemed to be Floating in front of my eyes, various patterns were randomly formed, which looked like Buddhist symbols, but they were not at all.
What are they?Is it just a set of meaningless patterns, or is it really a password of a Buddhist treasure as the old man Fujiwara said?
Xie Huiren let these patterns swim in his mind, not because he didn't want to sleep, but because he couldn't drive them away at all.In this way, Xie Huiren spent the night in a daze.
The only thing he knows now is that he must solve this mystery within three or four days, and what he can do at this time is to return to the temple where he lived as a child at the fastest speed.Perhaps, there he can find some clues.
That is not a formal temple in the strict sense, or in other words, it is just the lower house of a certain temple.There is no complete Buddhist temple built there, nor the specifications of a formal temple. Even the Buddha statues are miscellaneous, and it cannot be said that it conforms to any sect or school of rituals.Xie Huiren still clearly remembers some strange statues in the temple. The abbot once told him that these are not actually Buddhist figures, and it is not clear who made them, but they have been left like that for many years.
Later, Xie Huiren learned that the ancient Indian Buddhism deified the legendary gods of the South Asian subcontinent into Buddhism, and then passed them on to China.For example, the King of Hades, who is in charge of people's life and death, was originally a figure in ancient Indian mythology.Even in China, there is such a strange thing as Guan Yu being enshrined as a Dharma protector.
Dharma is boundless.Xie Huiren suddenly thought of this word.No matter what kind of mythology or real characters, Buddhism can include them. It is like a huge invisible net, which encloses everything that people can create.
Inclusive of all, that is nature.
Xie Huiren couldn't help laughing, he remembered talking about it in class once.
A female student who always loves to think asked a question: "Teacher, our China used to have such a good mythological tradition, but why did it disappear later? Is the imagination of the Chinese people declining?"
Good question!In today's society, it is rare for a liberal arts student who is studying for an undergraduate degree to ask such questions, and what is even more rare is that there are still students who are willing to delve into these questions after all.Xie Huiren secretly applauded.But he knew that it would be impossible to clarify where the Chinese mythology lineage is hidden in one class, and then analyze the unique Chinese way of thinking that emerges from abstraction.
Xie Huiren could only ask back, "Then, tell me, has there been no 'myth' in China since then?"
The girl bit her lip, "I'm afraid...not."
Xie Huiren smiled and said to her: "Myths have always existed, but they have changed their appearance and secretly hid in our lives. There is a very interesting example-the story of the gourd baby, have you heard of it?"
"The cartoon "Calabash Brothers"?" a student called with a strange expression.
"No, no, stories earlier than that, if you go to the bookstore to look at the collection of fairy tales, you can almost find them." Xie Huiren smiled mysteriously and continued, "Actually, you have also heard of this story. The old man picked up a gourd seed, but planted a huge gourd. The old man took care of it as his own child. One day the gourd told him that there was going to be a mountain torrent. If there was a flood, he would split it open. Then there was a big flood. After the old man split the gourd, the gourd scoops grew miraculously. The old man sat in one of the scoops, filled the other with his daily necessities, and drifted away to other places. Of course, there are many variants of this story in China. Now, let's think about it, is there a similar story in the West?"
There was silence in the classroom for a while, and a voice exclaimed, "Oh my God, Noah's Ark."
"That's right, this is the story of Noah's Ark in China, isn't it very similar?" Xie Huiren paused for a while and continued, "In fact, the truth of history may be hidden in Chinese folklore."
"The truth of history?"
"Yes, let's make an analogy. There used to be a pair of twins. They went to school together. The elder brother studied very hard, took notes very neatly, and bound them in categories. But the younger brother was very naughty. His class notes remember It was fragmented, some parts were a bunch of incomprehensible fragments of words, what's more, his notes were scattered everywhere, some books had been torn off by him, God knows whether he wrapped sesame cakes or folded airplanes."
At this time, some people in the classroom were already laughing.
"That brother's notes have been handed down, but later generations accidentally lost or damaged some, and some fragments have been completely lost. Or, in the process of copying by later generations, many typos were written, making it impossible for us to read. Understood. Or, when transcribing, someone rewritten or abbreviated part of it to save trouble. At this time, if we want to systematically understand the knowledge he has learned, what should we do?"
A student replied, "The best thing to do is to find my brother's notes and see what he wrote down. He happened to write down some clues?"
"Very good." Xie Huiren looked at the student with affirmative eyes, "Unfortunately, that brother's note has a lot of symbols - maybe it is a shorthand invented by him, only he can understand - between sentences and sentences. It is rare to be able to get in touch with it. Therefore, future generations can only imagine the complete notebook of my brother from these fragments."
"Teacher, this..." Obviously, some students did not understand what Xie Huiren meant.
Xie Huiren nodded to him, "Perhaps some students have guessed that the elder brother is called 'Zhengshi' and the younger brother is 'Folk Custom' or 'Folk Legend'. They learn the same knowledge, but when we are in the elder brother 'Zhengshi' When you find that a piece of historical truth is missing or contradictory in your notes, you might as well try to find it from the notes of your younger brother "Folk Legend". Only by combining their notes can it be considered a complete history—history, It is the old gentleman who taught them knowledge."
"Oh..." There was some commotion among the students, and someone shouted, "Teacher, can you tell me an example?"
"Okay, such examples abound, but you didn't pay attention." Xie Huiren thought for a while, "Tell me the story you are most familiar with, the story of Cowherd and Weaver Girl."
"Teacher, are you saying that this story happened in real history?"
"Probably!"
"There must be relics."
"Yes, in Shandong, there is a river in Yanya Township, Yiyuan County, Zibo. On both sides of the river are the Niulang Temple and the Weaver Girl Cave. In the cave, there are stone steles of past dynasties, recording the history of the Weaver Girl Cave for more than a thousand years after its construction."
"But that doesn't mean anything!"
"We don't want it to explain anything, you know, we are looking at the notes of the younger brother named 'Folk Custom'. Do you know whose fiefdom Zibo was in then?" Seeing the students looking at each other, he continued, "Jiang Taigong! That is, Jiang Ziya in Li. Zibo was the capital of the state of Qi he enfeoffed back then. Jiang Taigong’s way of governing the country is to 'govern according to the customs', that is to say, to formulate national policies according to local folk customs—for example, the local people think that Your own language is the best, so you don’t have to take the foreign language test during the postgraduate entrance examination.”
"Hmm—" the students in the classroom patted the table and laughed, and some even clapped their hands twice.
Xie Huiren also laughed, and when the students calmed down, he continued, "But Qi State is Jiang Shang's fiefdom after all, and Zhou Dynasty has its own national system, so of course Qi State's local policies will conflict with Zhou Rites. You know, Zhou Li is more serious and—well, let’s say it’s rigid, that is to say, it’s not humanized management. Therefore, we can imagine that the conflicts will be very intense.”
Xie Huiren thinks it's better to go straight to the point, um, straight to the point is another word from Buddhism, he thought to himself. "Let's talk about it again, let's talk about the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. In the folk marriage form of Qi State at that time, people could fall in love freely, and there was no need for a matchmaker to talk about matchmaking, let alone the need to match each other. Therefore, similar to the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Free marriages like Zhinu can exist. However, the mainstream form of marriage in society at that time, that is, the marriage system of the entire country during the Zhou Dynasty, was matchmaker marriage—the matchmaking system was stipulated by Zhou etiquette.”
"So, there will be objections." The thinking girl answered.
"Not only is it opposed, but the struggle will be fierce. We can imagine that a boy and a girl fall in love freely, but the boy's family is poor, and the girl comes from a rich family, and her mother happens to be a very domineering person. So he snatched the girl back home under the pretext of not being hired by a matchmaker, and prevented her from meeting the poor boy. Later, this real story gradually evolved into the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Of course, the old stubborn mother, It will become the domineering Queen Mother of the West."
Some of the students nodded.However, some people objected, "But, teacher, there is no historical data, so it cannot be proved..."
"I said, we don't want to prove that we are studying the messy notes." Xie Huiren smiled, "Maybe, one day we can find some letters in an ancient tomb or in a cave, such as The ancient manuscripts that were hidden when Qin Shihuang burned books and buried Confucianism clearly recorded this story, so the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl became official history. That is to say, we confirmed the lost notes of the elder brother from the notes of the younger brother. Only together can it become history—so, let’s not take the content recorded in the history book as history itself, it is just a note, maybe more like a note copied by later generations—the truth of history must be that the two brothers written together."
Xie Huiren paused for a moment, looked around at the students under the podium, they were already fascinated, "Well, do you want to hear another story?"
"Okay!" Everyone nodded, and one of the students said, "It doesn't stand alone!"
Xie Huiren smiled and said, "Okay! If I tell other types of stories, you will still regard them as orphans. Then, I will tell another folklore similar to the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. You are also familiar with it. The story of Meng Jiangnu crying on the Great Wall. Many people think this is just a folklore, but in fact it is a real story, which is recorded in "Zuo Zhuan". Then, we say that the notes of the elder brother's "official history" are confirmed by the records of the younger brother's "folk custom". But , the younger brother's records are more vivid than the elder brother's notes, and they have more vitality. Interestingly, this real story of Meng Jiangnu crying on the Great Wall happened to happen in Zibo."
Xie Huiren suddenly thought of another person, and he was also excited by his own imagination, "History just likes to joke with us so much. Unfortunately, that cowherd may really be a poor boy herding cows. He has no education. If he can write , then this story will become the most important chapter in the study of marriage patterns in ancient China. There is a similar story in history, which has been recorded in writing, and this text can be used as direct evidence by historians to study this person life."
"Who is it?" a student asked.
"Let's not say who it is, just ask the sentimental female students, the love story in "The Hairpin Phoenix", you will be moved after reading it?"
Some female students smiled knowingly, and they all said, "It's Lu You and his cousin!"
"Look, how unfair this is to the poor Niu Lang. The difference between him and Lu You is that Lu You can write lyrics. If Niu Lang wrote the words back then, he would be recorded in the annals of history forever." Xie Huiren smiled and continued, "Having said that, it still comes down to the story of the gourd baby we just mentioned. Perhaps the truth of history is that there was a great flood on the earth, and people from various regions and nationalities recorded it with different stories. In the West, it is Nuo Ya's Ark, in the east, is the folklore of gourd dolls."
Xie Huiren smiled and looked at the students who were whispering under the podium, and suddenly realized that he had gone too far, and he was going to talk about "nature".He decided to bring the topic back.
"In fact, there is another pair of twins like 'official history' and 'folklore. !"
The movement under the podium became even bigger, and someone was already shouting, "Impossible, they are born to be opposite."
"Slow down, slow down, don't be easily influenced by the stereotyped thinking in your head." Xie Huiren and other students calmed down and said slowly, "Just like official history and legends can synthesize historical truth, religion and science can synthesize nature. In fact, They are not opposite, they are the two wings for human beings to understand nature. Unfortunately, many people understand their concepts too narrowly, thinking that religion is worshiping God, or narrowing the scope of science to science and technology. However, I To say, no! For example, our science and technology are developing, but we don’t really understand why we study science. To give a very simple example, when we research from airplanes to rockets and satellites, what we think is What can they do for us, or whether they can reach the speed of light, without thinking about why the airplane was invented at that time. In fact, the purpose of a great scientist like Newton, who devoted his life to researching science, was to prove the existence of God. As a scientist, Leonardo da Vinci designed a spacecraft long ago, but this energetic but distracted person was too busy, he died before he could make this plane, maybe he had forgotten himself Also designed airplanes."
Xie Huiren couldn't help but think that in 2004, a foreign organization actually manufactured the spacecraft according to the sketch designed by Da Vinci, and Da Vinci's purpose may be to go to the sky to see what God looks like.
The classroom was quiet, and everyone listened to Xie Huiren's long speech in shock. In the eyes of the students, it was incredible that the teacher who taught Chinese classical literature said such a passage.
"I would like to believe that religion and science are two wings for human beings to understand nature. They must fly together. In the early days of human beings, primitive religion was born because of the fear of nature. At that time, the function of religion was science, which was to explain the unknowable A tool of nature. With the development of human beings, we have mastered some technologies and laws of nature, and then began to use science to prove religion. For example, the ancients may have entered the study of astronomy just to observe the gods in heaven category. Of course, our astronomical technology is getting higher and higher, but we must know that technology can only ensure that we live better, but it cannot explain why we live and how we will live. Remember, technology is not the whole of science— ——Technology is cold, it is invented and mastered by human beings with known knowledge, but science has human spirit, it cannot be invented, but has always existed in the hearts of human beings — Similarly, worship It is not the whole of religion. We often equate them with the same concept, which is wrong. Now that airplanes can fly in the sky, in the eyes of the ancients, this can only be explained as the mysterious power of religion, which will make them think that the gods descended from the world , and this power is the power of nature that the ancients could not explain. Obedience to the laws of nature is the essential meaning of science. And although we know the principle that the plane can fly, it is only the spacecraft technology, what we need to think about, It is this principle itself that is the force of nature, and it is only after we understand the atmosphere, mechanics, etc. that we have mastered its power. But we still need to explore whether the plane can fly faster, which is the nature that we use what we know to explore the unknown. Laws, and this is not the essential form of religion? Isn’t the germination of religion means that human beings want to know the unknown laws of nature? All technology and belief methods are just ways for us to understand nature. And science itself and religion itself ——Remember, it is not the form of science and technology and religion—it is the nature that human beings need to know. Science and religion are the two wings of human beings. When it has been reduced, when is it not making new explanations? Isn’t this reverence and explanation the religion itself? You know, religion has always been summarizing the natural laws that humans have already known. Why do we believe that science is developing, but put Is religion regarded as the stupidity and superstition of human beings in the past? And do we know how many scientific achievements that were once regarded as truth have been overturned and new explanations have been made in the past hundred years? Even Newton’s first law It is also untenable under the same conditions. This kind of explanation, is it not the self-correction of human beings after they understand nature? Can you tell clearly, is this science correcting the mistakes of religion, or is religion summing up the deviations of science? I prefer Think of science and religion as twin brothers, don't put them against each other, they grow together in reminding, correcting and encouraging each other. They combine to form nature, just as technology cannot be regarded as the core meaning of science, this nature is not What we call animals and plants, but the operating rules of human beings and everything related to human beings.law.We call the phenomena that cannot be explained by science and technology temporarily 'supernatural', which is a big mistake. Isn't it religion to use what we know to explain the unknown beyond us?And when his brother, that is, science, one day has the ability to understand this unknown, we will suddenly realize that this once unexplainable 'supernatural' is also a part of nature.In fact, humanity has developed for thousands of years, isn't this happening all the time? "
Xie Huiren didn't know if his students could understand his speech. In fact, this was the first time he expressed such a view. He didn't know when this concept was formed, but he had been feeling it in his heart for many years.
Xie Huiren talked for more than ten minutes. At this time, he breathed a sigh of relief, lowered his voice, and said: "Students, maybe you all know the stories in the Bible, and you think those miracles are nonsense. One would ask, if there is a God, why doesn't he show his miracles any more?"
"Yeah, without seeing miracles, it's hard for us to believe in the existence of God."
"No, no." Xie Huiren shook his head. "Perhaps you haven't understood what I just said. Religion and science are twins in our understanding of nature. Do you want to see miracles?"
The student nodded.
"Okay, look out the window, the sun rises and sets, spring, summer, autumn and winter, there is wind, fire, day and night; think about yourself again, the human heart is beating non-stop but it will not get tired like other muscles , Human breathing is so regular, human body temperature is so natural, and how the human mind works, we still don't fully understand... My child, what miracle do you want? Are these not enough? Nature is The greatest miracle God has given us. As I said just now, science and religion together are nature. Buddha and God are actually a way for us to understand the laws of nature, or in other words, they themselves are nature.”
The truth of history, classics and folklore, laws of nature, religion and science.In Xie Huiren's mind, these concepts began to intertwine again.
What about the silver bracelet pattern?Will the legend that it buried Buddhist classics become the truth of history?If, indeed, there were these lost texts about the truth about Buddhism, then the history of Buddhism would be rewritten, at least in part.But what kind of natural laws will these Buddhist secrets reveal?
Xie Huiren was a little sleepy, he was really tired, and his mind was completely exhausted.He was about to doze off when Sally touched him beside him, "Show me that set of patterns."
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