莲花开到了莫斯科——一位俄罗斯莲友的求道心路

本文作者净机居士是继净行居士后第二位皈依慧净法师的非华人莲友，他是俄罗斯人，在莫斯科出生、受教育，现居尼泊尔及泰国。他曾修学印度教、藏传佛教、日本净土真宗及日本净土宗，最终安心于善导大师的净土思想。以下是他寻找生命解脱的曲折历程。（原文为英文）

SAYING GOODBYE TO SAMSARA
永别了 轮回

The first time I heard the essence of Buddhist teaching was when I was 16. In my hometown of Moscow, our teacher in college included an overview of the Four Noble Truths in a course on philosophy. This was a watershed moment for me, which I remember very vividly. It was the first time I came to realize that I wasn’t that strange, “gloomy” or even abnormal, as my parents and friends sometimes described me. They thought so because I felt powerfully that life was full of suffering. I had had this conviction since I was 13. In that class, I heard from our professor that it wasn’t only I who thought so, but Shakyamuni Buddha himself. Not only did he believe it, but this notion – existential suffering and how to remedy it – became the cornerstone of all Buddhism, one of the global religions. I well remember how inspiring these insights were!

16岁，莫斯科，哲学课，四圣谛概要……那天的情形至今仍历历在目。对我来说，那是我人生的分水岭。13岁时，我便开始认为生活充满了“苦”，于是我的父母和朋友常常形容我古怪、奇葩、不正常。但在那堂课上，我第一次意识到我并不是像他们所形容的那样，因为教授说不止我自己认为人生是苦，释迦牟尼佛也是这么说的。释迦牟尼佛有感于人生之苦而思考如何解脱。从此，轮回之苦和解脱之道成为佛教这个全球性宗教的重要组成部分。我清晰地记得这些见解是多么启发人心！

Yet, at that time I did not explore Buddhism thoroughly. There was this scary concept of “emptiness,” which I immediately misunderstood as non-existence. Somehow, I felt that there must be some Absolute, perhaps not exactly a God – an anthropomorphic being who sits in the sky and judges everyone – but an Ultimate Reality, consciousness itself. So I started studying Hinduism and its many schools, which from the very beginning postulates the existence of such an Ultimate Reality.

但在那个时候，我并没有认真地去研究佛教。一接触到佛教的“空”，我立即误解为“无”，这让我觉得可怕。然而，不知何故，我总觉得世界上一定有一个“绝对的存在”。这个“绝对的存在”也许不完全是神——一个端坐天际、审视评判众生的拟人化的存在，而是一个“终极实在”的意识。于是我开始研究印度教和它的许多教派，因为印度教从一开始就假定这样一种“终极实在”的存在。

I spent about ten years exploring various Hindu traditions and visiting spiritual centers and masters in my home country, Russia. Hinduism also believes that life as we know it is something to be transcended, for it is full of suffering, the main one being continued transmigration in the wheel of samsara (cycle of rebirth). Gradually I ended up studying and trying to practice the teachings of non-duality (Advaita Vedanta).

在俄罗斯，我花了大约10年的时间研究不同印度教的教义，参拜他们的灵修中心和大师们。印度教也认为生活充满了苦，人类必须超越现有的生活，跳出生命的轮回。后来我逐渐地结束了学习，放弃了尝试修习非二元性（吠檀多不二论）的教义。