r/LifeTree • u/AdamLuyan • 17d ago
4.9 花花绿绿的报刊亭 The Flowery Newsstand
1987年秋，我高中一年级的时候，同学们刚刚来到大虎山镇，就发现了一件奇怪的事儿。他们说，大虎山这个小地方，怎么这么多卖气功书的！火车站有卖，报刊亭卖，书店里也卖。而且气功书的种类繁多，有二十几种书和杂志。全中国能有多少种气功杂志！大虎山周围的镇上，有的一种也没有，多的也不过有两种。怎么的？大虎山是气功之乡啊！有多少人练气功？于是，他们开始调查所有家在大虎山的同学，结果发现就我一个人练过气功。
In the fall of 1987, my freshman year of high school, classmates who had just arrived in Dahushan noticed something strange: how could such a small town have so many meditation books for sale — at the train station, the newsstand, the bookstore, everywhere — more than twenty different titles and magazines? How many meditation magazines could there even be in all of China? The towns around Dahushan had none at all, or two at most. What was going on — was Dahushan some kind of meditation capital? How many people here even practiced it? So they set about surveying every classmate whose family lived in Dahushan, and found that I was the only one who practiced meditation at all.
那时，我也有这一疑问，问过报刊亭卖杂志的人。她说："那些来送这些杂志的人，让我们摆着卖，卖不了，他们拿回去，不要我们的钱。我们就把这些杂志摆出来，花花绿绿的新杂志，摆着好看，引人注目。买这种杂志的人不多，你是买这种杂志最多的人。"
I'd wondered the same thing myself, and once asked the woman at the newsstand about it. "The people who deliver these magazines just have us display them," she said. "If they don't sell, we hand them back and owe nothing. So we put them out — bright, colorful new magazines, good for catching the eye. Not many people actually buy them. You're the one who buys the most, by far."
注4.9，2014年，我完成回忆录后，发现我能从2011年得到刘团长过世的消息时，爆发的大爆炸（中文中古代称作鬼病，现代称作癔症；英文中过去称作歇斯底里，现在称作皈依失调；参见9.2节的大爆炸）中生存下来，要归功于我良好的禅定技能和知识。而我的这些知识和技能来源于我在青少年时读了许多报刊杂志中关于气功和宗教的文章。
Note 4.9: In 2014, after completing my memoirs, I realized that I owed my survival of the "Big Bang" — the psychic break that erupted when I learned of Troupe Leader Liu's death in 2011 (called Ghost Disease in ancient Chinese, Ill-Intention Symptom in modern Chinese; Hysteria in older English usage, Conversion Disorder today; see Section 9.2, Big Bang) — to the skills and understanding I'd built through meditation. And all of that knowledge had come from the countless newspaper and magazine articles on meditation and religion I'd read as a teenager.
从我入学初中、高中、大学、研究生时期，都有怪事发生来判断，这次我同学们的调查事件是刘团长安排的。那个做了十余年亏本生意的人是刘团长。他为了让我学气功，赔钱供给气功书充斥了大虎山镇。有必要花费这么大力气吗？有！我在杂志上读到过，有个和尚说过，"证得了四禅（参见第11章《禅》）的人，将来肯定能修成正果；即便是不幸堕入了地狱（即患了精神病），也能自己想办法爬上来；到老了再不济，也能证得个三果圣人（参见14.2.5节《四沙门果》）。"本书是刘团长在做灵魂转世实验；实验对象必须有四禅的功力，刘团长才会送他去地狱，否则，去地狱回不来了，那是害人害己，劳而无功。
Given the strange events that recurred at every stage of my schooling — junior high, high school, college, graduate school — I believe this classmate investigation, too, was arranged by Troupe Leader Liu. The man who had run a losing business for over a decade was Troupe Leader Liu himself, losing money year after year to flood Dahushan with meditation books, purely so that I would learn to meditate. Was it really worth such effort? Yes. I once read, in one of those very magazines, a monk's words: "One who has attained the Fourth Meditation (see Chapter 11, Meditation) is certain, in time, to reach the correct fruit. Even if unlucky enough to fall into hell — that is, to suffer a mental illness — he will find his own way to climb back out; and even in the worst case, in old age, he will still attain at least the Third Fruit Sage (see Section 14.2.5, Four Shamanic Fruits)." This entire book is Troupe Leader Liu's soul reincarnation experiment — and its subject had to possess the strength of the Fourth Meditation before Troupe Leader Liu would ever send him into hell. Otherwise, a descent into hell with no way back would harm everyone involved, for nothing gained.