Geshe Ngawang Wangyal 昂汪旺嘉格西

Geshe Ngawang Wangyal

Geshe Ngawang Wangyal (Wyl. dge bshes ngag dbang dbang rgyal) (1901-1983) — a Kalmyk-Mongolian lama who was the first to come to America and teach in 1955. He established the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in 1958 in New Jersey as the first Tibetan Buddhist Dharma centre in the West.

昂汪旺嘉格西（Wyl. dge bshes ngag dbang dbang rgyal）（1901-1983）來自蒙古卡爾梅克（Kalmyk，近俄國西蒙古處），他是1955年第一位到美國並開始教導的喇嘛。他於1958年在紐澤西建立西藏佛教學習中心，這是第一座在西方的西藏佛法中心。

Professor Robert Thurman writes:

羅伯．瑟曼教授（Robert Thurman）曾寫到:

In [Geshe Ngawang Wangyal's] presence it was hard to speak, my knees felt weak and my stomach unsettled. Yet the amazing thing was that Geshe Wangyal himself seemed as if he were not there. He had nothing to do with me, to me, or for me. He seemed fully content and unconcerned for himself. When I couldn’t find “him,” I was forced to ask myself, where is this “me” I’ve been pursuing? At twenty-one years old, after dropping out of school, leaving a new marriage, barely able to take care of myself, I felt a hint of something beyond myself.

在格西的面前，我難以開口，我感到膝蓋虛軟且胃腸翻攪，但令人驚奇的是，旺嘉格西自身看來彷彿並不在那兒，他與我、於我、或對我都沒有任何關係。他似乎相當心滿意足且全不在乎自身。當我無法找到「他」時，反倒被逼問我自己，我一直在追尋的這個「我」在哪裡？輟學之後，21歲時離開新婚的我，幾乎無法照顧我自己，我感到有個在我之外另有什麼的暗喻。

Geshe Wangyal was unlike anyone I had ever met. As a teenage monk he had nearly died of typhoid in the hot Black Sea summer. His mother heard that the monks had given him up for dead, so she came to the monastery and spent three days sucking the pus and phlegm out of his throat and lungs to keep him from suffocating. When he awoke, the first thing he was told was that she had succumbed to the disease she saved him from and died on the very day he recovered. He was appalled when he observed that though he felt grief at the news, another current in his mind would not let him think of anything else except his overwhelming thirst after his ten-day fever. Noting this dreadful degree of selfishness, he resolved then and there to give his last ounce to freeing himself and others from such involuntarily selfish impulses. I had never encountered such unconditional compassion directly in my entire life.

旺嘉格西不像任何我所見過的人。當他還是十幾歲的僧侶時，他曾在黑海的炎熱夏季中幾乎因傷寒而死，他的母親聽到眾僧人已放棄他時，她到寺院花了三天的時間將膿液和痰從他的喉嚨與肺中吸出，以使他不致窒息。當他醒來時，他被告知他的母親因救他而死於該疾病，而且就在他復原的那天去世。雖然感到十分地悲傷，但他驚駭地發現，發燒十天後，劇烈的口渴使他無法思及除此之外的任何其他事情。注意到此可怕的自私行為，他決定要從此耗盡全力來為自己與他人解除這樣不自主的自私衝動。在我這一生，我從未直接遇見像他這樣無條件的悲心行者。

Publications

• Geshe Wangyal, The Door of Liberation: Essential Teachings of the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition, 1973, republished by Wisdom Publications, 1995.

～中譯：Su-an

～完稿：Serena（2014.01.18） 代表「普賢法譯小組」與大眾分享，感謝所有參與翻譯及校對的志工夥伴！有關人名、地名等音譯或用詞，或因習慣不一、或因學識不足，若有錯誤、漏失或非官方稱呼，敬請各方法友來信指正及建議：sstc.roc@gmail.com。若有稍許功德，盡皆迴向上師長壽、正法長流、大地豐饒、眾生證果！