笨的感覺 Feeling of Stupidity

I now know what stupidity feels like.

我現在知道什麼是「笨的感覺」了。


The feeling of stupidity is not the feeling you get when you get when you forgot to bring lunch to work.  It is not the feeling you get when you made some mistake.

這裡所說「笨的感覺」，不是您忘記帶午餐上班的笨，也不是您犯了生活上的某些錯誤，所覺得的笨 。


No, I am talking about the feeling of stupidity when at one moment, you seems to know everything, and at the next, you know you have lost most of it, and you remember what you were like; smart. This feeling of stupidity is laced with great discomfort.

我說的「笨」，是您記得您有多聰明的「笨」。在某一個時刻，您似乎知道一 切，可是在下一個時刻
您卻忘記了大部分，但還記得您在那一刻以前是很聰明的。這種「笨的感覺」 是很不安的。


This is probably not unlike the feeling of a wealthy person losing everything he has overnight.

一個有錢人一夜之間失去所有的財產，或許也有類似的感覺。


For the past few weeks, I have been working and thinking night and day for the blog. Because we are just starting out, I want to make sure we have enough content for people to digest and I have a lot I want to say. Plus, I have to translate my writings to Chinese, and there are a lot of Buddhism words and phrases whose standard English translation that I am not familiar with, so I also had to do a lot of research.

在過去的幾個星期，為了這個部落格，我天天夜夜的在想佛學。
因為剛開始，我要確保我們有足夠的內容，加上有很多想說的話。
除此之外，我需要翻譯，所以也需要花很多時間去研究、
去了解如何用英文去詮釋佛學的單詞和句子。


During those time, I felt smart, because I felt that I have all the knowledge in the world.

那時候，我覺得自己很聰明，感覺世界上所有的知識都在我腦海裡。


Then, last night, I was able to rest a bit, because there are about an extra week of content for the blog ready, and our current topic has come to a natural resting place. It is time for our reader to think about what we wrote. It's time for digestion.

然後，昨天晚上，我終於能夠休息一下，
因為大約有一個星期的文章內容都準備好，我覺得能好好睡一覺了。
而且目前的話題已經到了一個自然需要休息的地方，讀者可能需要一些時間去思考、去消化。


So I had a great night of sleep, the best kind, uninterrupted for 8 hours.

所以，昨晚我的睡眠品質非常好，就是處於全然無知的狀態、八小時不間斷的睡眠。


And when I woke up in the morning, I felt that there is a gaping hole in my brain.  I still knew the topics, but I don't think I knew them as precise as before. The concepts that I used to knew with great precision have all seem to loss their clarity. I don't think I will be able to explain the concept to another as clearly as I felt that I should.

醒來之後，覺得我的大腦似乎有個大洞。我應該還知道那些佛學的知識，但並沒有很清楚、變得不精準了。這些概念好像都失去他們的清晰度。我無法解釋這些概念像以前那樣清楚明白。


"I got stupid." 

「我變笨了。」


Oh believe me, I know stupid. I have stood in awe of the brilliance of many people, blinded by them even, and felt stupidity before. But this feeling of stupidity is worse than any other, this is the feeling of stupidity that made you question if you are still the same person.  This is Stupid with capital 'S'.

呵呵！相信我！我了解「笨」。我被許多聰明人的光輝照過，甚至被他們所蒙蔽而覺得自己笨。但這裡所說笨的感覺是超越其他任何感覺，這種笨的感覺讓您懷疑您是不是同一個人。


Master Ban Ji said that this is good.  Our method is to help us understand ourselves better. There is no magic and no mystery to the process of understanding oneself. It is done by admit, accept and self-reflect. I admitted that I felt stupid. I accepted that I am stupid. And I self-reflected on my feeling of stupidity, what did it felt like and why did I feel this way about been stupid.  This is how one grows. We have many aspects, and stupidity is one of them. Doesn't hurt to get to know this aspect early.

半寄師父說，這樣很好。這裡所修的方法是幫助我們更好好的了解自己，沒有魔法、也不神秘。
了解自己的過程中，我們需要承認、接受和自我反思。我承認我笨，也接受我變笨，也進一步的去了解笨的感覺跟我對笨的感受。成長是這樣發展的。
人的自我，有許多方面，笨就是其中之一。早點了解自我的笨也是不錯的。


To reward my growth, she told me that I get to write about it so I can self-reflect even more. 

為了獎勵我的成長，半寄師父告訴我，需要寫這個經驗跟大家分享，所以我才能自我反省多一些。


So now, not only do I know I got stupid, the whole world now knows too.  That's just great!

所以放這篇文章在這裡，不只是我知道自己變笨，全世界也知道我變笨，真好！


My next article should be "How it feels to know the world knows you are stupid."

我的下一篇文章應該是「全世界都知道我變笨的感覺」。