The Gay Genius Chapter17

I. The central question

Q: Did Su Tungpo really use yoga and alchemy to prolonging his life?

A: In this chapter, I doubt Lin Yutang's view about India yoga and external pill. Su Tungpo began to study Buddhist and Taoist philosophy in Huangchow. However, the India yoga and his life seems have no relevance. In the Song dynasty, Zen Buddhist became very prevalent, maybe the meditation looked like Hindu yoga, but these were two different things. Actually, Hindu yoga came to China was very late, as far as we know, the scholars in the Song dynasty have no chance to learn yoga. In addition, about the alchemy, it was ture that external pill and internal pill were both existed in the history. Whereas, in the Song dynasty, the external pill was obsoleted. Scholars tended to study internal pill, which is the art of conserving life. So we should say that Su Tungpo used to study Zen Buddhist and yang sheng of Taoism, but he was not so interested in prolonging his life.

II. Sentence

1. During his Huangchow period Tungpo beagan to study Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, and this colored his thinking and writing afterwards.

colored  为……增添色彩、着色    

这个词用在这里十分巧妙，很形象地展现了佛道思想对苏东坡思想与写作的影响

2. Chinese practitioners sometimes are not aware that this is yoga, but call it by the name of "sitting still," "in trospection," "meditation," and other Buddhist-Taoist terms.

这一句话不得不摘出来，因为逻辑实在是奇怪极了。的确，“静坐”、“内观”、“冥想”在我们今天看来无疑是瑜伽，但是瑜伽中的这些名词是从哪里来的呢？而且在瑜伽术传入中国之前，这些名称的哲学依据又是什么呢？这些并不是佛教与道教混合而成的名词，而是禅宗中本来就有的东西，比如禅观、禅坐，借鉴了小乘佛教与密教的修持法。

3. Forgetting the wild goose chase after immortality, one comes back always to the principles of moderations, simple living, enough work, enough rest, and above all, no worries and avoiding emotional disturbances of all kinds. In other words, one always comes back to common sense.

wild goose chase    徒劳无益的追求，劳而无功的事

不做无谓之争、适度知足、作息适意、安心少虑即是养生之道，最后一句one always comes back to common sense总结的极其精炼，“遵循常理”，不仅仅是外在的规律，还包含了自身的规律。