Predestination

　　Predestination

　　翻譯：北京外國語大學北戴河外語培訓基地副校長 張寶丹

　　Many things in this world find neither an answer nor a proper explanation. For example, why should two become a couple among the billions of people on earth? Why don't they love each other even though they live together everyday, and yet one of them falls in love with someone else at the first sight? Why do the members of a family quarrel daily but still stay unhappily together? Why can't they get married in spite of the fact that they are a perfect match to each other? Why should one toil so much for the other? Why should the love-infatuated always be deserted by the heartless?.....

　　People remain puzzled in spite of their great effort to understand the endless questions, so they invented the all-embracing word---“predestination”. In order to be more precise, different combinations were derived from it: love predestination, sinful predestination, evil predestination, and kind predestination etc., hence we have the sayings like: “Predestination will definitely bring you together despite the great distance while without predestination, you'll never know each other even though you are standing fact to face” “A distant couple is tied up with the thread of predestination” and even the phrases and expressions like “the god of marriage”, “predestination without luck”, “l(fā)uck without predestination”, “Coming across each other is a kind of predestination”, “Enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road”, “They shall not marry each other unless they are predestined lovers”. If people still can not find answers, they turn to “reincarnation” for help. Lin Daiyu is always in tears just for repaying for the water Jia Baoyu had given her when she was a plant in her previous life in A Dream of the Red Mansions .

　　In fact, the so-called “predestination” is often a kind of coincidence or chance encounter, even a kind of accident. If you don't meet this person, you'll surely meet some one else. But people insist on adding some colors of emotions or superstition, thus generating various religious factions, the main theories of which are no more than that of “reincarnation”, “heaven and hell” and “the ever-lasting soul” etc.

　　But does anyone know anything about his previous life or his after life? What could he do even if he knew them? If he can't grasp the present life, what's the benefit of commenting on the visionary after life? Giving up today is the same as giving up tomorrow, for they are closely connected. How absurd it is to work like the horse or cattle in the present life in order to be above others in the next life.

　　Have you ever seen emperor Qinshihuang reincarnate? Have you ever heard of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty going into another life? Where is now Monk Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty (What we know is the Big Wild Goose Pagoda)? Where is the Monkey King (The Flower and Fruit Mountain does exist, though)? And where can we find those great emperors such as Yao , Shun Yu and the influential philosophers like Confucius, Laozi and Zhuangzi?