The older the question, the older the answers.
问题越老，答案就越老。
The rational part means I have to reconcile with science and evolution. I have to reject all the pieces I can’t verify for myself. For example, is meditation good for you? Yes. Is clearing your mind a good thing? Yes. Is there a base layer of awareness below your monkey mind? Yes. All these things I’ve verified for myself.
理性的部分意味着我必须与科学和进化和解。我必须拒绝所有我不能验证的内容。例如，冥想对你有好处吗？是的。理清思路是好事吗？是的。你的猴心下面有一层底层意识吗？是的。所有这些我都亲自验证过了。
Some beliefs from Buddhism I believe and follow because, again, I’ve verified or reasoned with thought experiments myself. What I will not accept is things like, “There’s a past life you’re paying off the karma for.” I haven’t seen it. I don’t remember any past lives. I don’t have any memory. I just have to not believe that.
我相信并遵循佛教的一些信仰，因为我自己也用思想实验来验证或推理。我不会接受的事情是，” 你正在偿还前世的因果报应。“我没看过。我不记得任何前世。我没有任何相关记忆。我就只是不能相信。
When people say your third chakra is opening, etc.—I don’t know—that’s just fancy nomenclature. I have not been able to verify or confirm any of that on my own. If I can’t verify it on my own or if I cannot get there through science, then it may be true, it may be false, but it’s not falsifiable, so I cannot view it as a fundamental truth.
当人们说你的第三个脉轮打开时，等等。——我不知道是什么——只是知道那些是花里胡哨的命名。我自己无法验证或核实这些。如果我无法验证它，或者如果我不能通过科学到达那里，那么它可能是真的，也可能是假的，但它肯定是无法证伪的，所以我不能将它视为基本真理。
On the other side, I do know evolution is true. I do know we are evolved as survival and replication machines. I do know we have an ego, so we get up off the ground and worms don’t eat us and we actually take action. Rational Buddhism, to me, means understanding the internal work Buddhism espouses to make yourself happier, better off, more present and in control of your emotions—being a better human being.
另一方面，我知道进化是真实存在的。我也知道我们进化成了生存和复制的机器了。我知道我们有一个自我，所以我们离开地面，蠕虫不会吃掉我们，我们实际上采取了行动。对我来说，理性佛教意味着理解佛教所倡导的内在工作，让自己更快乐、更富裕、更现实、更能控制自己的情绪——成为一个更好的人。
I don’t subscribe to anything fanciful because it was written down in a book. I don’t think I can levitate. I don’t think meditation will give me superpowers and those kinds of things. Try everything, test it for yourself, be skeptical, keep what’s useful, and discard what’s not.
我不赞成任何幻想的东西，因为它只能被写在书里。我觉得我不能让自己漂浮在空中。我不认为冥想能带给我超能力和其它类似的东西。尝试一切，亲自测试，保持怀疑，保留有用的，舍弃没用的。
I would say my philosophy falls down to this—on one pole is evolution as a binding principle because it explains so much about humans, on the other is Buddhism, which is the oldest, most time -tested spiritual philosophy regarding the internal state of each of us.
我想说我的哲学是这样的——一方面是进化作为一个有约束力的原则，因为它解释了很多关于人类的事情，另一边是佛教，这是最古老的、最经得起时间考验的关于我们每个人内在状态的精神哲学。
I think those are absolutely reconcilable. I actually want to write a blog post at some point about how you can map the tenants of Buddhism, especially the non -fanciful ones, directly into a virtual reality simulation. [4]
我认为这些是绝对可以调和的。我实际上想写一篇博客文章，讲述如何将佛教的教义，尤其是那些不迷信的教义，直接映射到虚拟现实的模拟中。
Everyone starts out innocent. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom is the discarding of vices and the return to virtue, by way of knowledge.
每个人一开始都是无辜的。每个人都会被腐蚀。智慧是通过知识的方式，抛弃恶习，回归美德。