amzshar

正當他們要過河的時候，一位貌美的女施主叫住了他們說：您們能幫我過河嗎？ 水流太急，小女子過不去。

小和尚一臉羞色的說：我們乃出家人，恐不甚方便。女施主，莫若等水緩再過河吧。

而在這時候，老和尚已經蹲下來拍拍胸膛說：女施主，老衲抱妳渡河吧。

就這樣，老和尚抱著女施主過河。

小和尚跟在師傅後面就很納悶，心想：不是說男女授受不親，不近女色的嗎？

過了河，老和尚放下女施主便繼續上路了。

小和尚，在後來的路上，百思不得其解，心裡一股納悶：師傅平日教導，出家人不近女色，為何今日竟抱了女人呢？！

直到城裡，老和尚正準備化齋，小和尚終於忍不住的說：師父！師父！你平日怎麼樣教導我，今日為何自己又抱了女人呢？

老和尚笑答：阿彌陀佛！老衲早已將女施主放下，你沒有！

在三國裡面，周瑜算是能夠觀照全局的聰明人物了，
可是不曉得為什麼，這種聰明一碰到諸葛亮就統統失效了；
諸葛亮到底比周瑜多出來了什麼？

諸葛亮比周瑜多出來的，是人生一種更高層次的聰明。
真正要形容，應該叫做"智慧"。

智慧不是機智，不是知識，更不是對外在環境全面性的觀點。
智慧所呈現的，是一種生命的態度。

他讓人往內在去看到自己內在的心靈，看到別人內在的心靈。
這幾乎是諸葛亮和周瑜最大的差別了。

諸葛亮看得到別人，也看得到自己，但周瑜卻只看得到別人，看不到自己。
這是為什麼我們一天到晚看到周瑜面對諸葛亮時老是在抓狂，老是被諸葛亮操縱，
這是他不自知的。
聰明的周瑜遇到了諸葛亮為什麼竟顯得如此愚蠢？
這是因為他少了一種內在的觀照，無法在面對事情的時候看到自己的內在。
周瑜向來是個表演者，他一切的努力，都是要從別人身上獲得掌聲。
對於必須靠這麼多掌聲與讚美才能滿足的人而言，周瑜自己並沒有看出這點，
當然很容易就落入了諸葛亮的操控之中。

既生瑜，何生亮？

周瑜的人生算是十分美滿的，不僅長得帥，又懂音樂、又會打仗，又娶到絕世美女小喬。

以他的條件應該過著幸福快樂的人生才對，

可是為什麼他會被諸葛亮整得那麼痛苦，老是大嘆：『既生瑜，何生亮』？

也許，周瑜的人生是一種完美的比賽。

很多人的人生都是這樣，然而這很可能也就是痛苦的開始。

人往往習慣先去注意優點，而忽略了缺點。

假如你懂得從整體去觀照人生，也許就不會只注意優點而疏忽了缺點。

人的優點是否就代表了他生命的成就或者幸福，這其實是很難說的。

優點就像水一樣，是可以載舟，也可能覆舟的。

　　美國有個學術研究，把學生分兩班，一班是很漂亮的女生，另外一班是很醜的女生，十幾年後統計這些人的成就，漂亮的女生畢業後多半當秘書或情婦，只有少數幾個有傲人的成就；反觀醜的女生多半當了主管，事業非常成功，婚姻幸福美滿的也占了多數。

為什麼優點，反而造成了人生限制呢？

可見集很多優點不見得都是好事，端視你怎麼對待那個優點，才是關鍵所在。反過來看，缺點也未必都是不好的，端看怎麼去面對自己的缺點。所以人生的優缺點與人生的幸福狀態不是成正比的，我們需要更多的智慧去處理那些優缺點。

在三國裡面就充滿這樣的智慧，大家如果多看看《三國志》，多想想裡面人物的行為，也許就能夠讓自己活得更快樂、更幸福些。

其實，人的一生有甚麼好比的：
　　10歲看智力，20看學歷。
　　　　30看能力，40看經歷。
　　　　　　50看財力，60看體力。
　　　　　　　　70看病歷，80看黃曆。

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest
universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this
is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell
you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did
I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college
graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very
strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all
set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I
popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my
parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night
asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of
course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated
from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She
refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later
when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that
was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents'
savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see
the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how
college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the
money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust
that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back
it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could
stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in
on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in
friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with,
and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal
a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into
by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let
me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in
the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer,
was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to
take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to
do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount
of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great
typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way
that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten
years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came
back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with
beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in
college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally
spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal
computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped
in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the
wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the
dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking
backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them
looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in
your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the
difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple
had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with
over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh —
a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get
fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I
thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or
so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and
eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with
him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my
entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the
previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it
was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to
apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even
thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn
on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed
that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to
start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure
about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my
life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company
named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy
Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a
remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the
technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.
And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from
Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm
convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for
your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep
looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you
find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the
years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day
as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an
impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the
mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life,
would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has
been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything —
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -
these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly
important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid
the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is
no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a
pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer
that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six
months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is
doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything
you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It
means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as
possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where
they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my
intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I
was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells
under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very
rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery
and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I
get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you
with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual
concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die
to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever
escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single
best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make
way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now,
you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic,
but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most
important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow
already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth
Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a
fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to
life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal
computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors,
and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years
before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and
great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog,
and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the
mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a
photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself
hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay
Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay
Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you
graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

tay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

.End.