At the moment, the person I'm enjoying the most is Ketut. The old man—truly one of the happiest humans I've ever encountered—is giving me his full access, the freedom to ask any lingering questions about divinity, about human nature. I like the meditations he has taught me, the comic simplicity of "smile in your liver" and the reassuring presence of the four spirit brothers. The other day the medicine man told me that he knows sixteen different meditation techniques, and many mantras for all different purposes. Some of them are to bring peace or happiness, some of them are for health, but some of them are purely mystical—to transport him into other realms of consciousness. For instance, he said, he knows one meditation that takes him "to up."
目前，我最欣赏的人是赖爷。这位老人——确实是我遇过最快乐的人之一——允许我有完全的自由去询问他任何萦绕在我心中有关神灵、人性的问题。我喜欢他教我的禅修，简单而逗趣的"让肝脏微笑"，以及令人感到心安的"四兄弟法"。有天药师告诉我，他懂得十六种不同的禅坐法，以及切合不同需要的多种咒语。有些为了带来和平或快乐，有些针对健康，但有些只是单纯的神秘咒语——将他送往其他的知觉境界。比如，他说知道一种带他去"上面"的禅坐法。

"To up?" I asked. "What is to up?"
"上面？"我问，"什么是上面？"

"To seven levels up," he said. "To heaven."
"去上面七层，"他说，"去天堂。"

Hearing the familiar idea of "seven levels," I asked him if he meant that his meditation took him up through the seven sacred chakras of the body, which are discussed in Yoga.
听见这熟悉的"七层"观念，我问他是否指禅坐带他穿越瑜伽所谓体内的神圣七重轮。

"Not chakras," he said. "Places. This meditation takes me seven places in universe. Up and up. Last place I go is heaven."
"不是七重轮，"他说，"是地方。这种禅坐法带我去宇宙的七个地方，一层一层上去，最后抵达天堂。"

I asked, "Have you been to heaven, Ketut?"
我问："你去过天堂吗，赖爷？"

He smiled. Of course he had been there, he said. Easy to go to heaven. "What is it like?"
他微笑。他当然去过天堂。他说，去天堂并不难。

"Beautiful. Everything beautiful is there. Every person beautiful is there. Everything beautiful to eat is there. Everything is love there. Heaven is love."
"天堂什么样子？"

Then Ketut said he knows another meditation. "To down." This down meditation takes him seven levels below the world. This is a more dangerous meditation. Not for beginning people, only for a master.
"很美。那儿一切都很美。美丽的人。美丽的食物。那儿的万事万物都是爱。天堂即爱。"赖爷接着说他知道另一种禅坐。"去下面。"这种去下面的禅坐，带他前往地下七层，是一种危险的禅坐法。初学者不宜，只适合能手。

I asked, "So if you go up to heaven in the first meditation, then, in the second meditation you must go down to . . . ?"
我问："所以，第一种禅坐带你上天堂，那么，第二种禅坐肯定带你……"

"Hell," he finished the statement.
"下地狱。"他讲完句子。

This was interesting. Heaven and hell aren't ideas I've heard discussed very much in Hinduism. Hindus see the universe in terms of karma, a process of constant circulation, which is to say that you don't really "end up" anywhere at the end of your life—not in heaven or hell—but just get recycled back to the earth again in another form, in order to resolve whatever relationships or mistakes you left uncompleted last time. When you finally achieve perfection, you graduate out of the cycle entirely and melt into The Void. The notion of karma implies that heaven and hell are only to be found here on earth, where we have the capacity to create them, manufacturing either goodness or evil depending on our destinies and our characters.
这很有趣。我不常听印度教讨论天堂地狱的观念。印度人从因果报应的观点看待宇宙，一种永恒的循环过程，也就是说，当你走到生命尽头，最终的安息地并非某个地方——不是天堂也不是地狱——而是以另一种形式再次循环，回到世间，以解决上辈子尚未完成的关系或错误。终于获致完美之时，你从循环中完全脱离出来，融入无极之境。因果循环的观念暗示着，天堂与地狱只在尘世间看得见；因为依照自身的命运和性格，我们可以做出善行与恶行，而由此创造出天堂与地狱。