Jose Vega居士講於2023年8月30日星期三晚 萬佛聖城大殿

諸佛、菩薩、上人、法師、法友們，阿彌陀佛。今天是盂蘭盆節，所以我想分享一些有關「追憶我們的祖先」的見解。

我是何西·維加，是培德中學男校女校的生物和環境科學教師。週一至週五，我也在男生宿舍照顧學生。我要講的故事是昨晚發生在我的宿舍房間内。當時我躺在床上，正在思考今晚的演講內容，突然睡著了。幾分鐘後，我醒來，所看到的景象讓我嚇得從床上摔了下來，這就是我驚嚇的程度。床上坐著一位古老的印度老人，他結跏趺坐而坐，看起來衣衫襤褸，讓我想起嚴肅表情的羅漢像。實際上，他看起來很不高興。當我從地板上站起來時，他已經不見了。儘管他什麼都沒說，但我有種感覺，好像他在傳達一些信息，類似於：“小子，你什麼時候兌現諾言？我們還在等待著。”

我走出房間，注意到滿月剛從東方升起，距離妙覺山不遠。盂蘭盆節是我們追憶祖先的日子，我也知道在許多傳統中，月亮被視為死亡之地，或者作為與我們潛意識對話的“女神”。我不禁想知道，那位古老的訪客是否僅僅是我想像中的產物。也許他是我的祖先？我永遠無法確定，但如果是的話，他看起來並不快樂。

在這個異象湧現之前，我正在考慮分享我人生的一個關鍵時刻所做的一個夢。當時，我剛在西班牙獲得了博士學位，並打算移居美國，在伯克萊國家實驗室做博士後研究。在我的夢中，我正在打包一個行李箱，但一個笨重的塑料包裝佔據了太多的空間。而且，我不知道包裝裡面是什麼。於是我開始拆開它。我所看到的是如此令人震驚，以至於我驚醒。那是我祖母的屍體。她是我父親的母親，已經去世多年。她在祖父去世後搬到我們家。她之前在西班牙一個鄉下地區過著非常辛苦的生活，然而搬到我們大城市的小公寓後，情況並沒有改善。她始終無法適應城市生活。我們相處也不融洽。作為一個城市長大的少年，我認為她使我感到沒面子。我甚至記得對她說了一些可怕的話，比如 “你吃得太多了”，這完全不是事實。那個夢將所有這些痛苦的記憶浮現了出來。我崩潰了。幾個小時裡，我淚流滿面，我只說了一句話：“請原諒我。”當我恢復冷靜時，我感到輕鬆了。不知何故，我知道我們的關係已經永久修復了。

現在，我想談談與我所談的內容相關的一個相對較新的科學領域。表觀遺傳學，發現我們有能力可以把我們的經歷標記在我們的基因物質裡，因此可以傳遞給下一代。[1] 這個主題非常引人入勝，因為它表明創傷是可以被繼承的。例如，在經歷過戰爭的世代的子孫輩中，恐懼和壓力相關的心理障礙的病例明顯多於平均水平。我們可能過著正常的生活，然而，卻受苦於原因不明的破壞性行為… 除非我們往前幾代去尋找其原因！

就在我和學生們研究表觀遺傳學的隔天，我收到了一封關於這方面的電子郵件。它包含了一個鏈接，指向一個採訪馬克·沃林（Mark Wolynn）的視頻，他是一名專門治療抑鬱、焦慮、恐懼、恐懼症、慢性疼痛、自毀行為等問題的心理學家。他專於調查可能的遺傳創傷而來進行治療。例如，他說，我們的祖父母中如果有人是孤兒，這可能是與遺棄、孤獨、缺乏自尊、抑鬱，甚至不同形式的虐待相關問題的根源。

他建議調查可能存在的家庭創傷，將它們從潛意識中揭示出來，並將它們整合入我們的人格中。治療創傷的最後一步，是將我們的祖父母和祖先，想像成守護天使，幫助我們，透過我們來治愈他們的創傷，從而幫助我們成熟。

地藏菩薩是佛教菩薩中最受歡迎的之一，我將論證他可以標示上述所描述的過程。就像在盂蘭盆經中，地藏菩薩本願經中，這位菩薩告訴我們，在一個遠古劫中，她是一位年輕的女子，她懷疑剛去世的母親墮入地獄，因此深感悲傷。當她懇切地向那個時代的佛陀祈禱時，她被送達到地獄，在那裡的一位守護者告訴她，由於她誠摯的祈禱，她的母親已經重生在天堂。

如果最折磨我們的，就是我們的祖先在呼求需要被幫助的，那該怎麼辦呢？經典和後代遺傳學都支持這一觀點。這意味著一種超越時間和空間的意識，並沒有人我之間的界限，我們的祖先透過我們內心深處的感受，向我們傳達信息。

生物學發現，在所有生命形式中存在著如此多的共同特徵，以至於它得出一個結論，認為一定有個最後的普遍共同祖先（LUCA）。因此，如果所有眾生都相互關聯，那麼我們的最終極的意識必定是所有眾生的意識。歸根結底，我們談論的是透過大乘佛教所提倡的對一切眾生的無條件愛和慈悲，來揭示知識、療愈和解脫的了解。

恆順法師剛問我，積極正面的情緒是否也可以在基因中傳遞。”我不知道，但我合理推斷是可能的。” 阿彌陀佛！

[1] 這個過程有幾種機制，包括DNA和組蛋白（DNA纏繞的蛋白質）的甲基化，以及非編碼RNA的生成。結果並不是核苷酸序列的改變，而是涉及壓力管理的某些基因的表達或沉寂。 [2] https://www.dailygood.org/story/2641/mark-wolynn

Talk at the Buddha Hall of CTTB By Jose Vega

August 30, 2023

Buddhas, bodhisattvas, Venerable Master, Dharma Masters, Dharma friends: Amitofo. Today is Ullambana Day so I thought about sharing some insights on the topic of “remembering our ancestors.”

I am Jose Vega, a teacher of Biology and Environmental Science at the High School in both boys and girls divisions. I also take care of the boys’ dorm during weekdays, and what I am going to tell just happened last night in my room. I was lying on my bed thinking about what to say in this talk when I fell asleep. I woke up a few minutes later and what I saw made me fall from the bed, literally, such was my shock. There was an ancient old man sitting full lotus on my bed! He looked Indian and wore a ragged reddish garment. He reminded me of one of those images of Arhats of stern expression. In fact, he looked upset. When I stood up from the floor, he was not there. Although he did not say anything, I had the feeling he was communicating something like, “Man, when are you going to deliver? We are still waiting.”

I walked out of my room and noticed that the full moon was just rising from the east, not too far from Wonderful Enlightenment Mountain. Ullambana is a day to remember our ancestors, and I also know that the moon is considered by many traditions as the land of death, or as the “goddess” that speaks to our unconscious. I could not help wondering if that old visitor could be anything else than a figment of my imagination. “Perhaps an ancestor of mine?” I will never know for sure, but if he was, he was not happy.

Before the irruption of that vision, I was thinking about sharing a dream I had at a crucial time in my life. I had just earned my Ph.D. in Spain and was about to move to America to do a postdoc at the Berkeley National Lab. In my dream, I was packing a suitcase, but a bulky plastic wrap was taking up too much space. Besides, I didn’t know what was inside. I started to unwrap it. What I saw was so shocking that I woke up. It was the corpse of my grandmother. My father’s mom had already passed away some years ago. She had moved to our place when she was widowed. She had had a very difficult life in a rural part of Spain, and it did not improve after moving into our small apartment in a big city. She never got used to it. And we never got along. Being a city teenager, I thought of her as someone who embarrassed me. I even remember telling her horrible things such as, “You eat too much,” which was not at all true. That dream brought all those painful memories to surface. I broke down. For hours, all I said in tears was, “Please, forgive me.” When I regained composure, I felt lighter. Somehow I knew our relationship had healed, for good.

Now I want to talk about a relatively new scientific field connected to what I am talking about. Epigenetics has discovered that our experiences are capable of marking our genetic material and, therefore, be transmitted to new generations. [1] The subject is fascinating because it is saying that traumas can be inherited. For example, in the grandchildren of the generations who endured wars, there are significantly more cases of mental disorders related to fear and stress than on average. We may have a normal life and, nevertheless, suffer destructive behaviors without apparent cause… Unless we look for it some generations before!

Well, just the day after studying epigenetics with my students, I received an email talking about it. It contained a link to an interview with Mark Wolynn,[2] a psychologist specialized in treating depression, anxiety, fear, phobias, chronic pain, self-destructive behaviors, etc., with the particularity of doing so by investigating possible inherited traumas. For instance, he says that the orphanhood of one of our grandparents can be the source of problems related to abandonment, loneliness, lack of self-esteem, depression, and even different forms of abuse.

He recommends investigating possible family traumas, bringing them to light from the subconscious, and to integrate them into our personality. The last step in healing the trauma is visualizing our grandparents and ancestors as a kind of protective angels that help us to heal their traumas through us, and, by doing so, helping us to mature.

Earth Store (Skt. Ksitigarbha) Bodhisattva is one of the most popular of the Buddhist pantheon, and I am going to argue that he could symbolize the process described. Like in the Ullambana Sutra, in the Earth Store Bodhisattva Sutra, this bodhisattva tells us that, in a lifetime of a previous eon, he was a young woman deeply sad for she suspected that her mother, just deceased, had fallen into hell. While she was praying fervently to the Buddha of that time, she was transported to hell where a guardian told her that, thanks to the sincerity of her prayers, her mother had been reborn in heaven.

What if what afflicts us the most were the wailing of our ancestors asking for help? The Sutra would support this view, as epigenetics does too. This would imply a consciousness that transcends time and space, without borders between us and others, where our ancestors speak to us through our most intimate feelings.

Biology has found so many common characteristics in all forms of life that it concludes that there must have been a last universal common ancestor (LUCA). If all living beings are therefore related, then our ultimate consciousness must be the consciousness of all living beings. Ultimately, we are just talking about uncovering knowledge, healing and liberating knowledge, through the unconditional love and compassion for all living beings championed by Mahayana Buddhism.

Dharma Master Heng Shün has just asked me whether positive emotions could be also transmitted in the genes. “I don’t know, but I suspect so”.

Amitofo!

[1] There are several mechanisms that account for the process, such as the methylation of DNA and histones (proteins on which DNA is wound around), and the production of non-coding RNA. The result is not a change in the nucleotide sequence, but the expression or silencing of certain genes related to stress management. [2] https://www.dailygood.org/story/2641/mark-wolynn