關於 adequate meaning ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

George W Bush's statement:
Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country. Yet we have resisted the urge to speak out, because this is not the time for us to lecture. It is time for us to listen. It is time for America to examine our tragic failures – and as we do, we will also see some of our redeeming strengths.

It remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country. It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future. This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society? The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.

America’s greatest challenge has long been to unite people of very different backgrounds into a single nation of justice and opportunity. The doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union. The answers to American problems are found by living up to American ideals — to the fundamental truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights. We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice. The heroes of America — from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation — stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

That is exactly where we now stand. Many doubt the justice of our country, and with good reason. Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions. We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress. But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.

This will require a consistent, courageous, and creative effort. We serve our neighbors best when we try to understand their experience. We love our neighbors as ourselves when we treat them as equals, in both protection and compassion. There is a better way — the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice. I am confident that together, Americans will choose the better way.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics/george-w-bush-statement-on-george-floyd/index.html

Ideologies just got mixed into doctrinal basis ...

For my friends who are interested in the Evangelical Theological Society, please take a look at this important message from past president Stan Gundry, who, like me, is vitally interested in the continuing health of the Society. He has given me permission to copy it here.

WHENCE AND WHITHER ETS?
An Open Letter to the Members of ETS
Stanley N. Gundry
President of the Evangelical Theological Society, 1978

The following resolutions were adopted in the last business session of the 2015 national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society:
(1) We affirm that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and thus possess inherent dignity and worth.
(2) We affirm that marriage is the covenantal union of one man and one woman, for life.
(3) We affirm that Scripture teaches that sexual intimacy is reserved for marriage as defined above. This excludes all other forms of sexual intimacy.
(4) We affirm that God created men and women, imbued with the distinct traits of manhood and womanhood, and that each is an unchangeable gift of God that constitutes personal identity.
In the immediate aftermath of this business session, many ETS members were deeply troubled that any ETS members would vote against these resolutions. The post-ETS blogs of a few ETS members and the comments of their followers expressed dismay that anyone who claims to be evangelical and subscribes to the Doctrinal Basis of the Society would cast a negative vote.
But there was also a significant minority that opposed and voted against these resolutions. These members were troubled that such resolutions would be introduced, that they were not ruled out of order or at least tabled, and that they were passed by a significant majority of those present and voting. I was among the minority that voted “Nay.”
Why? It is a question that deserves to be answered because I am convinced that the future of ETS depends on our repudiation of what happened in that session and that ETS members must realize that resolutions of this nature are not consistent with the nature of the Society. In fact, the issue at stake is whether or not ETS will remain committed to the original purpose for which ETS was formed. I have not taken even an informal poll of others who voted against the resolutions, but I have discussed the matter with enough members to give me confidence that many members agree that the future of ETS is at stake.
My history within ETS uniquely qualifies me to address the concerns these resolutions raise. I have been immersed in the culture and affairs of ETS since my student days in the 1950s and 1960s. I knew on a first-name basis many of the first-generation ETS members. I was taught by some of them. I have been a full member of the Society since about 1968. I have attended most national meetings since 1970, and in the 1970s I was an active participant in the Midwestern section of ETS, serving also as president of that section and on its leadership committee. Then in 1978 I served as the national president of ETS and planned the program for the 30th Annual Meeting of ETS in collaboration with Dr. Kenneth Kantzer, followed by serving the allotted time on the ETS Executive Committee. Relevant to the concerns at hand, my first-hand knowledge of the workings of ETS and its Constitution, most especially the Purpose and Doctrinal Basis of the Society as stated in the Constitution, and my acquaintance with many of the founders and first-generation members of ETS give me insight into their intentions in forming the Society.
So why did I vote against the resolutions? Because the resolutions went beyond the Doctrinal Basis of the Society and were inconsistent with the clearly stated Purpose of ETS. But I run ahead of myself and it is a bit more complicated than that. So let me start at the beginning, the resolutions themselves.
First, it is unfortunate that the resolutions were presented at the last business meeting and then discussed and voted on as a group. My understanding is that those responsible for the agenda did not anticipate that the resolutions would be controversial and so they were scheduled to be considered in the last business session. This was not inconsistent as such with the ETS Constitution or Bylaws, but in a case like this, members should have had advance warning of the nature of the resolutions and ample opportunity to discuss them among themselves and on the floor of the business meeting. Further, many members had already left the conference or were absent for other reasons. Thus, members could not deliberately consider in advance whether or not voting on such resolutions was even consistent with the Purpose of ETS; and, given the time constraints of the program, there was not sufficient time to debate the merits of the individual resolutions and to vote up or down on each one.
The resolutions were so poorly stated that they needed such careful consideration. For instance, the second resolution ignored the question of biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage. And given the diversity of views on divorce and remarriage within ETS, is this really a question on which ETS should be taking a position even in the form of a resolution? What about the third resolution? Viewed superficially, who could possibly object to that resolution? But looked at more closely, “sexual intimacy” and “all other forms of sexual intimacy” are squishy descriptors. Are they intended to refer to physical sexual intimacy, and if so, are holding hands, kissing, or hugging forbidden? My fundamentalist and separatist father would have thought so, but what about the membership of ETS? Would we have a consensus on that question?
And what about the fourth resolution affirming “distinct traits of manhood and womanhood”? While I suspect all members of ETS (even those of us who self-identify as biblical egalitarians) believe that men and women in many respects are complementary to one another, many of us also believe that the terms “manhood” and “womanhood” are reifications of socially and culturally conditioned patterns of behavior more than they are descriptors of biblically supported male and female characteristics. Rather than being biblically supported, the terms tend to refer to stereotypical lists of alleged gender characteristics to which men and women are expected to conform. Even self-avowed complementarians have no consensus on what constitutes “manhood and womanhood,” so why would a scholarly society like ETS that includes both complementarians and egalitarians even take such a resolution seriously?
So I return to the opening statement of this first point—scheduling the resolutions for consideration as a group at the second business meeting without prior notice meant there was not adequate time to consider and debate the merits and wording of the resolutions and it made it impossible to carefully consider whether or not voting on such resolutions was even consistent with the Purpose of ETS.
Second, this broader issue needs to be considered by the Society. Is it even appropriate for resolutions to be introduced, debated, and voted on that go beyond the Doctrinal Basis and officially stated Purpose of the Society? I believe the answer is a clear and unequivocal “No!” Members tend to forget that ETS was never intended to have a doctrinal statement to which members had to subscribe. We have a “Doctrinal Basis,” one that originally had one affirmation: The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. Years later, the Trinitarian statement was added to the Doctrinal Basis out of concern that anti-Trinitarians such as Jehovah’s Witnesses might successfully claim membership in ETS. But even with that addition, it remains a Doctrinal Basis, not a doctrinal statement. Some members seem not to understand and/or remember the significance of the fact that we function as a scholarly society with a Doctrinal Basis. But even many who remember that we have a Doctrinal Basis all too easily and sloppily refer to it using the phrases “doctrinal basis” and “doctrinal statement” interchangeably, suggesting they do not really understand (or perhaps accept) the significance of the distinction. But this distinction is at the very heart and Purpose of ETS. A bit of historical context will be useful here.
When ETS was formed in 1949, evangelical biblical and theological scholarship was just beginning to emerge from its decline in the dark days of the modernist-fundamentalist debate and the loss of so many mainline denominations and associated colleges, seminaries, and missionary agencies to the takeover of these institutions by theological liberals. For at least fifteen or twenty years, fundamentalists and evangelicals at the local church and grassroots level had a profound suspicion of serious biblical and theological scholarship. But in the mid and late 1940s, this began to change as scholars who were willing to self-identify as fundamentalists (in the classic meaning of that term) and/or evangelical began to find each other, come together, and realize that in spite of all that divided them, they held one thing in common—the Bible and the Bible alone in its entirety is God’s Word written, it speaks truthfully on whatever it intends to say and teach, and hence it is the only rule for Christian faith and practice. Eventually in 1949 many of the fundamentalist and evangelical scholars who shared this conviction agreed there was a need for a scholarly society where members shared the same basis on which conservative scholarship and research should be discussed and debated. On that Doctrinal Basis, they formed the Evangelical Theological Society.
It is easy to forget, or perhaps many ETS members do not know, how deep and sometimes rancorous the divisions were that otherwise separated these same scholars. These divisions ranged from matters of church polity to biblical hermeneutics to the various loci of systematic theology. In fact, dispensational and amillennial theologians were accustomed to trading charges that the hermeneutical methods and theological systems of the other undermined the authority of Scripture. Scholars who practiced secondary separation risked their reputations if they joined with other evangelical scholars who practiced only primary separation or who were inclusivists. At least four of the ETS presidents in the first twenty years of the society would have been sympathetic to what is now known as biblical egalitarianism, a matter over which ETS members today have profound disagreements. Yet these scholars came together in ETS as did Pentecostals and cessationists, believer-immersionists and paedo-sprinklers, Arminians and Wesleyans and Reformed and Lutheran, as well as those who held to congregational, or presbyterial, or episcopal church polity.
A quick scan of the listing of ETS presidents over the past sixty-seven years and the institutions they represented makes the same point. Schools represented range from Wycliffe College, to Dallas Theological Seminary, to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, to Moody Bible Institute. The theological spectrum represented by ETS presidents is also quite remarkable. As I look at the list I can identify at least twelve presidents associated with one of five or six varieties of Presbyterian and Reformed communions, thirteen who were dispensationalists, five who were covenant premillennialists, one Pentecostal, three Wesleyans, and twelve sympathetic with biblical egalitarianism.
Throughout its history, ETS has been a demonstration of the Purpose for which ETS was formed: The Purpose of the Society shall be to foster conservative biblical scholarship by providing a medium for the oral exchange and written expression of thought and research in the general field of the theological disciplines as centered in the Scriptures.
So I return to the opening question and statement of my second point—“Is it even appropriate for resolutions to be introduced, debated, and voted on that go beyond the Doctrinal Basis and officially stated Purpose of the Society?” I believe the answer is a clear and unequivocal “No!” Why? Because such resolutions are inconsistent with the Purpose of ETS and the reason why we have a Doctrinal Basis and not a doctrinal statement.
Third, the introduction and passage of the four-fold resolution package and the internet conversations following the 67th Annual Meeting are symptomatic of the desire of some ETS members to move the Society in the direction of precise, doctrinal, and interpretive clarity and definition, ideally in the form of a doctrinal statement and other “position statements.” I am trained not only as a theologian but as a church historian; consequently I am inclined to be skeptical of conspiracy theories unless there is compelling evidence. Nevertheless, based on the evidence, some of us are now wondering if there is a conspiracy within ETS to:
1) ease out biblical egalitarians,
2) exclude women from the leadership of ETS,
3) let qualified women scholars know they are not part of “the old boys network,”
4) shut down discussion of contentious ethical and theological issues,
5) marginalize those who do not come out on the “right side” of those issues,
6) “pack” the nominating committee so as to get their compatriots in the positions of leadership,
7) question the evangelical and inerrantist bona fides of those who ask hard questions and come up with answers that most of us are not persuaded by, and
8) propose and pass a poorly framed set of four resolutions that makes the Society sound more like the Family Research Council or the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood than the intentionally diverse “medium for the oral and written expressions of thought and research in the general field of the theological disciplines as centered in the Scriptures” as stated in the ETS Purpose statement.
Lest I be misunderstood, I do believe that theological boundaries are important within the church and its institutions, and as an evangelical Protestant, I believe it is appropriate for churches and parachurch organizations to draw those boundary lines, based on their understanding of Scripture. But ETS is not a church and it was formed to serve a clearly defined purpose. It is significant that it takes an 80% majority vote to amend only three things in the ETS constitution—the Doctrinal Basis, the Society’s Purpose, and the requirement for an 80% majority to amend the first two items. The founders of our Society could hardly have made it clearer that they regarded the Purpose and Doctrinal Basis of ETS to be essential to the organization they were creating.
Why is it important to guard the integrity of the original Purpose and Basis of ETS? I will answer with another question. What better forum is there for collegial discussion and debate of complementarianism and egalitarianism, open theism and classical theism and all points in between, eschatology, the “new perspective” on Paul, and yes, even the question of whether same-sex “marriages” can be defended biblically, than a forum where we have agreed to appeal to the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice, the Bible, God’s Word written?
Copyright © 2016 by Stanley N. Gundry. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

【玳瑚師父佛學論】 《相聚與分離皆是緣》
Gatherings & Farewells Are Just Affinity At Play (English)

有首歌的歌詞，相當有意思，特恭錄之以勉勵大家，早日看清這「緣」字，打開心門讓陽光照進來，雨過天晴，清清朗朗。歌中唱到：別管以後將如何結束，至少我們曾經相聚過。吾認為這兩句歌詞，實足以撫平親朋戚友的「離去」，以及夫妻與情侶，緣盡分離的內心創傷。利益眾生的方法，就是佛法。這首歌的作詞人，在不知不覺中，也就行了「菩提」。大家不妨仿效之，創作一首解壓的歌曲，比如，當我們同在一起，真快樂無比.......

生離死別，是世間的眾苦之一。吾，玳瑚師父，早已「領教」過這一苦。那是不是從今以後，吾再也不會經歷這種苦呢？答案是，不是的。我們祇要一天還有世緣，依然還是會碰到這種苦。就拿吾來說吧！時至今日，吾也還不是得飽受徒弟與學生的叛離。這其實也是一種「生離死別」啊！走過某間咖啡屋，走過某間餐館，走過某個地方，似乎有隻形影不離的榔頭，欲悄悄地敲痛吾的心，痛苦一般可見。但還好，吾是一位實修的行者，除去七情六欲，是吾一生的功課。傷過、痛過、哭過，更能引領廣大眾生，邁進康莊大道。

妳你與三兩好友，正想合資做生意，什麼時候開業，什麼時候結業，在妳你們的八字裡，已有「伏藏」的密碼。當中當然不祇這些八字裡的「伏藏」，亦含蓋身體的健康指數，富貴與貧賤，丁貴與否，夫妻有否百夜恩，等等。那為何一個人的八字能夠「顯示」這麼多的資訊呢？有句成語說得極是，那就是：若要人不知，除非己莫為。我們所做的一切，就是一因子，因緣俱足下，就成了果。

在真正學佛人的眼裡，來討債的也好，來報恩的也好，善緣也好，逆緣也罷！隨她他來，隨她他去，這樣心才能普空寂，一切的因因果果，亦才能停止。心即是明鏡台，此時就如《金剛經》裡的無我相、無人相、無眾生相、無壽者相，一切明明白白，正如大日照破無明。但，現今的妳你，必需要有相聚與分離皆是緣的基礎心念。

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There is a verse in a song which I find particularly meaningful, and I would like to share it with everyone as a form of encouragement. I hope you will finally see clearly the true meaning of affinity and open up your heart to let in the rays of the sun, forming a clarity as clear and bright as the after-rain. In the song, one verse reads, "It does not matter how it might end in the future, at least we were together once." In my opinion, this verse is fully capable of soothing any grief and hurt from the departure of a family member or friend, as well as the emotional pain and sorrow from the breakup of a marriage or relationship. The Dharma is present in all things beneficial for the sentient beings. The lyricist of this song has inadvertently performed a deed of compassion. Everyone can learn from him, and compose similar songs that relieve sufferings. For example, "When we get together, how merry we all are..."

Separation between loved ones in life or death is one of the sufferings for all sentient beings. Master Dai Hu has long experienced this suffering. Does it mean that from now on, I am not going to live through this suffering again? The answer is NO. As long as we are still connected by affinity to this world, we are bound to encounter this suffering. Take myself for example, I had to live through the agony of the betrayal of disciples and students. This is also a kind of separation suffering! Walking past a certain coffee house, a certain restaurant, a certain place, there seemed to be an invisible hammer hitting my heart silently and painfully. Fortunately, I am a true practitioner, with a lifetime mission to rid myself of the seven emotions and six desires. After the hurt, pain and tears, I am more equipped to lead all sentient beings and forge ahead, onto the glorious Path.

When you and a couple of friends strike upon a new business idea, the key to the crucial questions of when to start the business, when to exit, etc, are already hidden in the birth charts of your partners and yourself. Of course, there are more hidden information in a birth chart: indicators concerning your health, wealth, descendants, marriage, etc. Why is it possible that a birth chart can reveal so much about oneself? I would like to share a well-said Chinese saying, "The best way to hide a misdeed is not to commit it." Our every action is like a planting a seed which, under adequate conditions, shall ripen into the fruit.

In the eyes of a true Buddhist practitioner, it makes no difference if a karmic debtor or a karmic benefactor appears, be it a kindred affinity or a difficult one, let it all rest! They can come and go as they like. Only in this state of mind can the mind be unbound and unattached. Only this enlightened state can put an end to the unrelenting causes and effects. When enlightened, your heart is like a mirror, as put forth in the Diamond Sutra, that do not abide in the notion of self, person, sentient being and life span. Everything becomes crystal clear, like the rays of the Sun that have fully penetrated the darkness of ignorance. But at this moment in time, you must have this basic foundation to realise that all gatherings and farewells are just but affinity.

In the eyes of a true Buddhist practitioner, it makes no difference if a karmic debtor or a karmic benefactor appears. Be it a kindred affinity or a difficult one, let it all rest! They shall come and go as they like. Only in this state of mind can the mind be unbound and unattached. Only this enlightened state can put an end to the unrelenting causes and effects. When enlightened, your heart is like a mirror, as put forth in the Diamond Sutra, that does not abide in the notion of self, person, sentient being and life span. Everything becomes crystal clear, like the rays of the Sun that have fully penetrated the darkness of ignorance. But at this moment in time, you must have this basic understanding that all gatherings and farewells are just affinity at play.

www.masterdaihu.com/gatherings-farewells-are-just-affinity-at-play/