Many years ago, I came across a book by Anthony de Mello called Awareness. De Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest whose writing wa

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问题     Many years ago, I came across a book by Anthony de Mello called Awareness. De Mello was
an Indian Jesuit priest whose writing was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. To me, he is a great source of inspiration, and he has much to say about happiness and pain. Life is easy; life is delightful. It’ s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, and your cravings.
    One of De Mello’s key messages is that, by nature, life is not a struggle. Attachment— greed, craving, ambition—is the cause of all misery, and so to be detached is to be happy. Does this mean we should have no preferences? Should we not want to achieve more? Should we not desire and seek out the good things in life? I think it would be absurd to say that we should have no preference between different experiences and conditions, but a distinction needs to be made between preference and attachment. We are surrounded by contrast, and one can choose—and enjoy—different experiences, without being attached to them. To enjoy someone’ s company without being clingy, to feel great pleasure when watching the sunset on a cool summer evening without mourning the coming of the night—we can have preferences and make choices about what we experience without craving them. We are free to choose—and to prefer—some conditions over others. But when our preferences become cravings, then life becomes a struggle to achieve these conditions, and once we have achieved them, we start to worry about losing them.
    An analogy might be going for a long walk in the country—there will be various different scenes, and each one can be enjoyed. Perhaps you have some preference for a certain view or a particular spot on the walk, and you might linger in one place for a while, but all of the different parts of the walk can be enjoyed along the way.
    Happiness, it seems, is to accept the world as it is, enjoying the journey as we pass through and being appreciative of each stage on the way. If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth. Trying to change the world in a forceful way is a foolish endeavor. Changing yourself may, in time, change things around you, but to "take on" the world will probably not achieve much. Force may result in change, but it will be temporary and easily reversed. Real change is the result of quiet, patient working with the natural flow of things, just as water can cut a deep valley in a landscape.
    Lao Tze, the semi-mythical Taoist sage, is said to have written in the Too Te Ching, "By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning."
What is the quality of water which is appreciated by the author?

选项 A、Still water runs deep.
B、Constant dripping wears away a stone.
C、Where there is a will, there is a way.
D、Fish do not come home when the water is too clear.

答案A

解析 由文章倒数第二段最后一句话“…just as water can cut a deep valley in a landscape.”可知,作者欣赏的是静水流深的特性。A项是“静水流深”,B项是“滴水穿石”,C项是“有志者,事竞成”,D项是“水至清则无鱼”,故选A。
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