我转向佛学其实也只有1年零9个月，所以在耶鲁的时候也错过了weinstein教授退休前的最后一次课程，之后耶鲁就没有了固定的佛学教职，后来只是来了两个短期的访问教授。所以去年申请的时候，我只递交了几所学校，觉得准备得并不充分，也没有比较成熟的sample, 尽管我也申请了普林斯顿的宗教系，但没有成功。录取我的学校，比如伊利诺大学却没有足够的财政支持。在美国，同时有财力和师资支持学习中国佛教的学校本来就寥若晨星，竞争就更加白热化。另一个重要的原因是，耶鲁的学习压力颇大，非常疲劳，所以我更愿意用1-3年的时间作充分的准备，喘一口气，慢慢地积累，而且尽管我读书不曾懈怠，以泡一流的图书馆为乐趣，以自由的大学为终生的归宿，但是我也要考虑个人的生活，在美国攻读佛学博士，年深日久，语言和养的训练漫长，食品难以下咽，如果没有F2的支持真的是难以为继。所以到香港大学作为中转站，可是说是多方面因素的综合考量的结果。而且在这里也有一些耶鲁所没有的佛学书籍，从参学的角度来讲也可以博采众长。

　　4日：今天尝试翻译梵文的几个短句，据我的观察是选自古印度史诗摩柯婆罗多(Mahabharata)，梵语如此的复杂，学起来真的是很难啊，不过学任何的语言都不容易，明天下午梵文课，所以干脆一天都用来学习语言了。

　　3日：在图书馆里看各种画册，在伯孜克里卡的图片中似乎找到了迦楼罗（Garuda）的形象, 在敦煌壁画中好像也有，看来要花时间去浏览所有石窟全集了，从四川到中亚地区的巴米扬，不过也是很有意思的工作。后来看了最新的两期《中国国家地理》，四川的图片真是美极了，关于甘肃长成的一张照片勾起了我对于当年路过的河西走廊的美好回忆。照片里的地方我亲自经过，而且那天晴空万里，我打前站，在辽阔无垠的戈壁大地上飞驰，身心似乎都得到了解放，真的非常怀念，等我有时间的时候，重新回忆并写出当年的所有的经历，题目就叫做 “大西北的苍茫时刻”。

　　2日：借了一本哈佛的照片集(Harvard: A Living Portrait)，看了前言，是从11000多张照片中选出了100多张，确实是非常的精彩。我复印了几张贴在书桌前的小板子上，其中印象深刻的一张，是一位教授在哈佛燕京图书馆展读藏文典籍的场景，他坐在两排书架之间，架子上是一排排一层层用黄布包起来的藏文佛经，就像我在XZang看到的那样。本书的编者是哈佛音乐系毕业的，他在前言的最后写了一段很精彩的对哈佛的总结，我看了很感动，特意摘录如下：

　　Harvard has given great men and great ideas and great citizens and great teachers to the nation; she has seen us through nearly a dozen wars. She has given us six presidents of our country; she has stood like a rock in our midst. She has weathered criticism just and unjust, and abuse which is never just; she has 1ooked at her own faults, which have been not a few, and has strived to correct them. She is far from perfect, but she knows that perfection is nothing more than the perpetual will to seek it. If she was ever the rich man’s college, she is just as much the poor man's college today; for her sole requirement of the entering student is that he or she have character, ambition, ability, and the capacity to learn to think for himself----for her self. She is not prejudiced with respect to race or creed or color. She is able and eager to help those who enter her gates. She is anxious to be one thing above all: a better Harvard tomorrow than she was yesterday. To that end, she is permanently for change but always with an eye to the unchanging values of the human spirit. Lastly and most important, she has faithfully stood for the freedom of the mind and the dignity of the individual and never more so than in the strange abrasive period which has followed World War II. As one alumnus once wrote to my office: This gift is "for the institution that represents one of th great achievements of American democracy ."

　　David McCord