yoga.
Basically yoga is made up of two parts: bahirang (external yoga)
and antarang (internal yoga). The West practices only the former. It needs to enter into antarang yoga. After that begins the trip
to the unknown where the master makes the student gradually aware at
every stage, where you know that you are not the body or the mind and not even the soul. That is when you get the first taste of moksha
, or enlightenment. It is the sense of the opening of the silence,
the sense where you lose yourself and are happy doing it, where for
the first time your ego has merged with the superconsciousness. You
feel you no longer exist, for you have walked into the valley of death.
And if you start walking more and more in this valley, you become freer. 249 TEXT G
First read the question.
33. The reviewer?s comments on Henry Kissinger?s new book are
basically ____.
A.negative B.noncommittal C.unfounded D.positive Now go through TEXT G quickly to answer question 33. Whatever you think of Henry Kissinger, you have to admit: the man
has staying power. With a new book— Does America Need a Foreign Policy?
—on the shelves, Kissinger is once again helping to shape American thinking on foreign relations. This is the sixth decade in which that
statement can be said to be true.
Kissinger?s new book is terrific. Plainly intended as an extended tutorial on policy for the new American Administration, it is full of
good sense and studded with occasional insights that will have readers nodding their heads in silent agreement. A particularly good chapter
on Asia rebukes anyone who unthinkingly assigns China the role once
played by the Soviet Union as the natural antagonist of the U.S.
Kissinger?s book can also be read in another, and more illuminating, light. It is, in essence, an extended meditation on the end of a
particular way of looking at the world: one where the principal actors in international relations are nation-states, pursuing their
conception of their own national interest, and in which the basic rule of foreign policy is that one nation does not intervene in the internal
affairs of another.
Students of international relations call this the “Westphalian system,” after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended Europe?s Thirty Years
War, a time of indescribable carnage waged in the name of competing religions. The treaties that ended the war put domestic 250
arrangements—like religion—off limits to other states. In the war?s
aftermath a rough-rand-ready commitment to a balance of power among
neighbours took shape. Kissinger is a noted shcool of the balance of
power. And he is suspicious of attempts to meddle in the internal
business of others.
Yet Kissinger is far too sophisticated to attempt to recreate a world
that is lost.“Today,”he writes,“te Westphalian order is in systematic crisis.”In particular, nation-states are no longer the sole drivers
of the international system. In some cases, groups of states—like the
European Union or Mercosur—have developed their own identities and
agendas. Economic globalization has both blurred the boundaries
between nations and given a substantial international role to those
giant companies for whom such boundaries make little sense. In today?s
world, individuals can be as influential as nations; future historians
may consider the support for public health of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to be more noteworthy than last week?s United Nations conference on AIDS. And a large number of institutions are premised
on the assumption that intervention in the internal affairs of others
is often desirable. Were that not the case, Slobodan Milosevic would not have been surrendered last week to the jurisdiction of the war
crimes tribunal in the Hague.
The consequences of these changes are profound. Kissinger is right to note that globalization has undermined the role of the nation-state
less in the case of the U.S. (Why? Because it?s more powerful than anyone else.) Elsewhere, the old ways of thinking about the “national
interest”—that guiding light of the Westphalian system—have fewer
adherents than they once did. TEXT H
First read the question.
34. In the passage the author expresses his concern about ____.
A.the survival of small languages 251
B.globalization in the post-Cold War era C.present-day technological progress
D.ecological imblance
Now go through TEXT H quickly to answer question 34. During the past century, due to a variety of factors, more than
1 000 of the world?s languages have disappeared, and it is possible to foresee a time, perhaps 100 years from now, when about half of
today?s 6 000 languages will either be dead or dying. This startling rate of linguistic extinction is possible because 96
per cent of the world?s languages are now spoken only by 4 per cent
of the world?s population.
Globalization in the post-Cold War era has witnessed the coming of the information age, which has played an important role in promoting economic co-operation but which has, at the same time, helped
facilitate the assimilation of smaller cultural systems into a larger,
mostly English-speaking whole.
Internet and other forms of mass media have succeeded in making English
the worldwide standard.
In 1998, the Seminar on Technological Progress & Development of the
Present-day World was held in China. At the seminar, many participants
expressed concern over the potential risks associated with excessive
dependency on information technology. These critics claimed a move from “information monopoly” to “information hegemony” could possibly
become just another way for the strong to dominate the weak, culturally
as well as economically.
In other words, life in a technology-and information-based global
society may lead to a new social stratification, in which linguistic
assimilation will lead to cultural assimilation and
social injustice will abound. 252
In the 20th century, human society?s over-development caused the
deterioration of the environment and ecological imbalance. The
extinction of myriad biological species aroused deep concern which led
people to an understanding of the special importance of protecting rare
animals and plants on the brink of extinction. Now we face the question, is the maintenance of cultural and linguistic
diversity as important as the preservation of pandas and Chinese
white-flag dolphins? Given the open society in which we live, or wish to live, this question
becomes complicated. A balance must be struck between promoting
international exchanges on the one hand, and taking measures to protect
“small” languages on the other hand.
Most widely used languages, such as the six working languages—including English and Chiese—used in the United Nations,
have little to fear and need no special protection. But for other, more marginal languages some measures should be taken.
Professionals should be trained to study and use them in order to keep
them alive. Effective measures such as bilingual or multilingual
education should also be implemented to protect them from extinction.
To some, 6 000 may seem like an inexhaustible number of languages. To those same people, it may seem irrelevant if one or two of those
languages cease to be used.
But what many fail to realize is that language and culture are linked.
Without one, the other dies, and so with the death of