对生活的评注 2-29

ON THE HOT rock in the burning sun the village women were spreading the paddy that had been kept in the storehouse. They had carried large bundles of it to the flat, sloping rock, and the two oxen that were tied to the tree would presently tread on the paddy to release the grain. The valley was far from any town, and the huge tamarind trees gave deep shadows. Through the valley a dusty road made its way to the village and beyond. Cattle and innumerable goats covered the hillsides. The rice fields were deep in water, and the white rice birds flew with lazy wings from one field to another; they seemed without fear, but they were shy and would not let one get near them. The mango trees were beginning to bloom, and the river made a cheerful noise with its clear running water. It was a pleasant land, and yet poverty hung over it like a plague. Voluntary poverty is one thing, but compulsory poverty is quite another. The villagers were poor and diseased, and although there was now a medical dispensary and food was distributed, the damage wrought by centuries of privation could not be wiped away in a few years. Starvation is not the problem of one community or of one country, but of the whole world.

在灼热的太阳下，村里的妇女们正在把存放在仓库里的稻草铺开在很烫的岩石上。她们把大捆的稻草放到平坦而倾斜的岩石上，绑在树上的两头牛现在正踩稻草，以释放谷物。山谷离任何城镇都很远，巨大的罗望子树留下了深深的阴影。穿过山谷，一条尘土飞扬的道路通向村庄和更远的地方。牛和无数的山羊覆盖了山坡。稻田深映水面，白稻鸟慵懒地翅膀从一片田地飞翔到另一片田地。他们似乎没有恐惧，但他们很害羞，不会让人靠近他们。芒果树开花了，河水清澈的流水发出欢快的响声。这是一片宜人的土地，但贫穷却像瘟疫一样笼罩着它。甘于贫困是一回事，但被迫贫困是另一回事。村民们贫穷，病入膏肓，虽然现在有一个医疗药房，食物被分发，但几个世纪的贫困造成的破坏，无法在几年内消除。饥饿不是一个社区或一个国家的问题，而是整个世界的问题。

With the setting sun, a gentle breeze came from the east, and from the hills came strength. These hills were not high, but high enough to give to the air a soft coolness, so different from the plains. The stars seemed to hang down very close to the hills, and occasionally one would hear the cough of a leopard. That evening the light behind the darkening hills seemed to give greater meaning and beauty to all the things about one. As one sat on the bridge, the villagers going by on their way home suddenly stopped talking, and only resumed their conversation as they disappeared into the darkness. The visions that the mind can conjure up are so empty and dull; but when the mind does not build out of its own materials – memory and time – , there is that without name.

夕阳西下，一阵微风从东方吹来，吹到山上时变强烈了。这些山丘并不太高，却有足够的高度，可以给空气带来柔和的凉爽，与平原截然不同。星星似乎挂在离山丘很近的地方，偶尔人们会听到豹子的咳嗽声。那天晚上，在黑暗的山丘后面的光明似乎赋予了人所拥有的更大的意义和美丽。当人坐在桥上时，回家路上经过的村民们突然停止了交谈，直到他们消失在黑暗中时，才继续交谈。头脑所能唤起的景象是如此的空虚和沉闷；但是，当头脑不用建造它自己的材料 —— 记忆和时间 —— 那么就出现了无名。

A bullock cart, with a hurricane lamp burning, was coming up the road; slowly every part of the steel-bound wheel touched the hard ground. The driver was asleep, but the oxen knew their way home; they went by, and then they too were swallowed up in the darkness. It was intensely still now. The evening star was on the hill, but soon she would drop from sight. In the distance an owl was calling, and all about one the insect world of the night was alive and busy; yet the stillness was not broken. It held everything in it, the stars, the lonely owl, the myriad insects. If one listened to it, one lost it; but if one were of it, it welcomed one. The watcher can never be of this stillness; he is an outsider looking in, but he is not of it. The observer only experiences, he is never the experience, the thing itself.

一辆燃烧着飓风灯的牛车正驶上马路。慢慢地，钢制车轮的每个部分都触及到坚硬的路面。司机睡着了，但牛知道他们回家的路。他们走了过去，然后他们也被黑暗吞噬了。现在，强烈地静止了。傍晚的星星在山上，但很快她就会从视线中消失。远处有一只猫头鹰在叫，夜里的昆虫世界还在活动、忙碌。然而，寂静并没有被打破。它容纳了一切，星星，孤独的猫头鹰，无数的昆虫。如果一个人听到了它，他就失去了它；但如果一个人属于它，它就欢迎他。观察者永远不可能有这种寂静；他是一个局外人，却不属于它。观察者只不过是各种的体验，他永远不是体验本身、事物本身。

He had travelled all over the world, knew several languages, and had been a professor and a diplomat. In his youth he had been at Oxford, and having made his way through life rather strenuously, he had retired before the usual age. He was familiar with Western music, but liked the music of his own country best. He had studied the different religions, and had been particularly impressed with Buddhism; but after all, he added, stripped of their superstitions, dogmas and rituals, they all essentially said the same thing. Some of the rituals had beauty in them, but finance and romance had taken over most religions, and he himself was free of all rituals and dogmatic accretions. He had played around with thought-transference and hypnosis, and was acquainted with clairvoyance, but he had never looked upon them as an end in themselves. One could develop extended faculties of observation, greater control over matter, and so on, but all this seemed to him rather primitive and obvious. He had taken certain drugs, including the very latest, which for the time being had given him an intensity of perception and experience beyond the superficial sensations; but he had not given great importance to these experiences, for they did not in any way reveal the significance of that which he felt was beyond all ephemeral things.

他走遍了世界各地，懂得几种语言，并曾担任教授和外交官。在他年轻的时候，他一直在牛津大学工作，并且相当努力地度过一生，他在通常的年龄之前就退休了。他熟悉西方音乐，但最喜欢自己国家的音乐。他研究过不同的宗教，对佛教的印象特别深刻。但毕竟，他补充说，剥开它们的迷信、教条和仪式，它们基本上都说了同样的话。有些仪式有美，但金钱和浪漫已经占据了大多数的宗教，他自己也摆脱了所有的仪式和教条主义的累赘。他玩过思想转移和催眠，熟悉透视，但他从未把它们本身视为目的。人可以发展出扩展的观察能力，对物质的更大控制，等等，但在他看来，所有这些都是相当原始和明显的。他服用了某些药物，包括最新的药物，这些药物暂时使他具有超越表面感觉的感知和体验强度；但是他没有十分重视这些体验，因为它们丝毫没有揭示他所认为的超越所有短暂事物的意义。

“I have tried various forms of meditation,” he said, “and for a whole year I withdrew from all activity to be by myself and meditate. At different times I have read what you say about meditation, and was greatly struck by it. Right through from boyhood the very word ‘meditation’, or its Sanskrit equivalent, has had a very strange effect upon me I have always found an extraordinary beauty and delight in meditation, and it is one of the few things that I have really enjoyed in life – if one may use such a word with regard to so profound a thing as meditation. That enjoyment has not gone from me, but has deepened and widened through the years, and what you said about meditation has opened new heavens to me. I don’t want to ask you anything more about meditation, because I have read almost everything that you have so far said about it but I would like to talk over with you, if I may, an event that happened quite recently.” He paused for a moment, and then went on.

“我尝试过各种形式的冥想，”他说， “整整一年，我退出了所有的活动，独自一人冥想。在不同的时间，我读过你关于冥想的话，并被它震撼了。从小到大，“冥想”这个词，或者它的梵文等价物，对我产生了非常奇怪的影响，我总是在冥想中发现一种非凡的美丽和喜悦，这是我在生活中真正享受的为数不多的事情之一 —— 如果人可以用这个词来形容冥想这样深刻的事情。这种享受并没有从我身上消失，而是随着这些年而加深和扩大，你说的冥想为我打开了新的天堂。我不想再问你关于冥想的任何事情，因为我已经读了你到目前为止所说的几乎所有关于冥想的事情，但我想和你谈谈，如果可以的话，最近发生的一件事。” 他停顿了一会儿，然后继续说下去。

“From what I have told you, you can see that I am not the kind of person to create symbolic images and worship them. I have scrupulously avoided any identification with self-projected religious concepts or figures. One has read or heard that some of the saints – or at least some of those whom people have called saints – have had visions of Krishna, Christ, the Mother as Kali, the Virgin Mary, and so on. I can see how easily one could hypnotize oneself through a belief and evoke some vision which might radically alter the conduct of one’s life. But I do not wish to be under any delusion; and having said all this, I want to describe something that took place a few weeks ago.

“从我告诉你的，你可以看到我不是那种创造象征性图像并崇拜它们的人。我一丝不苟地避免对自我投射的宗教概念或人物进行任何认同。人读到或听说过一些圣人 —— 或者至少是一些被人们称为圣徒的人 —— 有过克里须纳、基督、作为圣母的卡利、贞洁的玛利亚等异象。我可以看到一个人如何通过一种信念来催眠自己，并唤起一些可能从根本上改变一个人的生活行为的异象。但是，我不希望有任何幻想；说了这么多，我想描述几个星期前发生的事情。

“A group of us had been meeting fairly often to talk things over seriously, and one evening we were discussing rather heatedly the remarkable similarity between Communism and Catholicism, when suddenly there appeared in the room a seated figure, with yellow robe and shaven head. I was quite startled. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the faces of my friends. They were completely oblivious of the figure, and were so occupied with their discussion that they did not notice my silence. I shook my head coughed, and again rubbed my eyes, but the figure was still there. I cannot convey to you what a beautiful face it had; its beauty was not merely of form, but of something infinitely greater. I could not take my eyes off that face; and as it was getting to be too much for me, and not wanting my friends to notice my silence and my astonished absorption, I got up and went out on the veranda. The night air was fresh and cold. I walked up and down, and presently went in again. They were still talking; but the atmosphere of the room had changed, and the figure was still where it had been before, seated on the floor, with its extraordinary head cleanly shaven. I could not go on with what we had been discussing, and presently all of us left. As I walked home the figure went before me. That was several weeks ago, and it has still not left me though it has lost that forceful immanence. When I close my eyes, it is there, and something very strange has happened to me. But before I go into that, what is this experience? Is it a self-projection from the unconscious past, without my cognizance and conscious volition, or is it something wholly independent of me, without any relation to my consciousness? I have thought a great deal about the matter and I have not been able to find the truth of it.”

“我们一群人经常开会，认真地谈论事情，有一天晚上，我们相当激烈地讨论共产主义和天主教之间的显著的相似之处，突然在房间里出现了一个坐着的人，穿着黄色的长袍，剃着光头。我大吃一惊。我揉了揉眼睛，看着朋友们的脸。他们完全无视这个人，并且忙于讨论，以至于他们没有注意到我的沉默。我摇了摇头，咳嗽了一声，又揉了揉眼睛，但身影还在那里。我无法向你传达它有多么美丽的面孔；它的美丽不仅仅是形式，而是无限大的东西。我无法将目光从那张脸上移开。由于这对我来说太重要了，并且不想让我的朋友注意到我的沉默和我惊人的吸引，我站起来，走到阳台上。晚上空气清新寒冷。我上上下下，现在又进去了。他们仍然在说话。但房间的气氛变了，身影依旧在原地，坐在地上，其非凡的脑袋干净利落地剃光。我无法继续我们一直在讨论的事情，现在我们所有人都离开了。当我走回家时，那个身影在我面前。那是几个星期前的事了，尽管它已经失去了那种有力的内在性，但它仍然没有离开我。当我闭上眼睛时，它就在那里，一些非常奇怪的事情发生在我身上。但在我开始之前，这种体验是什么？它是来自无意识过去的自我投射，没有我的认知和有意识的意志，还是完全独立于我的东西，与我的意识没有任何的关系？我对这件事想了很多，但我无法找到它的真相。”

Now that you have had this experience, do you value it? Is it important to you, if one may ask, and do you hold on to it? “In a way, I suppose I do, if I am to answer honestly. It has given me a creative release – not that I write poems or paint, but this experience has brought about a deep sense of freedom and peace. I value it because it has caused a profound transformation in myself. It is, indeed, vitally important to me, and I would not lose it at any price.”

既然你已经有了这样的生活，你珍惜它吗？如果有人可能会问，它对你很重要吗，你是否抓着它？ “在某种程度上，我想我会这样做，如果我要诚实地回答的话。它给了我一种创造性的释放 —— 不是我写诗或画画，而是给这种生活带来了一种深刻的自由与和平感。我珍惜它，因为它在我自己身上引起了深刻的转变。它确实对我至关重要，我会不惜任何代价而不失去它。”

Are you not afraid of losing it? Do you consciously pursue that figure, or is it an everliving thing? “I suppose I am apprehensive of losing it, for I do constantly dwell on that figure and am always using it to bring about a desired state. I had never before thought of it in this way, but now that you ask, I see what I am doing.”

你不怕失去它吗？你是有意识地追求那个人影，还是它是一个永远活着的东西？ “我想我担心失去它，因为我确实一直在关注那个身影，并且总是用它来带来一种理想的状态。我以前从来没有这样想过，但现在你问，我明白我在做什么。”

Is it a living figure, or the memory of a thing that has come and gone? “I am almost afraid to answer that question. please do not think me sentimental, but this experience has meant a very great deal to me. Although I came here to talk the matter over with you and see the truth of it, I now feel rather hesitant and unwilling to inquire into it; but I must. Sometimes it is a living figure, but more often it is the recollection of a past experience.”

它是一个活生生的人，还是一个来来去去的事物的回忆？ “我几乎不敢回答这个问题。请不要认为我多愁善感，但这次生活对我来说意义重大。虽然我来这里是为了和你谈谈这件事，看看它的真相，但我现在感到相当犹豫，不愿意调查它；但我必须。有时它是一个活生生的身影，但更多的时候，它是对过去体验的回忆。”

You see how important it is to be aware of what is and not be caught in what one would like it to be. It is easy to create an illusion and live in it. Let us go patiently into the matter. Living in the past, however pleasant, however edifying, prevents the experiencing of what is. The what is is ever new, and the mind finds it extremely arduous and difficult not to live in the thousand yesterdays. Because you are clinging to that memory the living experience is denied. The past has an ending, and the living is the eternal. The memory of that figure is enchanting you, inspiring you, giving you a sense of release; it is the dead that is giving life to the living. Most of us never know what it is to live because we are living with the dead.

你看，意识到现实是多么地重要，而不是被困在人们想要的样子中。它很容易创造一种幻觉并生活在其中。让我们耐心地谈这个问题。活在过去，无论多么地愉快，无论多么地有启发性，都会阻止正在的体验。万物永远是新的，这个头脑发现，不生活在一千个昨天里，是极其艰巨和困难的。因为你紧紧抓住那段记忆，活生生的体验被拒绝了。过去在死亡，新的在永生。那个人影的记忆正在吸引你，激励你，给你一种释放的感觉；死人给活着的人赋予了生命。我们大多数人永远不知道生活是什么，因为我们同死亡住在一起。

May I point out, sir, that apprehension of losing something very precious has crept in. Fear has arisen in you. Out of that one experience you have brought into being several problems: acquisitiveness, fear, the burden of experience, and the emptiness of your own being. If the mind can free itself from all acquisitive urges, experiencing will have quite a different significance, and then fear totally disappears. Fear is a shadow, and not a thing in itself.

先生，请允许我指出，对失去一些非常珍贵的东西的担忧，已经在悄悄地蔓延开来。恐惧在你的心中升起。从那一次体验以来，你带来了几个问题：获取、恐惧、体验的负担和你自己存在的空虚。如果头脑能够从所有获取的冲动中解脱，那么体验就会有完全不同的意义，然后恐惧就会完全地消失。恐惧是一个影子，它本身不是一个实物。

“I am really beginning to see what I have been doing. I am not excusing myself, but as the experience was intense, so has been the desire to hold on to it. How difficult it is not to be caught in a deep emotional experience! The memory of an experience is as invitingly forceful as the experience itself.”

“我真的开始看到我一直在做什么。我不是在为自己开脱，但随着体验的强烈，人一直渴望抓住它。不陷入深刻的情感体验是多么地困难！对体验的记忆与体验本身一样诱人。”

It is most difficult to differentiate between experiencing and memory is it not? When does experiencing become memory, a thing of the past? Wherein does the subtle difference lie? Is it a matter of time? Time is not when experiencing is. Every experience becomes a movement into the past; the present, the state of experiencing, is imperceptibly flowing into the past. Every living experience, a second later, has become a memory, a thing of the past. This is the process we all know, and it seems to be inevitable. But is it?

区分体验和记忆是最困难的，不是吗？什么时候体验变成了记忆，变成一种过时的东西？细微的区别在哪里？它是时间的问题吗？在体验的时候，时间不存在。每一次的体验，都变成了走向过时的运动；现在，这种体验的状态，正在不知不觉地流入过去。一秒钟后，每一个活生生的体验都变成了一种记忆，一种过往。这是我们都知道的过程，它似乎是不可避免的。但它真是如此吗？

“I am following very keenly what you are unfolding, and I am more than delighted that you are talking of this, because I am aware of myself only as a series of memories, at whatever level of my being. I am memory. Is it possible to be, to exist in the state of experiencing? That is what you are asking is it not?”

“我非常敏锐地关注着你正在展开的事情，我很高兴你谈论这个，因为我意识到自己只是一系列的记忆，无论我在哪一个层面上。我就是记忆。有没有可能，存在于体验的状态中？这就是你要问的，不是吗？”

Words have subtle meanings to all of us, and if for a moment we can go beyond these references and their reactions, perhaps we shall get at the truth. With most of us, experiencing is always becoming memory. Why? Is it not the constant activity of the mind to take in or absorb, and to push away or deny? Does it not hold on to what is pleasurable, edifying significant, and try to eliminate all that is not useful to itself? And can it ever be without this process? Surely, that is a vain question, as we shall find out in the very asking of it.

言语对我们所有的人来说，都有微妙的意义，如果我们能暂时超越这些参考和它们的反应，也许我们就会明白真相。对于我们大多数人来说，体验总是成为记忆。为什么？难道不是头脑不断地活动，在接纳或吸收，推开或拒绝吗？难道它没有抓住那些令人愉悦的、具有启发意义的东西，并试图消除所有对自己没有用的东西吗？如果没有这个过程，它还能存在吗？当然，这是一个徒劳的问题，当我们提出这个问题的时候，将会发现它。

Now let us go further. This positive or negative accumulation, this evaluating process of the mind, becomes the censor, the watcher, the experiencer, the thinker, the ego. At the moment of experiencing, the experiencer is not; but the experiencer comes into being when choice begins, that is, when the living is over and there is the beginning of accumulation. The acquisitive urge blots out the living, the experiencing, making of it a thing of the past, of memory. As long as there is the observer, the experiencer, there must inevitably be acquisitiveness, the gathering-in process; as long as there is a separate entity who is watching and choosing experience is always a process of becoming. Being or experiencing is, when the separate entity is not.

现在让我们更进一步。这种主动的或被动的积累，头脑的这种评估过程，变成了审查者、观察者、体验者、思想者、自我。在体验的那一刻，体验者不存在；但是，当选择开始时，即当生命被结束，积累开动时，体验者就会形成。捕获的冲动抹杀掉生命 —— 那种鲜活的体验，使它成为过时的东西，过往的回忆。只要有观察者，有体验者，就必然有捕获性，即猎取的过程；只要有一个独立的实体在观察，在选择体验，就总有一个成为的过程。当分离的实体不存在的时候，就存在着生命或鲜活的体验。

“How is the separate entity to cease?”

“这个分离的实体如何消退？”

Why are you asking that question? The ‘how’ is a new way to acquire. We are now concerned with acquisitiveness, and not with how to attain freedom from it. Freedom from something is no freedom at all; it is a reaction, a resistance, which only breeds further opposition.

你为什么要问这个问题？ ‘如何’是一场新的狩猎运动。我们现在关心的是狩猎，而不是如何从中捕获自由。从某个事物中解脱出来，根本不是自由；这是一种反应，一种抵抗，只会滋生进一步的敌对。

But let us go back to your original question. Was the figure self-projected, or did it come into being uninfluenced by you? Was it independent of you? Consciousness is a complicated affair, and it would be foolish to give a definite answer, would it not? But one can see that recognition is based on a conditioning of the mind. You had studied Buddhism, and as you said, it had impressed you more than any other religion, so the conditioning process had taken place. That conditioning may have projected the figure, even though the conscious mind was occupied with a wholly different matter. Also, your mind being made acute and sensitive by the way of your life, and by the discussion you were having with your friends perhaps you ‘saw’ thought clothed in a Buddhist form, as another might ‘see’ it in a Christian form. But whether it was self-projected or otherwise, is not of vital importance, is it?

但是，让我们回到你最初的问题。这个人影是自我投射的，还是它不受到你的影响？它独立于你吗？意识是一件复杂的事情，给出一个明确的答案是愚蠢的，不是吗？但人可以看到，认知是基于头脑所受限的条框。你研究过佛教，正如你所说，它比任何其他宗教都更能打动你，所以条件反射过程发生了。这种条件反射可能已经投射了这个人影，尽管有意识的头脑被一个完全不同的物质所占据。此外，你的头脑因你的生活方式而变得锐利和敏感，通过你与朋友的讨论，也许你“看到”了穿着佛教形式的思想，如同另一个人可能会以基督教的形式“看到”它。但是，无论是自我的投影还是其它的方式，都不是至关重要的，不是吗？