WALKING DOWN THE straight road on a lovely morning, it was spring, and the sky was extraordinarily blue; there wasn't a cloud in it, and the sun was just warm, not too hot. It felt nice. And the leaves were shining and a sparkle was in the air. It was really a most extraordinarily beautiful morning. The high mountain was there, impenetrable, and the hills below were green and lovely.
在一个美好的早晨，走在笔直的道路上， 正值春天，天空格外蔚蓝； 里面没有云，太阳只是温暖，不太热。 感觉很好。树叶耀眼，在空中闪烁。 它真的是一个异常美丽的早晨。 高山在那里，坚不可摧，下面的山丘绿意盎然，很可爱。
And as you walked along quietly, without much thought, you saw a dead leaf, yellow and bright red, a leaf from the autumn. How beautiful that leaf was, so simple in its death, so lively, full of the beauty and vitality of the whole tree and the summer. Strange that it had not withered. Looking at it more closely, one saw all the veins and the stem and the shape of that leaf. That leaf was all the tree.
你安静地走着，不经意间， 你看到了一片枯叶，呈黄色和鲜红色，一片来自秋天的叶子。 那片叶子多么美丽，死得如此简单、如此活泼， 洋溢着这整棵树和夏日的美与活力。 奇怪的是，它没有枯萎。更仔细地看它， 一个人看见所有的叶脉、叶柄和那片叶子的形状。 那片叶子就是整棵树。
Why do human beings die so miserably, so unhappily, with a disease, old age, senility, the body shrunk, ugly? Why can't they die naturally and as beautifully as this leaf? What is wrong with us? In spite of all the doctors, medicines and hospitals, operations and all the agony of life, and the pleasures too, we don't seem able to die with dignity, simplicity, and with a smile.
为什么人类死得如此悲惨、如此不快乐， 带着疾病、老迈、衰颓、身体的萎缩和丑陋？ 为什么他们不能自然地死去，像这片叶子一样美？ 我们怎么了？ 尽管有所有的医生、药品和医院， 手术和生命中所有的痛苦，以及快乐， 我们似乎无法带着尊严、简单和微笑死去。
Once, walking along a lane, one heard behind one a chant, melodious, rhythmic, with the ancient strength of Sanskrit. One stopped and looked round. An eldest son, naked to his waist, was carrying a terracotta pot with a fire burning in it. He was holding it in another vessel and behind him were two men carrying his dead father, covered with a white cloth, and they were all chanting.
有一次，走在一条小路上，一个人听到身后有人吟唱， 旋律悠扬，富有节奏，具有梵语古老的力量。 一个人停了下来，环顾四周。 一个大儿子，上身赤裸，带着一个陶罐，里面燃烧着火苗。 被放在他所握住的另一个容器里。 他的身后有两个人，抬着他死去的父亲，被一块白布盖着，他们都在吟唱。
One knew what that chant was, one almost joined in. They went past and one followed them. They were going down the road chanting, and the eldest son was in tears. They carried the father to the beach where they had already collected a great pile of wood and they laid the body on top of that heap of wood and set it on fire.
一个人熟悉那首吟唱的内容，一个人几乎附和起来。他们从旁经过，一个人跟随着他们。 他们一边吟唱，一边沿路走下去，大儿子泪流满面。 他们把这位父亲抬到海滩， 他们已经堆起了一大堆木头， 他们把尸体放在木堆顶上，放火烧它。
It was all so natural, so extraordinarily simple: there were no flowers, there was no hearse, there were no black carriages with black horses. It was all very quiet and utterly dignified. And one looked at that leaf, and a thousand leaves of the tree. The winter brought that leaf from its mother on to that path and it would presently dry out completely and wither, be gone, carried away by the winds and lost.
这一切是如此自然，如此惊人地简单： 没有鲜花，没有灵柩，没有黑马拉的黑色马车。 一切都非常安静，却异常庄严。 而一个人看见那片叶子，和这棵树的一千片叶子。 冬天把那片叶子从它的母亲身边带到了那条小路上， 然后它很快就完全干涸，枯萎，离开，随风而逝。
As you teach children mathematics, writing, reading and all the business of acquiring knowledge, they should also be taught the great dignity of death, not as a morbid, unhappy thing that one has to face eventually, but as something of daily life - the daily life of looking at the blue sky and the grasshopper on a leaf. it is part of learning, as you grow teeth and have all the discomfort of childish illnesses.
当你教孩子们数学、作文、阅读和一切知识的时候， 也应该教他们死亡的巨大庄严， 不是一个人最终必须面对的那种病态的、不快乐的东西，而是日常生命的某个东西 —— 如同这条生命抬头看这片蓝天，低头看草叶上的蚱蜢。 它是学习的一部分，就像你换牙齿和各种儿科病所出现的不适一样。
Children have extraordinary curiosity. If you see the nature of death, you don't explain that everything dies, dust to dust and so on, but without any fear you explain it to them gently and make them feel that the living and the dying are one - not at the end of one's life after fifty, sixty or ninety years, but that death is like that leaf.
孩子们有非凡的好奇心。 如果你看见死亡的这种性质，你不会解释说，万物皆有死、尘归尘、土归土之类， 而是没有丝毫恐惧，你温柔地向他们解释， 让他们感觉到：生活与死亡是一体的 —— 不是在五十、六十或九十年后，一个人生命的尽头， 而是像那片叶子一样的那种死亡。
Look at the old men and women, how decrepit, how lost, how unhappy and how ugly they look. Is it because they have not really understood either the living or the dying? They have used life, they waste away their life with incessant conflict which only exercises and gives strength to the self, the `me', the ego. We spend our days in such varieties of conflict and unhappiness, with some joy and pleasure drinking, smoking, late nights and work, work, work. And at the end of one's life one faces that thing called death and is frightened of it.
看那些老男人和女人，他们是多么衰弱、多么迷茫、多么不快乐、多么丑陋。 是因为他们从来没有真正地理解生活与死亡吗？ 他们消耗生命，用无休止的冲突浪费生命， 冲突只能训练和强化这位‘我’、自我、自我意识。 我们消耗我们的日子，在各种冲突和不快乐中度过， 伴随着某些欢乐，高兴地喝酒、抽烟、夜生活，以及工作、工作、工作。 到了一个人生命的尽头，一个人面对着那个叫做‘死亡’的东西，产生了恐惧。
One thinks it can always be understood, felt deeply. The child with his curiosity can be helped to understand that death is not merely the wasting of the body through disease, old age and some unexpected accident, but that the ending of every day is also the ending of oneself every day.
一个人认为，它总是能被理解，被深刻地感受。 怀着好奇心的这个孩子能够被辅助，去理解那： 死亡不只是由于疾病、年老和某些意外事故而损耗身体， 而在每一天的结束，也是一个人自身的结束。
There is no resurrection, that is superstition, a dogmatic belief. Everything on earth, on this beautiful earth, lives, dies, comes into being and withers away. To grasp this whole movement of life requires intelligence, not the intelligence of thought, or books, or knowledge, but the intelligence of love and compassion with its sensitivity.
没有复活，那是迷信，一种教条主义的信仰。 地球上的一切，在这个美丽的地球上，生长、死亡，展露和枯萎。 把握这个生命的整体运动，需要智慧， 不是属于思想、书本或知识的智慧， 而是属于爱的智慧和慈以及它的灵敏。
One is very certain that if the educator understands the significance of death and the dignity of it, the extraordinary simplicity of dying - understands it not intellectually but deeply - then he may be able to convey to the student, to the child, that dying, the ending, is not to be avoided, is not something to be frightened of, for it is part of one's whole life, so that as the student, the child, grows up he will never be frightened of the ending. If all the human beings who have lived before us, past generations upon generations, still lived on this earth how terrible it would be. The beginning is not the ending.
一个人很确定：如果教育者理解死亡的意义和它的庄严， 以及它非凡的简单 —— 理解不是在理智上，而是在心底 —— 那么，他或许就能向学生、向小孩子传达： 这种死亡、这种结束，不是一件要去避免、令人恐惧的某个东西， 因为它是一个人完整生命的一部分，那样，随着学生，孩子长大， 他永远不会害怕这种结束。 如果我们所有人的祖先们，一辈又一辈的， 依然活在这个地球上，那将是多么恐怖！ 这就只有开始，没有结束了。
And one would like to help - no, that's the wrong word - one would like in education to bring death into some kind of reality, actuality, not of someone else dying but of each one of us, however old or young, having inevitably to face that thing. It is not a sad affair of tears, of loneliness, of separation.
而一个人想‘帮助’ —— 不，那是一个错误的词 —— 一个人想在教育领域里，把死亡带入某种现实、某个真实之中， 不是某些人在死去，而是我们每一个人去送死， 无论老小，都必然地面对它。 它并不是一件有关泪水、孤独和别离的悲伤。
We kill so easily, not only the animals for one's food but the vast unnecessary killing for amusement, called sport - killing a deer because that is the season. Killing a deer is like killing your neighbour. You kill animals because you have lost touch with nature, with all the living things on this earth. You kill in wars for so many romantic, nationalistic, political, ideologies. In the name of God you have killed people. Violence and killing go together.
我们如此轻易地杀死动物，不仅仅为了一个人的食物， 同时也为了娱乐而进行的大量毫无必要的杀戮，称之为体育运动 —— 杀死一头鹿，因为狩猎的季节到了。 杀死一头鹿，就像杀死你的邻居。 你杀死动物，因为你失去了与自然、与地球上所有生物之间的接触。 你为了如此之多的罗曼蒂克、爱国主义和意识形态，在战争中互相残杀。 你以上帝之名杀人。暴力与杀戮并肩而行。
As one looked at that dead leaf with all its beauty and colour, maybe one would very deeply comprehend, be aware of, what one's own death must be, not at the very end but at the very beginning. Death isn't some horrific thing, something to be avoided, something to be postponed, but rather something to be with day in and day out. And out of that comes an extraordinary sense of immensity.
当一个人看见那片枯叶，它的美与色， 也许，一个人会很深地领悟，意识到，一个人自己的死必定是， 不是在最后，而是在一开始。 死亡不是某个恐怖的东西，某种要去逃避、要去拖延的东西， 而是伴随着日升日落。 随之而来的，是一种无量的非凡感。