给学校的信，1979年3月15日 - 美
思想的运动不是美We have become far too clever. Our brains have been trained to become verbally, intellectually, very bright. They are crammed with a great deal of information and we use this for a profitable career. A clever, intellectual person is praised, shown honour. Such people seem to usurp all the important places in the world: they have power, position, prestige. But their cleverness betrays them at the end. In their hearts they never know what love is or deep charity and generosity, for they are enclosed in their vanity and arrogance. This has become the pattern of all the highly endowed schools. A boy or girl, accepted in the conventional school, gets trapped in modern civilization and is lost to the whole beauty of life.
我们已经变得太过聪明了。在言辞上和智力上，我们的脑子被训练得非常机智。它被塞满了大量的信息，而我们用这些信息在职业上谋取利益。一个聪明的、智力发达的人会得到赞赏与尊敬。这样的人似乎占据了世界上所有重要的位置，他们拥有权力，地位，声望。但是他们的聪明最终会背叛他们。他们心中从来都不知道什么是爱，或深切的宽容与慷慨，因为他们被囚禁在自己的自负和傲慢里面了。这已经成了所有私立学校的模式。常规学校里的男孩或女孩则被现代文明所困，对整个生命的美无动于衷。
When you wander through the woods with heavy shadows and dappled light and suddenly come upon an open space, a green meadow surrounded by stately trees, or a sparkling stream, you wonder why man has lost his relationship to nature and the beauty of the earth, the fallen leaf and the broken branch. If you have lost touch with nature, then you will inevitably lose relationship with another. Nature is not just the flowers, the lovely green lawn or the flowing waters in your little garden, but the whole earth with all the things on it. We consider that nature exists for our use, for our convenience, and so lose communion with the earth. This sensitivity to the fallen leaf and to the tall tree on a hill is far more important than all the passing of examinations and having a bright career. Those are not the whole of life. Life is like a vast river with a great volume of water without a beginning or an ending. We take out of that fast running current a bucket of water and that confined water becomes our life. This is our conditioning and our everlasting sorrow.
当你在光线幽暗、树影斑驳的森林中漫步，突然看到一片开阔的空间 ，一片被高耸的树木围绕的绿草，或一条活泼的小溪，你会奇怪为什么人类失去了与自然的联系，与大地、落叶和断枝之美的联系。如果你失去了与自然的接触，那么你必然会失去与其他人的联系。自然不仅仅是你小花园里面的花朵，可爱的绿地或流水，而是整个地球上的一切。我们认为自然是为了我们的使用和方便而存在的，因此失去了和地球的交流。对落叶和山间巨树的敏感远比通过所有的考试和拥有一个吸引人的职业重要得多。那不是生活的全部。生活就像一条奔流的大河，没有起点也没有终点。我们从那个急流中取出一桶水，这点有限的水变成了我们的生活。这是我们的局限和永远的悲伤。
The movement of thought is not beauty. Thought can create what appears to be beautiful - the painting, the marble figure or a lovely poem - but this is not beauty. Beauty is supreme sensitivity, not to the sense of one's own pains and anxieties, but in encompassing the whole existence of man. There is beauty only when the current of the me has completely dried up. When the me is not, beauty is. With the abandonment of the self the passion of beauty comes into being.
思想的运动不是美。思想能够创造看上去很美的东西——绘画、大理石雕像或动人的诗句——但这些不是美。美是最高的敏感性，不是对自己痛苦和焦虑的感受，而是包含着整个人类的生命。只有在“自我”之流完全枯竭的时候美才会存在。当“自我”不在时，美就存在了。随着对自我的放弃，美的激情就生起了。
We have been talking over together in these letters the degeneration of the mind. We have pointed out for your examination and investigation some of the ways of this deterioration. One of its basic activities is thought. Thought is a breaking up of the wholeness of the mind. The whole contains the part, but the part can never be that which is complete.Thought is the most active part of our life. Feeling goes with thought. Essentially they are one though we tend to separate them. Having separated them we give great importance to feeling, to sentiment, to romanticism and devotion, but thought, like a string in a necklace, weaves itself through them all, hidden, alive, controlling and shaping. It is always there, though we like to think our deep emotions are essentially different. In this lies great illusion, a deception that is highly regarded and leads to dishonesty.
在这些信中，我们一直在讨论心灵的退化。我们指出了这种退化的一些方式供你审视与探究。它的基本活动之一就是思想。思想是完整心灵的一种破碎。整体包含着部分，但是部分永远也不会成为完整的。思想是我们生命中最活跃的部分，感情伴随着思想。本质上它们是同一个东西，尽管我们倾向于将它们分开。把它们分开后，我们给予感情、柔情、浪漫和奉献以巨大的重要性。但是思想就象项链上的细绳，穿行在所有这些之中，隐藏着，活跃着，控制着，调整着。它总在那儿，尽管我们总是愿意相信我们深刻的情感在本质上是不同的。这里面存在着巨大的幻觉，存在一种自欺，它被高度推崇并导致某种不诚实。
As we said, thought is the actuality of our daily life. All so-called sacred books are the product of thought. They may be revered as revelation but they are essentially thought. Thought has put together the turbine and the great temples of the earth, the rocket, and the enmity in men. Thought has been responsible for wars, for the language one uses and the image made by hand or by the mind. Thought dominates relationship. Thought has described what love is, the heavens and the pain of misery. Man worships thought, admires its subtleties, its cunning, its violence, its cruelties for a cause. Thought has brought great advances in technology and with it a capacity for destruction. This has been the story of thought, repeated throughout the centuries.
我们说过，思想是我们每天生活的现实。所有所谓的神圣典籍都是思想的产物。它们或许被当作神的启示来崇拜，但它们本质上是思想。思想制造了涡轮机、地球上的伟大庙宇、火箭和人们内心的仇恨。是思想制造了战争，人们使用的语言，用手或心制造的偶像。思想支配着人际关系。思想描绘了什么是爱，天堂般的美感以及痛苦悲伤。人类崇尚思想，并以事业的名义推崇它的精细，它的狡诈，它的暴力，它的残忍。思想带来了巨大的技术进步以及随之而来的破坏能力。这就是思想的故事，它已经被重复了许多个世纪。
Why has humanity given such extraordinary importance to thought? Is it because it is the only thing we have, even though it is activated through senses? Is it because thought has been able to dominate nature, dominate its surroundings, has brought about some physical security? Is it because it is the greatest instrument through which man operates, lives and benefits? Is it because thought has made the gods, the saviours, the super-consciousness, forgetting the anxiety, the fear, the sorrow, the envy, the guilt? Is it because it holds people together as a nation, as a group, as a sect? Is it because it offers hope to a dark life? Is it because it gives an opening to escape from the daily boring ways of our life? Is it because not knowing what the future is, it offers the security of the past, its arrogance, its insistence on experience? Is it because in knowledge there is stability, the avoidance of fear in the certainty of the known? Is it because thought in itself has assumed an invulnerable position, taken a stand against the unknown? Is it because love is unaccountable, not measurable, while thought is measured and resists the changeless movement of love?
为什么人类给予思想如此非同寻常的重要地位？是不是因为它是我们仅有的东西，尽管它是基于感官的？是因为思想能够支配自然，支配它周围的环境，并带来一些身体上的安全感吗？是因为它是人们用来操作、生活和获益的最佳工具吗？是因为思想制造了上帝、救世主、超意识，同时遗忘了焦虑、恐惧、哀伤、嫉妒和内疚吗？是因为它把人们结合成国家、团体、教派吗？因为它给黑暗的生活提供了希望吗？因为它给了我们一个逃避乏味日常生活的出口吗？因为在我们对未来不确定的时候，它提供了通过对过去经验的傲慢坚持而产生的安全感吗？因为知识带来了稳固，在对已知的确信中避免了恐惧吗？因为思想为自身假定了一个不受伤害的位置，采取了一个对抗未知的立场吗？因为爱是无法理解、不可测量的，而思想是可测量的，能够抵抗爱的永恒运动吗？
We have never questioned the very nature of thought. We have accepted thought as inevitable, as our eyes and legs. We have never probed to the very depth of thought: and because we have never questioned it, it has assumed preeminence. It is the tyrant of our life and tyrants are rarely challenged.
我们从未质疑过思想的本质。我们认定思想是必不可少的，就像我们的眼睛和腿一样。我们从未探查过思想的深层，而因为我们从来没有质疑过它，它占据了突出的位置。它是我们生活的统治者，而统治者很少会受到挑战。
So as educators we are going to expose it to the bright light of observation. The light of observation not only instantly dispels illusion but the clarity of its light reveals the tiniest detail of that which is being observed. As we said, observation is not from a fixed point, from a belief, prejudice or conclusion. Opinion is a rather shoddy affair and so also is experience. The man of experience is a dangerous person because he is caught in the prison of his own knowledge.
因此，作为教育者，我们要将它暴露在观察的光明中。观察之光不仅会立即驱散幻象，而且它的明晰会显示出被观察对象的最微小的细节。我们说过，观察不是出自一个固定的位置，不是出自信念、成见或结论。意见是相当劣质的东西，经验也是。有经验的人是一个危险的人，因为他被困在自己知识的监狱里了。
So can you observe with extraordinary clarity the whole movement of thought? This light is freedom: it does not mean that you have captured it and employed it for your convenience and benefit. The very observation of thought is the observation of your whole being and this very being is put together by thought. As thought is finite, limited, so are you.
那么，你能否以非同寻常的明晰来观察思想的整个运动？这个光明就是自由。这并不意味着你获得了它，并将它用于自己的方便与利益。对思想的观察就是对你整个生命的观察，这个生命正是被思想组合在一起的。正如思想是有限的，你也是如此。
绿草园翻译工作室
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