给学校的信，1979年9月1日 - 智力
学习“你自己”这本书Why are we being educated? Perhaps you never ask this question, but if you do, what is your response to it? Many reasons are put forward for the necessity of being educated, arguments that are reasonable, quite necessary and mundane. The usual reply is to get a job, have a successful career, or to become skilful with your hands or with your mind. Great emphasis is laid upon the capacity of the mind to find itself a good, profitable career. If you are not intellectually bright then the skill of your hands becomes important. Education is necessary, it is said, to sustain society as it is, to conform to a pattern set by the so-called establishment, traditional or ultramodern. The educated mind has great capacity to gather information on almost any subject - art, science and so on. This informed mind is scholastic, professional, philosophical. Such erudition is greatly praised and honoured. This education,if you are studious,clever, swift in your learning, will assure you a bright future, the brightness of it depending on your social and environmental situation. If you are not so bright in this framework of education, you become a labourer, a factory worker or have to find a place at the bottom of this very complex society. This is generally the way of our education.
我们为什么要接受教育？也许你从来没问过这个问题，但是如果你问的话，你的回答会是什么？有许多关于接受教育的必要性的理由，论证它是合理的、完全必要的和正常的。通常的回答是为了得到一份工作，拥有一个成功的职业，或让自己的双手或头脑变得灵巧。重点还是在于让自己有能力去找到一个好的、有利可图的职业。如果你智力上不够聪明，那么你双手的技能就变得很重要。据说教育是必要的，它是为了维持社会现状，为了符合由所谓的当权派（无论是传统的或超现代的）所设定的现有秩序。受过良好教育的头脑有能力出色地收集几乎任何主题的信息——艺术、科学等等。这个博学多闻的头脑是学者化的、专业化的和哲学化的。这种博学是极受赞赏和尊重的。如果你在学习中勤奋、聪明、反应敏捷，这种教育将确保你有一个光明的未来，它的光明程度取决于你在社会中所处的的位置和环境。如果你在这种教育结构中没有那么杰出，你就会成为一个劳动者，一个工厂工人，或者你不得不在这个非常复杂的社会的底层找到一个位置。这是我们通常的教育方式。
What is education? It is essentially the art of learning, not only from books, but from the whole movement of life. The printed word has become consumingly all-important. You are learning what other people think, their opinions, their values, their judgements and a variety of their innumerable experiences. The library is more important than the man who has the library. He himself is the library and he assumes that he is learning by constant reading. This accumulation of information, as in a computer, is considered an educated, sophisticated mind. Then there are those who do not read at all, who are rather contemptuous of the other and are absorbed in their own self-centred experiences and assertive opinions.
教育是什么？教育本质上就是学习的艺术，不仅从书本上，而是从生活的全部运动中学习。印刷文字已经变得极为重要。你在学习别人的想法、观点、价值观、他们的判断和种种数不清的经验。图书馆比拥有图书馆的人更加重要。人自己就是图书馆，他却认为自己通过不断地阅读在学习。这种信息的累积，就像电脑一样，被认为是在培养高素质的、完善的头脑。然后还有了那些根本不读书的人，他们相当鄙视那些读书的人，他们沉浸在他们自我中心的经验与自以为是的看法中。
Recognising all this, what is the function of a holistic mind? We mean by the mind all the responses of the senses, the emotions - which are entirely different from love - and the intellectual capacity. We now give a fantastic importance to the intellect. We mean by the intellect the capacity to reason logically, sanely or without sanity, objectively or personally. It is the intellect with its movement of thought that brings about fragmentation of our human condition.It is the intellect that has divided the world linguistically, nationally,religiously - divided man from man. The intellect is the central factor of the degeneration of man throughout the world, for the intellect is only a part of the human condition and capacity. When the part is extolled, praised and given honours,when it assumes all-importance, then one's life which is relationship, action,conduct, becomes contradictory, hypocritical,then anxiety and guilt come into being.Intellect has its place, as in science, but man has used scientific knowledge not only for his benefit but to bring about instruments of war and pollution of the earth. The intellect can perceive its own activities which bring about degeneration but it is utterly incapable of putting an end to its own decline because essentially it is only a part.
认识到所有这些之后，完整心灵的功能是什么？我们所说的“心灵”是指所有的感官反应，情绪（那和爱完全不同）和智力上的能力。我们现在给予智力超乎寻常的重要性。我们说的“智力”是指逻辑推理的能力，无论是清晰的还是不清晰的，客观的还是主观的。智力及其思想运动导致了人类社会的分裂。是智力在语言上、民族上、宗教上划分了世界，划分了人和人。智力是全世界人类退化的首要因素，因为智力只是人类条件和能力的一部分。当这个部分被赞美，被崇拜，被赋予荣誉，当它占据了全部的重要性，那么你的生活，也就是关系、行动、行为，就会变得矛盾和虚伪。于是焦虑和愧疚就产生了。智力有它的位置，例如在科学当中，但是人类不光利用科学知识获取利益，而且也生产武器，污染环境。智力能够看到它自己的活动，这些活动在导致退化，但是它却完全没有能力终止自身的衰退，因为本质上它只是一个局部。
As we said, education is the essence of learning. Learning about the nature of the intellect, its dominance, its activities, its vast capacities and its destructive power is education. To learn the nature of thought,which is the very movement of the intellect, not from a book but from the observation of the world about you - to learn what exactly is happening without theories, prejudices and values, is education. Books are important but what is far more important is to learn the book, the story of yourself, because you are all mankind. To read that book is the art of learning. It is all there; the institutions, their pressures, the religious impositions and doctrines, their cruelty, their faiths. The social structure of all societies is the relationship between human beings with their greed, ambitions, their violence, their pleasures, their anxieties. It is there if you know how to look.
我们曾经说过，教育是学习的实质。学习智力的本质，它的控制力，它的活动，它巨大的能力和它的破坏性力量，就是教育。不是从书本上，而是从对周围世界的观察中去学习思想的本质，思想正是智力的活动，不带理论、偏见和价值观地去学习正在实际发生的东西，就是教育。从书本中学习是重要的，但比这重要得多的是学习“你自己”这本书，因为你就是所有的人类。读这本书就是学习的艺术。整个人类都在那里：各种机构，它们的压力，宗教的强加和教条，他们的残忍，他们的信仰。所有社会的结构就是人们和他们的贪婪、野心、暴力、快感、焦虑等等之间的关系。这一切就在那里，如果你知道怎么去看的话。
The look is not inward. The book is not out there or hidden in yourself. It is all around you: you are part of that book. The book tells you the story of the human being and it is to be read in your relationships, in your reactions, in your concepts and values. The book is the very centre of your being and the learning is to read that book with exquisite care. The book tells you the story of the past, how the past shapes your mind, your heart and your senses. The past shapes the present, modifying itself according to the challenge of the moment. And in this endless movement of time human beings are caught. This is the conditioning of man.
这本书不在远处，也不是隐藏在你心里。它在你的周围，你是这本书的一部分。这本书会向你讲述人类的故事，它需要在你自己的关系、反应、观念和价值标准中被阅读。这本书是你存在的核心，而学习就是非常细心地阅读它。这本书会告诉你过去的故事，过去是如何影响你的理智、感情和感官的。过去在影响着现在，并根据此刻的挑战修正自己。人类就陷在这种时间的无尽运动中。这是人类的局限。
This conditioning has been the endless burden of man, of you and your brother.
The philosophers, the theologians, the saints, have accepted this conditioning, have allowed the acceptance of it, making the best of it; or they have offered escapes into fantasies of mystical experiences, of gods and heavens. Education is the art of learning about this conditioning and the way out of it, the freedom from this burden. There is a way out which is not an escape, which does not accept things as they are.It is not the avoidance;of the conditioning, it is not the suppression of it. It is the dissolution of the conditioning.
这个局限一直是人类永无休止的重负——你的和你兄弟的。哲学家、神学家和圣人们接受了这个局限，他们允许了这种接受，并且在充分利用它。或者他们提供了逃避，逃到神秘经验、神明和天堂的幻觉中。教育就是这样一门艺术，去学习这个局限性，学习如何脱离它，学习从这个重负中获得解脱。有一种摆脱它的方法，那不是逃避，不是接受现有的事实，不是对局限的回避，也不是对它的压抑，而是局限性的溶解。
When you read this or when you hear it, be aware of whether you are listening or reading with the verbal capacity of the intellect or with the care of attention? When there is this total attention there is no past but only the pure observation of what is actually going on.
当你读到或听到这里，觉知你是否在以智力上的能力听或读，还是带着专注的关心？全神贯注的时候没有过去，只有对正在实际发生的东西的纯然观察。
绿草园翻译工作室
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