给学校的信,1980年1月15日 - 友爱
当你关心的时候,每一种形式的暴力都会离你而去To continue with what we were saying in our last letter, pointing out the responsibility to study, learn and to act. Since one is young and perhaps innocent, given to excitement and games, the word responsibility will seem rather frightening and a wearisome burden. But we are using the word to imply care and concern for our world. When we use this word the students must not feel any sense of guilt if they have not shown this care and attention. After all,your parents who feel responsible for you, that you should study and equip yourselves for your future life, do not feel guilty, though they may feel disappointed or unhappy if you do not come up to their expectations. We must clearly understand that when we use the word responsibility there must not be a feeling of guilt. We are taking a particular care in using this word,freed from the unhappy weight of a word like duty. When this is clearly understood, then we can use the word responsibility without its burden of tradition.
继续我们在上一封信中未完成的内容。我们指出过,你有研究、学习和行动的责任。因为你还年轻,或许还很天真,习惯于兴奋和游戏,责任这个词对你来说似乎有点可怕,就像一个令人厌烦的负担。但我们现在用这个词表示对我们这个世界的关心和关注。在我们使用这个词的时候,如果学生没有表现出这种关心和注意,他们不应该有任何负罪感。毕竟,自觉对你们负有责任的家长——他们认为你应该学习,为将来的生活做准备——并没有感到内疚,尽管在你没达到他们的期望时他们会感到失望或不快。我们必须清楚地理解,当我们使用责任这个词的时候,不应有负罪的感觉。我们正在特别小心地使用这个词,以避免像“义务”这类词汇令人不快的沉重感。当这点被清楚理解的时候,我们就能够使用责任这个词,而不携带它传统的重负。
So you are at school with this responsibility to study, to learn, to act. This is the main purpose of education.
In our last letter we put the question "What will you do about yourself and your relationship with the world?" As we said, the educator,the teacher, is also responsible for helping you to understand yourself and so the world. We ask this question for you to find out for yourself what is your response. It is a challenge you must answer. You have to begin with yourself, to understand yourself, and in relation to that, what is the first step? Is it not affection? Probably when you are young you have this quality but very quickly we seem to lose it. Why? Is it not because of the pressure of studies, the pressure of competition, the pressure of trying to reach a certain standing in your studies,comparing yourselves with others and perhaps being bullied by other students? Do not all these many pressures force you to be concerned with yourself? And when you are so concerned with yourself, you inevitably lose that quality of affection. It is very important to understand how gradually circumstances, environment, the pressure of your parents or your own urge to conform, narrows the vast beauty of life to a small circle of yourself. And if you lose this affection while you are young there is a hardening of the heart and mind. It is a rare thing to keep this affection throughout life, without corruption. So this is the first thing you must have.
因此,你要怀着这种责任感在学校里研究、学习和行动。这是教育的主要目的。
我们在上一封信中提出这个问题:你会对自己,对你和世界的关系做些什么?我们说过,教育者,老师,对帮助学生了解自己也了解世界负有责任。我们向你提出这个问题以帮你发现你的反应是什么。它是一个你必须回答的挑战。你只能从自己开始去了解自己。与之相关的第一步是什么?难道不是友爱吗?也许你年轻的时候拥有这种品质,但是似乎很快就失去了它。这是为什么?是因为学习的压力,竞争的压力,试图在学习中达到某个位置的压力,拿自己和别人比较,或者被其他学生欺负?所有这些压力不都迫使你关注自己吗?而当你过于关注自己的时候,你必然会丧失友爱的品质。环境——周围的状况,你父母的压力,你自己顺从的愿望——如何逐渐把生活巨大的美狭隘化,变成了渺小的自我的圈子,理解这点是非常重要的。如果你在年轻的时候就失去了友爱的品质,心和头脑就会越来越坚硬。能够终生保持这种友爱不枯萎是罕见的。因此,它是你必须首先拥有的东西。
Affection implies care, a diligent care in whatever you are doing; care in your speech, in your dress, in the manner of your eating, how you look after your body; care in your behaviour without the distinctions of superior or inferior; how you consider people.
Politeness is consideration for others and this consideration is care, whether it is for your younger brother or oldest sister. When you care, violence in every form disappears from you - your anger, your antagonism and your pride. This care implies attention. Attention is to watch, observe, listen,learn.There are many things you can learn from books but there is a learning which is infinitely clear, quick and without any ignorance. Attention implies sensitivity and this gives depth to perception which no knowledge, with its ignorance can give. This you have to study, not in a book, but, with the help of the educator, learn to observe things around you - what is happening in the world. What is happening with a fellow student, what is happening in that poor village or slum and to the man who is struggling along that dirty street.
友爱意味着关心,对你正在做的无论什么事情的一种勤勉的关心——对你的言谈,服饰,吃东西的方式,你怎样照看自己身体的关心;对你的举止不带优越感或自卑感的关心,对你如何对待别人的关心。礼貌是对别人的体贴,这种体贴就是关心,无论它是对你的弟弟还是姐姐。当你关心的时候,每一种形式的暴力都会从你身上消失——你的愤怒,你的敌意和傲慢。这种关心意味着注意。注意就是看,观察,倾听,学习。你能够从书上学到很多东西,但是有一种学习,它极为清晰、迅速,没有任何愚昧。注意意味着敏感性,它为感知赋予了深度,而知识和它的愚昧却没有这种品质。你必须学习这些,不是从书上,而是在教师的帮助下学习观察周围的事物——这个世界上正在发生什么,同学身上正在发生什么,在穷困的村庄或贫民区肮脏的街道上艰难前行的人身上正在发生什么。
Observation is not a habit. It isn't a thing you train yourself to do mechanically. It is the fresh eye of interest, of care, of sensitivity. You cannot train yourself to be sensitive. Again, when you are young you are sensitive, quick in your perceptions, but again this fades as you grow older. So you have to study yourself and perhaps your teacher will help you. If he doesn't it doesn't matter for it is your responsibility to study yourself and so learn what you are. And when there is this affection your actions will be born out of its purity. All this may sound very hard but it is not. We have neglected all this side of life. We are so concerned with our careers, with our own pleasures, With our own importance, that we neglect the great beauty of affection.
观察不是一种习惯。它不是一件你可以训练自己机械地做的事情。它是包含兴趣、关心、敏感的新鲜视野。你无法训练自己成为敏感的。年轻时你的感知敏感而迅速,但是长大以后它就慢慢消失了。因此你必须研究自己,或许你的老师会帮助你。如果他不能帮你,那也没关系,因为研究自己,认清自己是谁,这是你的责任。在拥有友爱的时候,你的行为就会从它的纯粹中产生。这一切可能听上去很困难,但它并不是那样。我们忽视了生活中所有这些方面。我们太关注我们的职业,我们的快乐,我们自己的重要性了,以至于忽视了友爱那巨大的美。
There are two words that one must always bear in mind - diligence and negligence. We diligently apply our mind to acquiring knowledge from books, from teachers, spend twenty or more years of our life in that and neglect to study the deeper meaning of our own life. We have both the outer and the inner. The inner demands greater diligence than the outer. It is an urgent demand and this diligence is the affectionate study of what one is.
有两个词你必须一直记住——勤奋和懈怠。我们勤奋地从书本和老师那里获取知识;我们花二十年或生命中更多的时间在它上面,而忽视了对自己生命更深意义的研究。我们既有外在也有内在。内在比外在需要更多的勤奋。这是一个急迫的要求。这种勤奋就在于对“你是什么样的”的热情研究中。
绿草园翻译工作室
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