给学校的信，1982年10月1日 - 家庭与社会
生活是一种只有偶尔快乐的痛苦过程吗？The future for every human being, including the young and the old, appears to be bleak and frightening. Society itself has become dangerous and utterly immoral. When a young person faces the world he is concerned and rather frightened of what will happen to him in the course of his life. His parents send him to school and, if they have money, to university and they are concerned that he should settle down to a job, marriage, children and so on. The parents, it appears all over the world, have very little time for their own children. After a few years from birth the parents have lost them; they have very little relationship with their children. They worry about their own problems, ambitions and so on and the children are at the mercy of their educators, who themselves need education. They may be academically excellent and they too are concerned that their students should reach the highest grades (again academically), that the school should have the best reputation, but the educators have their own problems. Their salaries, except in a few countries, are rather low and socially they are not highly regarded.
无论是年轻还是年老，每个人的未来似乎都凄凉、恐怖。社会本身变得危险和彻底不道德。年轻人在面对世界时，会对生活中将要遇到的事情感到恐惧。父母把他送进学校，有钱的话还会把他送进大学，他们希望他能够安定地工作、结婚、生育，等等。在东方社会的家庭中，父母在孩子的生活中扮演着十分重要的角色。家庭单位依然存在，尽管年轻人可以在世界各地谋生，家庭仍是他们生活的中心。这在西方正迅速消失。在世界上的很多地方，父母只在孩子身上花很少的时间。在孩子出生几年之后，父母就离开了他们，他们和孩子的联系非常少。他们担忧自己的问题、野心等等，而孩子任凭教育者摆布——而教育者自身也需要教育。教育者们或许在学术上是优秀的，因此他们也关注学生要获得最高的学分，学校要拥有最好的名誉。但是教育者有他们自身的问题。除少数国家之外，他们的薪水很低，在社会上也不是很受尊重。
So those who are being educated have rather a difficult time with their parents, their educators and their fellow students. Already the tide of struggle, of anxiety, fear and competition has set in. This is the world they have to face: a world that is overpopulated, under-nourished, a world of war, increasing terrorism, inefficient governments, corruption and the threat of poverty. This threat is less evident in affluent and fairly well-organized societies but it is felt in those parts of the world where there is tremendous poverty, overpopulation and the indifference of inefficient rulers. This is the world the young people have to face and naturally they are really frightened. They have an idea that they should be free, independent of routine, should not be dominated by their elders and they shy away from all authority. Freedom to them means to choose what they want to do, but they are confused, uncertain and want to be shown what they should do.
那些正在接受教育的人，在与他们的父母、教师和同学的关系中正在经历着相当的困难。奋斗、焦虑、恐惧和竞争的潮流已席卷而来，他们不得不面对这样一个世界：人口过剩、营养不良、战争、不断增长的恐怖主义、无效的政府、腐败、被贫困威胁。这种威胁在富裕的、组织良好的社会里不那么明显，但是它会出现在那些极度贫困，人口过剩，统治者无能而懈怠的地区。这就是年轻人不得不面对的世界，他们当然会非常害怕。他们以为他们将会是自由的，不受常规约束，不被年长者支配；他们躲避所有的权威。对他们来说，自由意味着选择自己要做什么。但是他们困惑而犹豫，总想让别人告诉他们应该做什么。
[color=Navy]In the eastern world the family, the parents, play a strong part in their lives. The family unit is still there. Though its young may earn a livelihood in different parts of the world, the family is the centre of their lives. This is fast disappearing in the Western world.[/color] So the student is caught between his own desire for freedom to do what he wants and the society which demands conformity to its own necessities that one become an engineer, a scientist, a soldier, or a specialist of some kind. This is the world they have to face and become a part of in their education. It is a frightening world.
学生渴望自由地做自己想做的事，而社会要求他顺应规律，成为工程师、科学家、军人、或某种类型的专家，这使他陷入两难。学生不得不面对这样的世界，并且通过受教育成了它的一部分。这是一个可怕的世界。
We all want security physically as well as emotionally and this is becoming more and more difficult and painful. So we of the older generation, if we at all care for our children, must ask what then is education? If the present education, as it is now universally, is to prepare them to live in perpetual striving, conflict and fear, we must ask what is the meaning of it all? Is life a movement, a flow of pain and anxiety with occasional flares of joy and happiness, and the shedding of unshed tears? Unfortunately we, the older generation, do not ask these questions and neither does the educator. So education, as it is now, is a process of facing a dreary, narrow and meaningless existence, but we want to give a meaning to life. Life has no meaning in itself, apparently, but we want to give it meaning and so invent gods, various forms of religion and other entertainments including nationalism and ways to kill each other to escape from our monotonous life. This is the life of the older generation and will be the life of the young.
我们都想要生理上和情感上的安全，而拥有它正在变得越来越困难和费力。
因此，如果我们老一代人真正关心孩子，我们必须要问，教育是什么。如果教育，从当前普遍的状况看，就是为了让孩子终生活在无休止的斗争、冲突和恐惧中做准备，那么我们必须要问，这一切有什么意义。生活是一个痛苦、焦虑和流泪的过程吗，偶尔才闪现喜悦和幸福？不幸地是，我们老一代人不问这些问题，教育者也不问。因此教育事实上是一个面对枯燥、狭隘和无意义的生活的过程。但是我们想让生活有意义。生活本身似乎没有意义，但是我们想要赋予它意义，所以我们发明了神祗，各种形式的宗教和其它的娱乐，包括爱国主义和互相残杀的方法，只是为了逃避我们单调乏味的生活。这就是老一代人的生活，也将是年轻人未来的生活。
Now we the parents and educators have to face this fact and not escape into theories, seek further forms of education and structure. If your minds are not clear about what we are facing, we shall inevitably, consciously or unconsciously, slip into the inaction of what to do about it. There are a thousand people who will tell us what to do: the specialists and the cranks. Before we understand the vast complexity of the problem we want to operate upon it. We are more concerned to act than to see the whole issue.
作为家长和教育者，我们必须面对这个事实，而不是逃进理论中寻找更先进的教育机制。如果我们内心对正在面临的事实不清楚，我们必然会有意无意地变得无所作为，不知道该做什么。有一千个人会告诉我们应该做什么，包括专家和有奇思怪想的人们。我们总想在理解问题的巨大复杂性之前就对它做些什么。我们更重视行动，而不是去看整个的问题。
The real issue is the quality of our mind: not its knowledge but the depth of the mind that meets knowledge. Mind is infinite, is the nature of the universe which has its own order, has its own immense energy. It is everlastingly free. The brain, as it is now, is the slave of knowledge and so is limited, finite, fragmentary. When the brain frees itself from its conditioning, then the brain is infinite, then only there is no division between the mind and the brain. Education then is freedom from conditioning, from its vast accumulated knowledge as tradition. This does not deny the academic disciplines which have their own proper place in life.
真正的问题是内心的品质——不是它拥有的知识，而是拥有知识的心灵的深度。心是无限的，它是宇宙的本质，有它自身的秩序和浩瀚的能量。心永远是自由的。大脑，就现状来看，是知识的奴隶，因此是有限的、受限的、破碎的。当大脑从它的局限中解脱出来，它就成了无限的。只有在那时，心和大脑之间才没有界限。因此教育就是从局限中解脱出来，从大量累积的传统知识中解脱出来。这并不是否认学术科目的价值，它在生活中有自己适当的位置。
绿草园翻译工作室
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