给学校的信 - 文化
True culture is a movement in freedom真正的文化是一种在自由中的活动
Culture, as the word indicates, is something that is constantly growing, changing, a movement without any particular end. To cultivate a plant or a flower, it needs attention and protection, and to cultivate the mind is much ' more difficult. The mind is very complex, very subtle, and has immense possibilities that are really incalculable. We neglect the totality of the mind and try to cultivate a very small part of it through education, through learning a technique which will give us the capacity to earn a livelihood. This particular little training that one gets through education, through social contacts, through relationship with other human beings leads to contradiction, which is expressed in daily life in conflict, hatred, antagonism, and the competitive aggression which has become so important merely to survive. And because one is not able to bring about an end to this contradiction in oneself and in the society or the community in which one lives, one escapes to temples, to churches or mosques, to drink or to exaggerated sexual relationships, and so on. All escapes are essentially the same, whether they are escapes to so-called God or through giving importance to sex.
文化，正如这个词所表明的，是某种不断生长，变化的东西，一种没有特定终点的运动。要培育一棵植物或者一朵花，需要关注和保护，而培养心灵则更加困难。心灵是非常复杂的，非常微妙，有着巨大的可能性，而那是无法估量的。我们忽略心灵的整体性然后通过教育，通过学习一门能够给予我们谋生能力的技术，试着去培养其中的一小部分。
这些通过教育，通过社会上的交往，通过和其他人的关系所得到的这种特殊的小小训练导致了矛盾，它表现在我们的日常生活里便是冲突，憎恨，对抗和竞争性的攻击，而这些已经变得如此的重要，为了生存。因为我们无法结束这种存在于我们身上，存在于社会里，我们所生活的社区里的矛盾，所以我们逃进寺庙，教堂或者是清真寺，喝酒或者是过度的性关系，等等。所有逃避在本质上是相同的，无论是逃向所谓的神或是把性变得很重要。
The cultivation of the fragment must inevitably lead to destruction and sorrow, whether that fragment is the nation, a particular belief, the family, or an idea. Cultivation of the glory and the success of the fragment must divide, separate, and so bring about chaos in the world. Till now the cultivation of the fragment has been the main concern of education, of society. This fragmentary cultivation must nurture fear and so the constant search for security, both outer and inner. This is the society in which we live, with its wars, violence, brutality, aggression, and the ever-mounting sorrow.
对于这种碎片的培养必然导致毁灭和苦难，无论那个碎片是国家，某种信仰，家庭，或是一个理想。培养碎片的荣耀与成功的必然会产生分歧与隔阂，也因此带来世上的混乱。直到今天，对于碎片的培养仍是我们教育和社会的主要关心点。这种对于碎片的培养便然滋生恐惧，和随之而来对于内在和外在安全感的寻求。这就是我们所生活的社会，伴随着它的是战争，暴力，残忍，攻击性和无尽的苦难。
In a school, if we give all importance to acquiring technical knowledge and totally neglect the vastness of die mind as human beings, we shall become mechanical, bored with life, and fundamentally lazy. This is what is taking place. You can cultivate the fragment, but you cannot cultivate the whole field because you do not have the instrument with which to enter this vastness. We do not realize this, and so the intellect becomes all-important, or we give an emotional, enthusiastic devotion to a particular ideology—of the State, or of one's own image, or of a concept of this vastness which is called religion. Something cultivated by man in his fears becomes tradition.
在学校里，如果我们把所有的重心放在获取技术知识上，并完全忽略作为人类的心灵的浩瀚性的话，我们将变得呆板，厌倦生活和根本地的懒惰。这就是正在发生的事情。你可以培养碎片，但你无法培养这个整体，因为你没有进入这种浩瀚的工具。我们没有认识到这点，所以才让智力变得无比重要，又或是或者醉心于对某种意识形态给以无比的热情——国家，或是你某人自己的形象，又者给那个浩瀚一个概念并称之为宗教。人们在恐惧中所培养的东西就变成了传统。
So our problem is not only to have first-class training in technological knowledge, but also to feel our way into this extraordinary mind, with all its immensity. You will inevitably ask how this is to be done. The "how" is the method, the system, and if you follow the system or the method, it doesn't matter what it is, whose it is, you are again cultivating the fragment. When you realize this you will not ask how.
所以我们的问题不只是拥有关于技术知识的最好的训练，我们还要去找到进入那非凡的，无限的心灵的道路。你必然要问这要如何才能做到。这个“如何”就是方法，体系，如果你追随这套体系或方法，无论它是什么，无论它是谁的，你就还是在培养碎片。当你认识到这点时，你便不再询问“如何”了。
So you have already plunged into a different investigation. This investigation demands complete freedom. This freedom is not disorder; it is not laisser-aller. If you have ever demanded this freedom of yourself, you have also built an image, a concept, an idea of what this freedom is, and obviously that is rat freedom. Freedom is not something to be found in heaven but in our daily lives, in freedom from brutality, violence, greed, and so on. Without this foundation of freedom, the growth of the fragment brings chaos and untold mischief and misery.
True culture is a movement in freedom, not within the Pattern of an ideology, which becomes tradition.
所以你已经投身于另外一种探索了。这种探索需要彻底的自由。这种自由不是无序；不是放任。如果曾对自己要求过这样的自由，那你也建立了这个自由是什么的形象，概念，或是理想，但很显然那些都不是自由。自由无法在天堂里得到，它就在我们的日常生活里，在从残忍, 暴力, 贪婪等等的解脱中。没有这种自由的基础，碎片的成长只会带来混乱，无尽的闹剧和悲伤。
真正的文化是一种在自由中的活动，它不存在于那些将成为传统的意识形态的模式中。
绿草园翻译工作室
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