给学校的信 - 行动
Living is action in relationship生活就是关系中的行动
Surely we all seek a way of life in which conflict has no place. Humanity has sought this in a monastery, has become a wandering monk or has withdrawn from the world into a cave, an ivory tower, hoping to find a way of life in which pain and sorrow have come to an end. But mankind has accepted war, inwardly and outwardly, as a way of life. Even the monk goes through various struggles, chaos and anxieties. We have accepted life as a battlefield in which we are not only against each other but are also divided within the limited consciousness of our own being. So we only know a way of living which is turmoil and an action which brings more anxieties and despairs.
毫无疑问，我们都在寻找一种生活方式，其中没有冲突的存在。人类曾在修道院中去寻找它，成为行脚僧，或者退出这个世界，到洞穴，象牙塔里，希望找到一种没有痛苦和悲伤的生活方式。但人类已经从内在到外在都将战争作为一种生活方式接受下来了。即便是僧人也都经受着各种挣扎，混乱和焦虑。我们已经将生活看作是战场，在那里我们不但相互敌对，同时在我们自我的意识里也是分裂的。因此我们只知道一种混乱的生活方式，以及某种只会带来更多的焦虑和绝望的行动。
Now we can ask whether there is any action at all that does not breed conflict. Action is not an ideological concept of what action should be. Action is the very doing in the present. Action is never what has been or what will be. What has been is the memory of action, and what will be is the projection through the present of what has been. We think out an action and carry it out in the present, modifying it if necessary; so action is something which has been worked out by thought in the past for us. Action, therefore, is never in the present; it is always in the shadow of the past. This shadow is memory, experience and knowledge, an ideology or a concept of what action should be. And so action never is.
现在我们要问到底有没有一种行动不会带来冲突。行动不是一个关于行动应该是什么的思想上的概念。行动是此时此刻的行为。行动永远不是曾经的或将要的。曾经的是对行动的回忆，而“将要的”是“曾经的”通过现在进行的投射。我们计划出一次行动并在现在执行，如果需要的话就对其修改；于是行动是过去的思想为我们所安排的。因此，行动也永远不是在现在的；它一直处在过去的阴影里。这个阴影就是记忆，经验和知识，一个关于行动应该是什么的意识形态或概念。因此我们永远没有行动。
This division of action as the past in the present to produce a result in the future is the work of thought. Thought is the outcome of the past and so thought is always old. There is nothing new in thought, so when thought dominates action it ceases to be action but is only a result, an effect. But living, feeling, relationship are always in the present, the present being the active movement. So there is always a contradiction between what is and what has been, and so this action always produces conflict.
这种把行动分为“过去”通过“现在”来产生一个“未来”的结果的方式正式思想的产物。思想是过去的产物，所以思想永远都是陈旧的。在思想里没有任何新的东西，当思想支配行动时，行动就不再是行动，而只是一个结果，一种效果。但生活，感受，关系永远是现在的，现在是指这个活跃的此刻。所以这里会一直有“事实”和“曾经的”之间的矛盾，所以这种行动将不断产生冲突。
When one sees this whole structure of what we call action, with its resultant conflicts, one asks oneself whether action can spring not out of thought but out of a state of mind that is utterly quiet and silent. Only then can action be not a result, and so not productive of pain and sorrow.
当你看到我们所谓的行动的整个过程，以及由此而来的冲突，他就会问自己行动是否可以不由思想产生，而是来源于一种彻底安宁寂静的心灵状态。只有在那时，行动才不是一个结果，也因此不会产生痛苦和悲伤。
The emptying of the mind of the past is meditation; and then action is meditation. After all, living is action in relationship. For the mind to free itself from the image of the past is the action of meditation.
清除心灵中的过去就是冥想；于是行动就是冥想。毕竟，生活就是在关系里的行为活动。心灵将自己从过去的形象里解脱出来就是冥想的行动。
绿草园翻译工作室
页:
[1]