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给学校的信,1978年11月1日 - 知识

积累知识不能通向智慧

     Knowledge will not lead to intelligence. We accumulate a great deal of knowledge about so many things but to act intelligently about what one has learned seems almost impossible. Schools, colleges and universities cultivate knowledge about our behaviour, about the universe, about science and every form of technological information. These centres of education rarely help a human being to live a daily life of excellence. Scholars maintain that human beings can evolve only through vast accumulations of information and knowledge. Man has lived through thousands and thousands of wars; he has accumulated a great deal of knowledge on how to kill, yet that very knowledge is preventing him from putting an end to all wars. We accept war as a way of life and all the brutalities, violence and killing as the normal course of our life.We know we should not kill another. This knowing is totality irrelevant to the fact of killing. Knowledge does not prevent killing animals and the earth. Knowledge cannot function through intelligence but intelligence can function with knowledge. To know is not to know and the understanding of this fact that knowledge can never solve our human problems is intelligence.

知识不会通向智慧。我们累积了关于很多事情的大量知识,但是要按照学到的知识去明智地行动,看起来几乎是不可能的。学校、学院和大学传授有关行为、宇宙、科学和各种技术的知识,但是这些教育中心很少帮助一个人在日常生活中做一个优秀的人。学者们坚称,人类只有通过积累大量知识和信息才能进化。人类经历了无数次战争,积累了大量如何杀人的知识,而正是那个知识在阻止我们结束所有的战争。我们把战争当作一种生活方式,把野蛮、暴力和杀戮看作生活中正常的事情。我们知道我们不该杀死另一个人,而这个知道却和杀人的事实完全不发生关系。知识没能阻止我们杀害动物,破坏地球。知识不能产生智慧,智慧却可以运用知识。知道就是不知道。知识永远不能解决我们人类的问题,理解这一点就是智慧。

     Education in our schools is not only the acquisition of knowledge but what is far more important - the awakening of intelligence which will then utilize knowledge. It is never the other way round. The awakening of intelligence is our concern in all these schools and the inevitable question then arises: how is this intelligence to be awakened? What is the system, what is the method, what is the practice? This very question implies that one is still functioning in the field of knowledge. The realization that it is a wrong question is the beginning of the awakening of intelligence. The practice, the method, the system in our daily life make for a matter of routine, a repetitive action and so a mechanical mind. The continuous movement of knowledge, however specialized, puts the mind into a groove, into a narrow way of life. To learn to observe and understand this whole structure of knowledge is to begin to awaken intelligence.

在我们的学校里,教育不仅是要获取知识,更为重要得多的是让智慧觉醒,然后智慧会利用知识,而绝不是相反。在所有这些学校里,让智慧觉醒是我们的重心。随之而来的问题必然是,如何唤醒这个智慧?采用什么体系,什么方法,怎么训练?这个问题恰恰表明你仍在知识的范围内运作。认识到它是一个错误的问题,就是智慧觉醒的开始。我们日常生活中的训练、方法、体系造成了一种习惯模式,一种重复活动,因而造成了一颗机械的心。知识的持续运动,无论它是多么的专业,都会使心陷入陈规,陷入一种狭隘的生活方式。学会去观察和理解知识的整个结构,就是唤醒智慧的开始。

     Our minds live in tradition. The very meaning of that word - to hand down denies intelligence. It is easy and comfortable to follow tradition, whether it is political, religious or self-invented tradition. Then one has not to think about it, one does not question it; it is part of tradition to accept and obey. The older the culture,the more the mind is bound to the past,lives in the past. The breaking down of one tradition will inevitably be followed by the imposition of another. A mind with many centuries of any particular tradition behind it refuses to let the old go and accept only when there is another tradition equally gratifying and secure. Tradition in all its various forms, the religious to the academic, must deny intelligence.Intelligence is infinite. Knowledge, however vast, is finite like tradition. In our schools the habit-forming mechanism of the mind must be observed and in this observation the quickening of intelligence is born.

我们的心活在传统中。传统这个词的含义,去传承,正是对智慧的否定。跟随传统是容易的、令人舒服的,无论这个传统是政治的、宗教的还是自己发明的。这样你就不必思考它,不去质疑它了。接受和服从都是传统的组成部分。文化越是古老,心就越是被过去束缚,越活在过去。一个传统的中断必然会被另一个传统代替。背负着千百年传统的心不愿放弃过去,直到出现另一个同样可靠和令人满意的传统。任何形式的传统,从宗教到学术,都必然会否定智慧。智慧是无限的。知识和传统一样,无论多么丰富,都是有限的。在我们的学校里,习惯形成的内心机制是需要被观察的,在这样的观察中,智慧就会开始活跃起来。

     It is part of human tradition to accept fear. We live with fear, both the older and younger generation. Most are not aware that they live in fear. It is only in a mild form of crisis or a shattering incident that one becomes aware of this abiding fear.It is there. Some are aware of it, others shy away from it. Tradition says control fear, run away from it, suppress it, analyse it,act upon it,or accept it. We have lived for millennia with fear and we somehow manage to get along with it. This is the nature of tradition, to act upon it or run away from it; or sentimentally accept it and look to some outside agency to resolve it. Religions spring from this fear, and the politicians' compelling urge for power is born out of this fear. Any form of domination over another is the nature of fear. When a man or a woman possesses another there is fear in the background and this fear destroys every form of relationship.

接受恐惧是人类传统的一部分。年老的一代和年轻的一代都学会了忍受恐惧。大多数人没有意识到他们正活在恐惧中。只有在轻微的危机或爆发性的事件中,我们才开始意识到这个一直在持续的恐惧。它就在那里。一些人能意识到它,另一些人则回避它。传统说:要控制恐惧,逃避它,压制它,分析它,对它做点什么,或接受它。我们已经和恐惧共处了几千年,我们好像有些办法与它和平相处。这些是传统的本性:对它做点什么或逃避它,或情绪化地接受它并指望某种外在的力量帮助解决它。宗教来自于这个恐惧,政客对权利强烈的渴望也来自于这个恐惧。任何形式对他人的控制都是恐惧的本性。当男人或女人占据对方时,背后都有恐惧的存在,这个恐惧会毁坏任何形式的关系。

     It is the function of the educator to help the student to face this fear, whether the fear of the parent, of the teacher or of the older boy, or the fear of being alone and the fear of nature. This is the central issue in understanding the nature and structure of fear, to face it. To face it not through the screen of words but to observe the very happening of fear without any movement away from it. The movement away from the fact is to confound the fact. Our tradition, our education, encourages control, acceptance or denial or very clever rationalization. As the teacher, can you help the student and yourself to face every problem that arises in life? In learning, there is neither the teacher nor the taught; there is only learning. To learn about the whole movement of fear one must come to it with curiosity which has its own vitality. Like a child who is very curious, in that curiosity there is intensity. It is the path of tradition to conquer what we do not understand, to beat it down, to trample it; or worship it. Tradition is knowledge and the ending of knowledge is the birth of intelligence.

教师的职责就是帮助学生面对这个恐惧,无论是对家长、老师或比自己大的孩子的恐惧,还是对孤独的恐惧或对自然的恐惧。要理解恐惧的本质和结构,关键是要面对它。不是通过语言去面对,而是去观察恐惧正在发生的具体过程,而没有任何逃离它的活动。从事实逃离的活动会使事实模糊不清。我们的传统和教育都鼓励控制、接受或拒绝,或非常狡猾的合理化。
作为教师,你能否帮助学生和自己面对生活中出现的每一个问题?在学习中既没有教育者也没有被教育者,只有学习。要了解恐惧的全部活动,我们需要带着好奇心去接近它,而好奇心有它自己的活力。就象一个非常好奇的孩子,在他的好奇中有一种强烈的东西。征服我们不理解的东西,摧毁它,忽视它,或崇拜它,这些都是传统的道路。传统是知识,而知识的结束就是智慧的开始。

     Now, realizing there is neither the teacher nor the taught but only the act of learning on the part of the grown-up and the student, can one, through direct perception of what is happening, learn this fear and all about it? You can if you will allow fear to tell its ancient story. Listen to it attentively without interference, for it is telling you the history of your own fear. When you so listen you will discover that this fear is not separate from you. You are that very fear, that very reaction with a word attached to it. The word is not important. The word is knowledge, the tradition; but the actual, the now that is happening, is something totally new. It is the discovery of the newness of your own fear. Facing the fact of fear, without any movement of thought, is the ending of fear. Not any particular fear but the very root of fear is disintegrated in this observation. There is no observer, only observation.

那么,成年人和学生在认识到“既没有教育者也没有被教育者,只有学习本身”之后,你能否通过直接观察正在发生的事情,来了解这份恐惧?如果你允许恐惧讲述它古老的故事你就能。专注地、不去干扰地仔细倾听,因为它正在向你讲述你自己的恐惧的历史。当你那样去听的时候,你会发现这个恐惧和你并不是分离的。你就是那个恐惧,就是那个被贴上文字标签的反应。文字并不重要,文字是知识、传统,而事实,那个正在发生的现在,则是全新的。这是对你自己的恐惧的新鲜性的发现。面对恐惧的事实,没有任何思想的活动,就是恐惧的终结。在这个观察中,不是某种特定的恐惧,而是恐惧真正的根源被粉碎了。其中没有观察者,只有观察。

     Fear is a very complex business, as ancient as the hills, ancient as humankind and it has a very extraordinary story to tell. But you must know the art of listening to it and there is great beauty in that listening. There is only listening and the story does not exist.

恐惧是一个非常复杂的东西,和山岳一样古老,和人类一样古老,它有一个非同寻常的故事要讲。但是你必须懂得倾听它的艺术,在那倾听之中有着巨大的美。事实上只有倾听,而故事并不存在。

                                                                              绿草园翻译工作室

您准备自己重新翻译一遍吗?

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不是,这里陆续贴的是稻兄他们的译本。

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