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给学校的信,1978年12月1日 - 学习

整个生命的活动就是学习

     The whole movement of life is learning. There is never a time in which there is no learning. Every action is a movement of learning and every relationship is learning. The accumulation of knowledge, which is called learning and to which we are so accustomed, is necessary to a limited extent, but that limitation prevents us from comprehending ourselves. Knowledge is measurable, more or less, but in learning there is no measure. This is really very important to understand, especially if you are to grasp the full meaning of a religious life. Knowledge is memory and if you have observed the actual, the now is not memory. In observation memory has no place. The actual is what is actually happening. The second later is measurable and this is the way of memory.

整个生命的活动就是学习,没有任何时间是没有学习的。每一个行动都是学习的活动,每一种关系都是学习。我们习惯于积累知识,并把它叫做学习,这在有限的范围内是必要的,但是这种限制会妨碍我们了解自己。知识在某种程度上是可以度量的,但学习中是没有度量的。理解这一点非常重要,特别是在你想领会宗教生活的全部意义时。知识是记忆,但如果你观察过的话,真实、现在并不是记忆。在观察中,记忆是没有位置的。真实就是正在实际发生的事情。下一个瞬间就成了可度量的,这就是记忆的方式。

     To observe the movement of an insect needs attention - that is if you are interested in observing the insect or whatever interests you. This attention again is not measurable. It is the responsibility of the educator to understand the whole nature and structure of memory, to observe this limitation and to help the student to see this. We learn from books or from a teacher who has a great deal of information about a subject and our brains are filled with this information. This information is about things, about nature, about everything outside of us and when we want to learn about ourselves we turn to books that tell about ourselves. So this process goes on endlessly and gradually we become secondhand human beings. This is an observable fact throughout the world and this is our modern education.

如果你有兴趣观察一只昆虫的活动,或其它吸引你的东西,注意力是必需的。这个注意也是不可度量的。理解记忆的全部本质和结构,认识它的局限,并帮助学生看清它,是教师的责任。我们从书本中学习,或从精通某个学科的老师那儿学习,我们的脑袋装满了这些知识。这些知识是关于事物、自然以及我们外在的一切,当我们想了解自己时,我们就求助于那些描述我们自身的书籍。于是这个过程不断继续,渐渐地我们变成了二手人。这是一个明显的事实,整个世界都是如此。这就是我们的现代教育。

     The act of learning, as we have pointed out, is the act of pure observation and this observation is not held within the limitation of memory. We learn to earn a living but we never live. The capacity to earn a living takes most of our life; we have hardly any time for other things. We find time for gossip, to be entertained, to play, but all this is not living. There is a whole field which is the actual living, totally neglected.

正如我们指出的,学习活动就是纯粹的观察活动,而这种观察不会被局限在记忆的范围内。我们学习谋生,但我们从来没有生活过。谋生的能力占据了我们大部分的生命,我们几乎没时间做别的了。我们有时间闲聊、娱乐、游戏,但所有这些都不是生活。有一片叫做真实生活的巨大领域,它被完全忽视了。

     To learn the art of living one must have leisure. The word leisure is greatly misunderstood, as we said in our third letter. Generally it means not to be occupied with the things we have to do such as earning a livelihood, going to the office, factory and so on, and only when that is over is there leisure.During that so-called leisure you want to be amused, you want to relax,you want to do the things which you really like or which demand your highest capacity. Your earning a livelihood, whatever you do,is in opposition to so-called leisure. So there is always the strain, the tension and the escape from that tension, and leisure is when you have no strain. During that leisure you pick up a newspaper, open a novel, chatter, play and so on. This is the actual fact. This is what is going on everywhere. Earning a livelihood is the denial of living.

要学习生活的艺术,你需要有悠闲。悠闲这个词被严重误解了。它通常是指不被我们必须做的日常事务占据,例如赚钱谋生,到办公室或工厂上班等等,只有在这些事情做完之后才有悠闲。在那段所谓的悠闲里,我们想要消遣,想要放松,想做我们真正喜欢的,或需要发挥我们最大潜力的事情。谋生和所谓的悠闲是矛盾的,因此总是存在压力、紧张和逃避紧张的努力。于是悠闲是指我们没有压力,在那个时候,我们会拿起一张报纸,打开一本小说,闲聊,游戏等等。这是真实的情况,到处都在发生。谋生是对生活的否定;

     So we come to the question - what is leisure? Leisure, as it is understood, is a respite from the pressure of livelihood. The pressure of earning a living or any pressure imposed on us we generally consider an absence of leisure, but there is a much greater pressure in us, conscious or unconscious, which is desire and we will go into that later.

悠闲,按照我们的理解,是谋生压力的暂时缓解。我们通常把谋生或者强加给我们的任何压力看作是没有悠闲。而我们内心有一个更大的压力,有意识或无意识地,它就是欲望。

     School is a place of leisure. It is only when you have leisure that you can learn. That is: learning can only take place when there is no pressure of any kind. When a snake or a danger confronts you there is a kind of learning from the pressure of the fact of that danger. The learning under that pressure is the cultivation of memory which will help you to recognise future danger and so becomes a mechanical response.

学校是一个提供悠闲的场所。你只有在悠闲的时候才能学习。也就是说,只有在没有任何压力的情况下,学习才能够发生。当你遭遇危险的时候,比如一条蛇,从那个危险产生的压力中,也有一种学习。在那个压力下的学习是在培养记忆,它将帮助你识别将来的危险,从而变成一种机械的反应。

     Leisure implies a mind which is not occupied. It is only then that there is a state of learning. School is a place of learning and not merely a place for accumulating knowledge. This is really important to understand. As we said, knowledge is necessary and has its own limited place in life. Unfortunately this limitation has devoured all our lives and we have no space for learning. We are so occupied with our livelihood that it takes all the energy of the mechanism of thought, so that we are exhausted at the end of the day and need to be stimulated. We recover from this exhaustion through entertainment - religious or otherwise. This is the life of human beings. Human beings have created a society which demands all their time, all their energies, all their life.There is no leisure to learn and so their life becomes mechanical, almost meaningless. So we must be very clear in the understanding of the word leisure - a time, a period, when the mind is not occupied with anything whatsoever. It is the time of observation.It is only the unoccupied mind which can observe. A free observation is the movement of learning. This frees the mind from being mechanical.

悠闲意味着心不被占据,只有那时才会有一种学习的状态。学校是学习的地方,不仅是积累知识的地方。理解这一点真的很重要。我们说过,知识是必要的,在生活中有它有限的位置。不幸的是,这个有限的知识耗尽了我们全部的生活,使我们没有空间学习。我们是如此地被谋生占据,它消耗了我们思想的全部能量,以致于我们一天下来精疲力尽,只想去寻求刺激。我们通过宗教或其它的娱乐从这种疲惫中恢复,这就是人类的生活。人类创造了这样一个社会,它需要他们全部的时间、精力和生命。他们没有悠闲学习,生活因此变得机械,几乎毫无意义。所以我们必须非常清晰地理解悠闲这个词的含意:它是我们的心不被任何事物占据的一段时间,它是可以去观察的时间。只有一颗不被占据的心才能够观察。自由的观察就是学习的活动,它把心从机械中解放出来。

     So can the teacher, the educator, help the student to understand this whole business of earning a livelihood with all its pressure? the learning that helps you to acquire a job with all its fears and anxieties and the looking on tomorrow with dread? Because he himself has understood the nature of leisure and pure observation, so that earning a livelihood does not become a torture, a great travail throughout life, can the teacher help the student to have a non-mechanistic mind? It is the absolute responsibility of the teacher to cultivate the flowering of goodness in leisure. For this reason the schools exist. It is the responsibility of the teacher to create a new generation to change the social structure from its total preoccupation with earning a livelihood. Then teaching becomes a holy act.

因此,老师、教育者能不能帮助学生理解这整个的情况:谋生和它所有的压力;帮你得到一个工作并伴随着所有恐惧和焦虑的学习;以及带着忧虑对明天的期盼?了解了悠闲的本质和纯粹的观察,这样的教师能不能帮助学生拥有一颗不机械的心,从而让谋生不再成为一件痛苦的事情,一个伴随终生的巨大辛劳?在悠闲中致力于善的绽放,是教师不可推卸的责任。这些学校就是为此而存在的。创造新的一代,改变这种完全被谋生所占据的社会结构,是教师的责任。这样的教育就是一种神圣的活动。

                                                                    绿草园翻译工作室

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