宁静在说话（第八章：关系）

第八章：关系

Relationships

 

How quick we are to form an opinion of a person, to come to
a conclusion about them. It is satisfying to the egoic mind to label another
human being, to give them a conceptual identity, to pronounce righteous
judgment upon them. 

我们是多么容易就对别人有了看法，并且对他们做出论断。小我最乐意去做的事就是往别人身上贴标签，给别人一个概念化的身份，还宣称这是公正的评断。

 

Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave
in certain ways – conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood
experiences and their cultural environment. 

人的思考与行为在某些方面都是被制约的，被遗传基因、童年经验以及文化环境所制约。

 

That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to
be. When you pronounce judgment upon someone, you confuse those conditioned
mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned
and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and that false
identity becomes a prison not only for the other person but also for yourself. 

但那并不是人们真正的样子，只是他们表面看起来如此。所以，当你对别人发出评断时，你是将别人受制约的心智表现与真正的他混淆了。你这么做的本身，也是种被严重制约、无觉识的心智模式。你加诸别人一个概念化的身份，这个虚假的身份变成了牢笼，不仅囚禁了他们，也囚禁了你自己。

 

To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what
they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of conditioning,
and you see it and accept it as that. You don’t construct an identity out of it
for that person.

不去评断别人，并不是不再看他人的所作所为，而是你明白他们的行为都只是受制约的表现，你看见了，也如实地接受，并且不再从这些行为表现去为对方建构一个虚假的身份。

 

That liberates you as well as the other person from
identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego then no longer
runs your relationships.

这会让你和对方都得到解放，从此不再认同于外相、心智与受制约的反应，于是你的小我也就无法再主导你的人际关系了。

 

As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts,
emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear. In relationships you then
either want or fear something from the other person. 

只要是小我在主导你的生命，你绝大部分的想法、情绪与行动都会出自欲望与恐惧；于是在人际关系里，你要不就是想从别人身上得到些什么，要不就是害怕着别人的什么。

 

What you want from them may be pleasure or material gain,
recognition, praise or attention, or a strengthening of your sense of self
through comparison and through establishing that you are, have, or know more
than they. What you fear is that the opposite may be the case, and they may
diminish your sense of self in some way.

你想从他人身上得到的东西，也许是愉悦，也许是某实质利益，或者是别人的认可、赞美与关注，也可以是自我感的巩固--透过较量及建立身份地位，透过自己拥有的或懂得的比别人多来巩固。而你所恐惧的东西，则恰好和上述相反，它们可能会在某方面贬抑了你的自我感。

 

When you make the present moment the focal point of your
attention–instead of using it as a means to an end–you go beyond the ego and
beyond the unconscious compulsion to use people as a means to an end, the end
being self-enhancement at the cost of others. When you give your fullest
attention to whoever you are interacting with, you take past and future out of the
relationship, except for practical matters. When you are fully present with
everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for
them–your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past–and are
able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention,
which is alert stillness, is the key. 

当你不再把当下视为达成目的的工具，而把它变为你注意力的焦点，你便超越了小我，也超越了不由自主想利用他人达到某些目的的冲动，超越了以他人为代价来强壮自我。当你全然专注于任何与你互动的人，你们之间，除了处理实际的问题之外，过去和未来都不存在了。当你全然“临在”于每个所遇到的人，你将放弃对他们所做的感念化身份识别，那些你认为他们是谁，过去做了什么事情的概念诠释。你们之间的互动，也将不再带着小我的欲望与恐惧。专注，是充满醒觉的寂照，它是一切的关键。

 

How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your
relationships. Love does not want or fear anything.  

超越欲望与恐惧的人际关系是多么美好啊！爱，是没有需求，也无惧于任何事情的。

 

If her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of
consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as
she does. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion, peace. 

如果她的过去就是你的过去，她的痛苦就是你的痛苦，她的觉识层次就是你的觉识层次，你的所思、所为就会完全和她一样。有了这样的了解后，宽恕、慈悲与平静将油然而生。

 

The ego doesn’t like to hear this, because if it cannot be
reactive and righteous anymore, it will lose strength.

小我可不想听到这些话，因为如果它不再有正当性，无法为反应而反应，小我将会失去力量。

 

When you receive whoever comes into the space of Now as a
noble guest, when you allow each person to be as they are, they begin to
change.  

当你把任何进到“当下”空间的人视为贵客，并且让他们做他自己，这些人就开始改变了。

 

To know another human being in their essence, you don’t
really need to know anything about them–their past, their history, their story.
We confuse knowing about with a deeper knowing that is non-conceptual. Knowing
about and knowing are totally different modalities. One is concerned with form,
the other with the formless. One operates through thought, the other through
stillness. 

若想从本质上去认识一个人，你不需要知道“关于”他的任何事，例如他的过去，历史或故事。我们把对某人的事有“相关性的了解”与非概念化的真正认识弄混了，它们是两种不同的形态，前者着重在有相，后者着重在无相，前者以思考运作，后者则透过寂照运作。

 

Knowing about is helpful for practical purposes. On that
level, we cannot do without it. When it is the predominant modality in
relationships, however, it becomes very limiting, even destructive. Thoughts
and concepts create an artificial barrier, a separation between human beings.
Your interactions are then not rooted in Being, but become mind-based. Without
the conceptual barriers, love is naturally present in all human interactions.

从实际面来说，对某人有“相关性了解”是很有助益的，且不能没有它。但如果这种相关性了解变成人际关系中的主要形态，它就变得有局限性，甚至具破坏性了。思考与概念在人与人之间制造了一个人为的障碍，于是人际的互动就不是根植于本体，而是以心智为基础，只有去除掉这个概念栅栏，爱就会自然地“临在”于所有人类的互动中。

 

Most human interactions are confined to the exchange of
words – the realm of thought. It is essential to bring some stillness,
particularly into your close relationships. 

大部分的人类互动都被限制在言语的交流下，也就是限制在思维的范畴里。因此，把寂照带进你的人际关系，特别是亲密关系中是非常重要的。

 

No relationship can thrive without the sense of
spaciousness that comes with stillness. Meditate or spend silent time in nature
together. When going for a walk or sitting in the car or at home, become
comfortable with being in stillness together. Stillness cannot and need not be
created. Just be receptive to the stillness that is already there, but is
usually obscured by mental noise. 

任何的关系，如果缺乏了伴随寂照而来的无垠宽广的感受，便无法成长茁壮。与亲友一起在自然中冥想或共度安静时光，不论是外出散步，或是安坐于车上或家里，你们都将因为共同“临在”于寂照之中，而感到轻松自在。寂照，是无法也不需去创造的，它本已存在，你只要好好感受并接纳它，不过，它总是被我们的心智杂音所干扰。

 

If spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be
dominated by the mind and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict. If
stillness is there, it can contain anything.

如果那无垠的寂照消失了，人际关系就会沦为由心智所掌控，而且轻易地被问题与冲突所接管。如果寂照存在，它将包容所有的一切。

 

True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the
relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness
arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship. But true listening is
a rare skill. Usually, the greater part of a person’s attention is taken up by
their thinking. At best, they may be evaluating your words or preparing the
next thing to say. Or they may not be listening at all, lost in their own
thoughts.

真正的倾听，是另一个将寂照带入人际关系的方法。当你真正在倾听别人说话时，寂照的层面将会自然生起，变成了人际关系中很重要的部分。但是，真正的倾听是种少见的技能，人们大部分的注意力，通常都被自己的想法所占满了。好一点的，也只是在衡量你说的话，准备下一句要说什么，当然，他们更可能完全没在听，迷失在自己的念头里。

 

True listening goes far beyond auditory perception. It is
the arising of alert attention, a space of presence in which the words are
being received. The words now become secondary. They may be meaningful or they
may not make sense. Far more important than what you are listening to is the
act of listening itself, the space of conscious presence that arises as you listen.
That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person
without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the
other person is no longer “other.” In that space, you are joined together as
one awareness, one consciousness.  

真正的倾听，远远超越了听觉的感知。真正倾听是警醒的专注力在生起，并形成一个“临在”空间接受话语，这时语词变得次要，它们也许有意义，也许完全没道理，重要的是倾听本身这个行为，与当你倾听时，所生起的那个“临在”空间，而不是你听到对方说些什么。这空间是觉识成为一体的地方，在这空间里，概念性思维所形成的栅栏不再阻隔人与人之间的相遇，他人不再是“他”人了，你们在这里结合为一体的觉性、一体的意识。

 

Do you experience frequent and repetitive drama in your
close relationships? Do relatively insignificant disagreements often trigger
violent arguments and emotional pain? 

在亲密关系当中，是否经常上演重复的戏码？是否经常因为芝麻绿豆的小事，引发激烈的争论与情绪上的痛苦？

 

At the root of it lie the basic egoic patterns: the need to
be right, and, of course, for someone else to be wrong, that is to say
identification with mental positions. There is also the ego's need to be
periodically in conflict with something or someone in order to strengthen its
sense of separation between me and the other, without which it cannot
survive.  

这一切皆根源于基本的小我模式：我是“对”的，当然，还必须有个犯错的他人。换句话说，就是认同于心智的立场。此外，还有个小我的基本需求是，要周期性的与某人或某事有所冲突，藉以强调“人”、“我”之间是有区别的。少了这些冲突，小我就无法存在。

 

In addition, there is the accumulated emotional pain from
the past that you and each human being carries within, both from your personal
past as well as the collective pain of humanity that goes back a long, long time.
This pain body is an energy field within you that sporadically takes you over
because it needs to experience more emotional pain for itself to feed on and
replenish itself. It will try to control your thinking and make it deeply
negative. It loves your negative thoughts since it resonates with every
frequency and so can feed on them. It will also provoke negative emotional
reactions in people close to you, especially your partner, in order to feed on
the ensuing drama and emotional pain.

此外，每个人心中都带着从过去到现在所累积下来的情绪伤痛，它们来自你个人的过去，也来自人类久远以来的集体痛苦。此--“痛苦之身”是你内在的一个能量场，它不时地来占有你，因为它靠感受更多的痛苦来喂养与填满自己。“痛苦之身”企图控制你的思考，让你的想法变得极端负面，它爱你的负面想法，因为频率相同，它能赖以为食。它还会在你所亲近的人们身上煽起负面的情绪反应，尤其是你的伴侣，藉以喂养接下来的戏码与情绪痛苦。

 

How can you free yourself from this deep-seated unconscious
identification with pain that creates so much misery in life?  

你要如何摆脱这在你生命中制造了无数不幸，根深蒂固的、对痛苦的无觉识认同感？

 

Become aware of it. Realize that it is not who you are and
recognize it for what it is, past pain. Witness it as it happens in your
partner or in yourself. When your unconscious identification with it is broken,
when you are able to observe it in yourself, you don't feed it anymore and it
will gradually lose its energy charge. 

觉察那痛苦，明白那痛苦并非真正的你，并且认清它的真面目：过去的痛苦。当痛苦发生于你的伴侣或自己身上时，看着它。当你不再无意识地认同于它，当你能够于内在观察它，你就不再喂养它了，而它也将逐渐失去了能量的补充。

 

Human interaction can be hell. Or it can be a great
spiritual practice. 

人类彼此的互动，可以是炼狱，也可以成为伟大的灵性修行。

 

When you look upon another human being and feel great love
towards them, or when you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you
responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of
that love or that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true
nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in
your essence. That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all
outer forms will.  

当你看着一个人，并感到有极大爱涌向他们，或当你凝视自然的美好，内在与之深深呼应时，请将双眼闭上片刻，去感受你内在那股爱和美的本质，去感受它们与真正的你或你的本质是如此地密不可分。外在形相是你内在本质的暂时映现，因此，外在形相早晚会消失，而爱与美却永远不会离你而去。

 

What is your relationship with the world of objects, the
countless things that surround you, and that you handle everyday. The chair you
sit on, the pen, the car, the cup. Are they to you merely a means to an end or
do you occasionally acknowledge their existence, their being, no matter how
briefly, by noticing them and giving them your attention?  

你与这个物质世界，以及那些每天包围着你、必须处理的众多事物，关系如何呢？你坐的那张椅子、那只笔、那辆车、那只杯子......它们对你来说，只是工具吗？偶尔，无论多么短暂，你会因为瞥见它们，对它们起了关注，进而认识到它们的存在、它们的本体吗?

 

When you get attached to objects, when you are using them
to enhance your worth in your own eyes and in the eyes of others, concern about
things can easily take over your whole life. When there is self-identification
with things, you don't appreciate them for what they are because you are
looking for yourself in them. 

当你对于事物产生了执着，当你利用它们提升你在自己与他人眼中的价值，这种对于外在事物的在意，便能轻易地占据你全部的生命。当你的自我认同来自于外在事物，你将不再欣赏这些东西的本然面貌，因为你只是在它们身上寻找你自己罢了。

 

When you appreciate an object for what it is, when you
acknowledge its being without mental projection, you cannot not feel grateful
for its existence. You may also sense that it is not really inanimate, that it
only appears so to the senses. Physicist will confirm that on a molecular
level, it is indeed, a pulsating energy field.  

当你欣赏一件物品的本然样貌，当你不带任何心智投射的眼光认识它的本体，你无可避免地会感谢它的存在。你也许感觉到它并非真的是无生命，只是对我们的感官来说是如此。物理学家将证实，从分子层次来看，它实际上是一个正在搏动的能量场。

 

Through selfless appreciation of the realm of things, the
world around you will begin to come alive for you in ways you cannot comprehend
with the mind.  

若从无我的角度欣赏事物的世界，你周遭的一切，将会以你连想去思维都无从思维起的方式，而活了起来。

 

Whenever you meet anyone, no matter how briefly, do you
acknowledge their being by giving them your full attention? Or are you reducing
them to a means to an end, a mere function or role?  

不论遇到任何人，不管相处时间是多么短暂，你是否都能以完整的关注去认识他们的本体？或者，你只是把他们当成为达到某种目的的工具、某种功能或角色？

 

What is the quality of your relationship with the cashier
at the supermarket, the parking attendant, the repair man, the “customer”? 

你与超市收银员、停车场管理员、修理工人或“顾客”的互动关系品质如何？

 

A moment of attention is enough. As you look at them or
listen to them, there is an alert stillness. Perhaps only two or three seconds.
Perhaps longer. That is enough for something more real to emerge than the roles
we usually play and identify with. All roles are part of the conditioned
consciousness that is the human mind. That which emerges through the act of
attention is the unconditioned–who you are in your essence underneath your name
and form. You are no longer acting out a script. You become real. When that
dimension emerges from within you, it also draws it forth from within the other
person.  

只要片刻的专注便已足够，就在你凝视或倾听他们的时候，一种警醒的静观寂照生起，也许只有两、三秒，也许再久一点，那便足让某些更为真实的东西显现出来，它比我们平常所扮演与认同的角色真实。所有的角色，都是被制约的意识，也就是人类心智的一部分；那因为专注而显现的一切则是不受制约的--是隐藏在你的名字与外在形相之下，你的真正本质。你不再依照人生剧本演出，你变得真实。当这个层面自你内在浮现出来时，它同时也将其他人的相同内在召唤出来。

 

Ultimately, of course, there is no other and you are always
meeting yourself. 

最后，很自然地，不再有别人了，你总是遇见你自己。