If you think it is important to know about yourself only because I or someone else has told you it is important, then I am afraid all communication between us comes to an end. But if we agree that it is vital that we understand ourselves completely, then you and I have quite a different relationship, then we can explore together with a happy, careful and intelligent enquiry.

如果你认为理解自己很重要,只是因为我或是其他人告诉你这很重要,那我们之间的沟通可能就到此为止了。如果我们都认为彻底理解自己极其得重要,你和我则有一种很不一样的关系,我们可以一起探索,用一种愉快的、细致的和智慧的探寻方式。

I do not demand your faith; I am not setting myself up as an authority. I have nothing to teach you - no new philosophy, no new system, no new path to reality; there is no path to reality any more than to truth.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

我不要求你信我,我也不把自己树立为权威。我没什么可教你的——没有新的哲学,没有新的体系,没有新的通往某种现实的路径,也没有通往真相的路径。

(译注:此刻大脑觉得什么是真的,这个整体的状态叫现实(reality),绝大多数人活在幻象中,所以,这些幻象是他们的现实,但对于活在真相中的人来说,事实是现实。)

任何种类的权威,尤其是在想法领域的,是最具破坏性的、最邪恶的东西。领导者毁了跟随者,跟随者毁了领导者。你必须得是你自己的老师,是你自己的信徒;你得去质疑一切被人类当作有价值、有必要的东西。

If you do not follow somebody you feel very lonely. Be lonely then. Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty and anxious - a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. The moment you run away fear begins.

如果你不跟随别人会感到非常孤独,那就孤独吧。为什么你害怕一个人?因为你在真实地面对自己,你发现你是空的,乏味的,愚蠢的,丑陋的,愧疚的,焦虑的—— 一个狭隘、冷漠、二手的实体。面对这样一个事实,观察它,不要跑开。一旦你跑开,恐惧就来了。

In enquiring into ourselves we are not isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. It is not an unhealthy process. Man throughout the world is caught up in the same daily problems as ourselves, so in enquiring into ourselves we are not being in the least neurotic because there is no difference between the individual and the collective. That is an actual fact. I have created the world as I am. So don't let us get lost in this battle between the part and the whole.

在探索内心的过程中,我们并没有让自己跟这个世界隔绝,这不是一个不健康的过程。全世界的人跟我们一样陷入到各种日常问题中,所以探索我们自己的内心恰好表明了我们一点也不神经质,因为个体和集体没有区别。这是事实。我创造了我的内心世界。所以不要让我们在这个局部和整体的斗争中迷失。

I must become aware of the total field of my own self, which is the consciousness of the individual and of society. It is only then, when the mind goes beyond this individual and social consciousness, that I can become a light to myself that never goes out.

我必须觉察到自我的全部领域,那就是个体和社会的意识。只有到那时,当内心已经超越了这个个体和社会的意识,我才可以变成自己的一盏明灯,永不熄灭。

(译注:对于绝大多数人来说,个体意识和社会意识是分裂的,ta把社会理解为一个外在于自我的东西,所以,超越这个意识,就是看到这个意识的幻象,不存在所谓的个体和社会,我就是这个社会,整个社会的框架在我的脑海中运行。)

Now where do we begin to understand ourselves? Here am I, and how am I to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking place inside myself? I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship. It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself.

I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself. Every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and I cannot study myself in abstraction; I am not an abstract entity; therefore I have to study myself in actuality - as I am, not as I wish to be.

现在我们从哪里开始来了解自心呢?此刻我就在这里,我应该如何研究自己,观察自己,看到在我的内心深处,此刻正在发生什么?我只可以透过关系来观察自己,因为生活的全部就是关系。坐在一个角落,围绕着自己来冥想没有什么用。我不能单独地存在。

我只存在于各种关系中——跟人的关系,跟物的关系,跟想法的关系。通过研究我跟外界事物和人的关系,以及我跟内心活动的关系,我开始理解我自己。任何一种其他形式的理解只不过是一种抽象,我不可能在抽象中了解我自己;我不是一个抽象的实体,因此我必须在实际中了解我自己—— 如实的,而不是我希望的样子。

Understanding is not an intellectual process. Accumulating knowledge about yourself and learning about yourself are two different things, for the knowledge you accumulate about yourself is always of the past and a mind that is burdened with the past is a sorrowful mind. Learning about yourself is not like learning a language or a technology or in the present and knowledge is always in the past, and as most of us live in the past and are satisfied with the past, knowledge becomes extraordinarily important to us.

That is why we worship the erudite, the clever, the cunning. But if you are learning all the time, learning every minute, learning by watching and listening, learning by seeing and doing, then you will find that learning is a constant movement without the past.

理解不是一个智识的过程。积累关于你自己的知识和了解你自己是两件不同的事情,因为你所积累的关于你自己的知识总是属于过去的,一个被过去所累的心是一个伤悲的心;不像是学习语言或者技术,了解你自己是在此时此刻,而知识总在过去;因为我们中的大多数人生活在过去并满足于过去,知识因而对我们而言变得极其重要。

这也是为什么我们敬奉高深的学问,各种聪明,各种心思狡猾。但是如果你一直在学习,每时每刻,通过观察和聆听来学习,通过看到和行动来学习,你将会发现学习是一个没有过去的永恒的运动。

If you say you will learn gradually about yourself, adding more and more, little by little, you are not studying yourself now as you are but through acquired knowledge. Learning implies a great sensitivity. There is no sensitivity if there is an idea, which is of the past, dominating the present. Then the mind is no longer quick, pliable, alert. Most of us are not sensitive even physically.

We overeat, we do not bother about the right diet, we oversmoke and drink so that our bodies become gross and insensitive; the quality of attention in the organism itself is made dull. How can there be a very alert, sensitive, clear mind if the organism itself is dull and heavy?

We may be sensitive about certain things that touch us personally but to be completely sensitive to all the implications of life demand that there be no separation between the organism and the psyche. It is a total movement.

如果你说,你将逐渐了解你自己,一点点的增加,那此刻你并非在如实的研究你自己,而是通过累积的知识。了解意味着非常敏锐。如果有一个想法在左右着当下,想法属于过去,那这种敏锐就不存在;这样内心就不再敏捷、柔软和机警。我们中的大多数人并不敏锐,身体上也不敏锐。

我们吃得太多,不关心合适的饮食,我们烟抽得太多,酒喝得太多,因而身体变得很糟、不敏锐,机体自身的觉察也变得迟钝。如果身体都变得迟钝和沉重,那怎么会有一个机警、敏锐和清晰的内心呢?

我们可能对某些让自己感动的东西敏感,但对生活所暗示的一切完全敏感需要(深刻地意识到)身和心不可划分。这是一个整体的运动。

To understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know all its content, its nature, its structure, its movement. Have you ever tried living with yourself? If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive. And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgements and values.

为了能够理解任何事情,你需要接纳它,你必须观察它,你必须知道它所有的内容,它的本质,它的构架,它的动态,你可曾尝试接纳你自己?如果是这样,你将开始看到你自己不是一个静止的状态,而是新鲜的、活生生的。去接纳一个活生生的事物,你的内心必须鲜活。当内心被各种观点、判断和价值观框住的时候,内心不可能鲜活。

In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees.

为了能够观察你内心的动态,你的整个生命体的动态,你必须有一颗自由的心,不是一个总是赞成或不赞成的心,不是在争论中站队,仅仅凭着文字来争辩,而是带着一种想去理解的愿心——这是一个非常困难的事情,因为我们中的大多数人不知道如何去观察,去聆听我们自己这个生命体,正如我们也不知道如何去欣赏一条河的美,或者聆听树木中微风的声音。

When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.

当我们谴责或者正当化的时候,我们无法看清,当我们内心喋喋不休的时候,我们也无法看清;这样我们就无法观察是什么,我们看到的只是基于自我的投射。我们每个人都有一个认为自己是什么或者应该是什么的画面,也正是那个画面,完全地阻碍了我们如实地看清自己。

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to look at anything simply. Because our minds are very complex we have lost the quality of simplicity. I don't mean simplicity in clothes or food, wearing only a loin cloth or breaking a record fasting or any of that immature nonsense the saints cultivate, but the simplicity that can look directly at things without fear - that can look at ourselves as we actually are without any distortion - to say when we lie we lie, not cover it up or run away from it.

简单如实的看待一切,这是世界上最具挑战的事情之一。因为我们内心非常的复杂,我们已经丧失了简单这种品质。我不是说穿着或者食物的简单,只穿一条遮羞布或者打破禁食时长的记录,也不是各种圣人们所开创的那些幼稚的废话,而是我们能够如实的看到一切,没有恐惧的那种简单——如实的观察自己,没有任何的扭曲——当我们撒谎的时候,说我们撒谎了,既不掩盖,也不逃避。

Also in order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, `I know myself', you have already stopped learning about yourself; or if you say, 'There is nothing much to learn about myself because I am just a bundle of memories, ideas, experiences and traditions', then you have also stopped learning about yourself.

同样,理解我们自己也需要大量的谦卑。如果你说:“我知道我自己了”,那么你已经停止了认识你自己;或者你说:“关于我自己没什么可了解的,因为我就是各种记忆、想法、经验和传统的集结”,那么你也停止了认识你自己。

The moment you have achieved anything you cease to have that quality of innocence and humility; the moment you have a conclusion or start examining from knowledge, you are finished, for then you are translating every living thing in terms of the old.

一旦你通过努力实现了什么,那你就不再拥有那种天真无邪和谦卑的品质;一旦你有了结论或者开始从知识的视角来检索,那么你也停止了认识你自己,因为你正在用陈旧的知识来解读一切活生生的事物。

Whereas if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty, no achievement, there is freedom to look, to achieve. And when you look with freedom it is always new. A confident man is a dead human being.

如果你没有立足之处,没有确定感,没有成就,那么才有自由去观察,去实现。当你自由地观察,一切总是新的。一个自信满满的人是一个死气沉沉的人。

But how can we be free to look and learn when our minds from the moment we are born to the moment we die are shaped by a particular culture in the narrow pattern of the `me'?

但是,我们怎么才可以自由地观察和了解(自己),当我们从一生下来到离开人世,内心就被特定的文化中的小“我”束缚?

For centuries we have been conditioned by nationality, caste, class, tradition, religion, language, education, literature, art, custom, convention, propaganda of all kinds, economic pressure, the food we eat, the climate we live in, our family, our friends, our experiences - every influence you can think of - and therefore our responses to every problem are conditioned.

数个世纪以来,我们已条件依赖于国籍,等级,阶级,传统,信仰,语言,教育,文学,艺术,习俗,约定俗成,各种的宣传,经济压力,我们吃的食物,所处的气候,我们的家庭、朋友、经历——任何一种你能想到的影响——因而我们对每一个问题的回应都是条件依赖的。

Are you aware that you are conditioned? That is the first thing to ask yourself, not how to be free of your conditioning. You may never be free of it, and if you say, `I must be free of it', you may fall into another trap of another form of conditioning. So are you aware that you are conditioned?

你意识到你依赖于某些条件吗?这是第一件要问你自己的事情,而不是如何摆脱各种条件依赖。你可能永远都不会摆脱,但如果你说“我必须得摆脱”,你可能会掉入另外一个陷阱,另外一种形式的条件依赖。所以,你意识到你依赖于某些条件吗?

Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.

甚至当你去看一棵树,并说:“这是一棵橡树”或者“这是一棵杨树”,也就是树的命名,植物学的知识,已经在制约你的心,这些词语夹在中间,让你无法真正地看到这棵树,你是否清楚这一点?为了跟这棵树接触,你得把手放在上面,词语无法帮你触碰到它。

How do you know you are conditioned? What tells you? What tells you you are hungry? - not as a theory but the actual fact of hunger? In the same way, how do you discover the actual fact that you are conditioned? Isn't it by your reaction to a problem, a challenge? You respond to every challenge according to your conditioning and your conditioning being inadequate will always react inadequately.

你怎么知道你有条件依赖呢?什么会告诉你?什么会告诉你你饿了?不是一个理论,而是饥饿这个事实。同样的,你怎么去发现你被条件框限的这个事实呢?不正是你对一个问题或者挑战的反应吗?你根据你所依赖的条件来回应每一个挑战,这些条件不完备意味着你的回应也是不完备的。

When you become aware of it, does this conditioning of race, religion and culture bring a sense of imprisonment? Take only one form of conditioning, nationality, become seriously, completely aware of it and see whether you enjoy it or rebel against it, and if you rebel against it, whether you want to break through all conditioning.

当你意识到这一点,这种种族、信仰和文化的条件依赖是否带来一种被囚禁的感觉?拿一种条件来说,国籍,你需要严肃地、完全地觉察到它,观察一下你真喜欢它还是厌恶它,如果你厌恶它,你是否想突破各种条件依赖。

If you are satisfied with your conditioning you will obviously do nothing about it, but if you are not satisfied when you become aware of it, you will realize that you never do anything without it. Never! And therefore you are always living in the past with the dead.

如果你满足于你的条件依赖,显然,你将不会采取任何措施;但是如果你觉察到它并且不满意,你将意识到没有这些条件,你什么也做不了。因此,你总是活在过去,活在死气沉沉的条件里。

You will be able to see for yourself how you are conditioned only when there is a conflict in the continuity of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. If everything is perfectly happy around you, your wife loves you, you love her, you have a nice house, nice children and plenty of money, then you are not aware of your conditioning at all. But when there is a disturbance - when your wife looks at someone else or you lose your money or are threatened with war or any other pain or anxiety - then you know you are conditioned.

只有当愉悦难以持续,或者痛苦难以避免的时候,你才可能亲自看到你是如何依赖于各种条件的。如果你周围的一切都非常和谐,你的妻子爱你,你爱她,你有一个漂亮的房子,很好的孩子,很多钱,那么你不会意识到你的条件依赖。但当出现扰动的时候——当你的妻子爱上了别人,或者你失去了你的金钱,或者被战争、其他痛苦或焦虑威胁到,你才会知道你受制于条件依赖。

When you struggle against any kind of disturbance or defend yourself against any outer or inner threat, then you know you are conditioned. And as most of us are disturbed most of the time, either superficially or deeply, that very disturbance indicates that we are conditioned. So long as the animal is petted he reacts nicely, but the moment he is antagonized the whole violence of his nature comes out.

当你去对抗任何的扰动,或者保卫自己来抵抗任何的外部或者内部的威胁,你就会知道你被条件框限了。由于我们很多人很多时候都会受到扰动,轻微的,深层的,这个扰动本身意味着我们依赖于某些条件。只要动物被宠爱着,它会表现得很和善;但一旦它感到敌意,它整个暴力的本质将毕露无遗。

We are disturbed about life, politics, the economic situation, the horror, the brutality, the sorrow in the world as well as in ourselves, and from that we realize how terribly narrowly conditioned we are. And what shall we do? Accept that disturbance and live with it as most of us do? Get used to it as one gets used to living with a backache? Put up with it?

我们被生活、政治、经济状况、世界上的恐怖、残忍、悲哀所扰,也被自己所扰,从中我们意识到,我们受制于如此狭隘的条件。我们需要做什么?接受这种扰动,带着这种扰动生活,就像大多数人一样(凑合着过这一生)?习惯它就像是习惯了背痛一样?忍耐它?

There is a tendency in all of us to put up with things, to get used to them, to blame them on circumstances. `Ah, if things were right I would be different', we say, or, `Give me the opportunity and I will fulfil myself', or, 'I am crushed by the injustice of it all', always blaming our disturbances on others or on our environment or on the economic situation.

我们每个人都有一种去忍耐的倾向,去适应,把问题归咎于外境。“唉,如果一切顺利的话,我不会是现在这样”,或者说,“给我机会,我将实现自我”,或者,“我被这不公平碾压了”,总是把我们的困扰归咎于他人、环境或者经济状况。

If one gets used to disturbance it means that one's mind has become dull, just as one can get so used to beauty around one that one no longer notices it. One gets indifferent, hard and callous, and one's mind becomes duller and duller. If we do not get used to it we try to escape from it by taking some kind of drug, joining a political group, shouting, writing, going to a football match or to a temple or church or finding some other form of amusement.

如果一个人习惯了这种扰动,这意味着一个人变得麻木,就像一个人习惯了周围的美,再也注意不到美一样。一个人变得冷漠、强硬和残酷,变得越来越麻木。如果我们不习惯于这种扰动,我们试图用各种方式来逃避,通过嗑药、加入某个政党、呐喊、写作、去看足球比赛、去寺庙或者教堂,或者找到其他形式的娱乐。

Why is it that we escape from actual facts? We are afraid of death - I am just taking that as an example - and we invent all kinds of theories, hopes, beliefs, to disguise the fact of death, but the fact is still there. To understand a fact we must look at it, not run away from it.

Most of us are afraid of living as well as of dying. We are afraid for our family, afraid of public opinion, of losing our job, our security, and hundreds of other things. The simple fact is that we are afraid, not that we are afraid of this or that. Now why cannot we face that fact?

为什么我们要逃避事实呢?我们害怕死亡——我只是举一个例子——我们发明了各种各样的理论、希望、信仰,来掩饰死亡的事实,但事实就在那里。为了能够理解事实,我们必须观察它,而非逃开。

我们中的大多数人害怕活着也害怕死亡。我们为我们的家庭担心,害怕群体舆论,害怕失去工作,失去安全感,各种各样其他的事情。简单的事实就是我们害怕,不是我们害怕这个或那个。现在,我们为什么不能面对那个事实呢?

You can face a fact only in the present and if you never allow it to be present because you are always escaping from it, you can never face it, and because we have cultivated a whole network of escapes we are caught in the habit of escape.

你只能在此时此刻面对一个事实,如果你不允许它在此刻出现,因为你总是逃避它,那你不可能面对它,因为我们已经创造出一系列的逃避方式,我们已经深陷在逃避的习惯中了。

Now, if you are at all sensitive, at all serious, you will not only be aware of your conditioning but you will also be aware of the dangers it results in, what brutality and hatred it leads to. Why, then, if you see the danger of your conditioning, don't you act?

现在,如果你真的敏锐,真的严肃,你不仅会觉察到你的条件依赖,也会觉察到它导致的危险,它将带来什么样的残酷和仇恨。当你看到了条件依赖的危险,为什么不采取行动呢?

Is it because you are lazy, laziness being lack of energy? Yet you will not lack energy if you see an immediate physical danger like a snake in your path, or a precipice, or a fire. Why, then, don't you act when you see the danger of your conditioning? If you saw the danger of nationalism to your own security, wouldn't you act?

是因为你懒,能量匮乏而懒惰?然而当你遇到即刻的物理危险,比如一条蛇,或者悬崖,或者大火,你不会缺乏能量。那么既然看到了条件依赖的危险,为什么不采取行动?如果你看到了国家主义给你自身带来的危险,你为什么不采取行动?

The answer is you don't see. Through an intellectual process of analysis you may see that nationalism leads to self-destruction but there is no emotional content in that. Only when there is an emotional content do you become vital.

答案是你没有看到危险。通过智识上的分析,你可能会看到国家主义导致自我毁灭,但这种认识里没有强烈的情感。只有当一种强烈的情感存在的时候,你才会变得充满能量。

If you see the danger of your conditioning merely as an intellectual concept, you will never do anything about it. In seeing a danger as a mere idea there is conflict between the idea and action and that conflict takes away your energy. It is only when you see the conditioning and the danger of it immediately, and as you would see a precipice, that you act. So seeing is acting.

如果你只是把条件依赖的危险当作是一个智识上的概念,你将无动于衷;把危险仅仅看作是一个想法,在想法和行动之间总是存在冲突,这种冲突把你的能量消耗殆尽。只有当你即刻看到条件依赖和它的危险,就像你看到悬崖的时候,你会立刻采取行动。所以,看清即行动。

Most of us walk through life inattentively, reacting unthinkingly according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and such reactions create only further bondage, further conditioning, but the moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally.

我们中的大多数人生活并不留心,按照我们长大的环境不假思索地做出反应,这些反应只是创造了进一步的束缚,进一步的条件依赖,但一旦你全然地关注到你的条件依赖,你将看到你彻底挥别过去,条件依赖自然离你而去。


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《从已知中解脱/Freedom from the known》浓缩了克里希那穆提对人类意识和问题的核心洞察。本书首版于1969年,内容是克里希那穆提的演讲和谈话精选。编辑Mary Lutyens是克的朋友、图书编辑和自传作者。

全书一共16章,6万字,短小精悍,主题包括理解自己,自我,愉悦,痛苦,自由,爱,恐惧,想法和觉察等等。

即日起,曼谛会会陆续连载由Cico译注的版本,为每个人的观察和理解,提供一面新的镜子。