Mindfulness In Plain English
佛教禅修直解
by Mahathera Henepola Gunaratana
德宝法师著作
梁国雄居士译
Chapter 16: What's In It For You
第十六章 禅修的效益
You can expect certain benefits from your meditation. The initial ones are practical, prosaic things; the later stages are profoundly transcendent. They run together from the simple to the sublime. We will set forth some of them here. Your own experience is all that counts.
你可以期望从禅修中得到一些利益，最初的利益很实际和平凡，往后阶段所得的利益则是深远与超凡的，它们从简单的到崇高的都有，我们在这里会宣布一些，你自己的体验才算是真的。
Those things that we called hindrances or defilements are more than just unpleasant mental habits. They are the primary manifestations of the ego process itself. The ego sense itself is essentially a feeling of separation -- a perception of distance between that which we call me, and that which we call other. This perception is held in place only if it is constantly exercised, and the hindrances constitute that exercise.
Greed and lust are attempts to get 'some of that' for me; hatred and aversion are attempts to place greater distance between 'me and that'. All the defilements depend upon the perception of a barrier between self and other, and all of them foster this perception every time they are exercised. Mindfulness perceives things deeply and with great clarity. It brings our attention to the root of the defilements and lays bare their mechanism. It sees their fruits and their effects upon us. It cannot be fooled. Once you have clearly seen what greed really is and what it really does to you and to others, you just naturally cease to engage in it. When a child burns his hand on a hot oven, you don't have to tell him to pull it back; he does it naturally, without conscious thought and without decision. There is a reflex action built into the nervous system for just that purpose, and it works faster than thought. By the time the child perceives the sensation of heat and begins to cry, the hand has already been jerked back from the source of pain. Mindfulness works in very much the same way: it is wordless, spontaneous and utterly efficient. Clear mindfulness inhibits the growth of hindrances; continuous mindfulness extinguishes them. Thus, as genuine mindfulness is built up, the walls of the ego itself are broken down, craving diminishes, defensiveness and rigidity lessen, you become more open, accepting and flexible. You learn to share your loving-kindness.
那些我们称为盖障或烦恼的东西，不仅是令人不快的心理习惯而已，它们是自我活动过程本身的主要表现。自我感觉本身基本上是一种疏离的感受，一种「自我」与「其他」之间的距离知觉。这种知觉要不断重复演习才能稳固地保持，而那些演习就是盖障所组成的。贪心与爱欲试图为「自我」得到「其他」的一些东西，瞋恚与厌恶则试图拉阔「自我」与「其他」之间的距离。所有烦恼皆因「自我」与「其他」之间有障碍的知觉而生起，而每次烦恼出现时，全都会助长此一知觉。静观能深入与极清晰地体会事物，它能带领注意力到烦恼的根源，把它们的机制暴露无遗，它知道它们对我们所造成的后果与影响，它不会被愚弄。一旦你看清楚贪欲的真面目，真正认识到它对你及其他人的所作所为，你自会停止，不再参与其事。就好像一个小孩，当他的手被烤炉烫过后，你无需叫他缩手，他也自然会做的，而且是不假思索或决断。神经系统自会作出此反射动作，且它的速度比思想还要快。当孩子感到火热的感觉并开始哭的时候，他的手已急拉离开了致痛的源头。静观的运作方式与此很相似，它是无言的、自发的、且绝对有效率。清晰的静观制止了盖障的增长，持续的静观则可彻底消灭它们。因此，当真正的静观被建立起来时，「自我」的墙壁会瓦解、渴爱会减少、自我防御和顽固僵硬等亦会减轻，你会更为开放、更为包容与灵活变通，你学会与他人分享你的慈悲心。
Traditionally, Buddhists are reluctant to talk about the ultimate nature of human beings. But those who are willing to make descriptive statements at all usually say that our ultimate essence or Buddha nature is pure, holy and inherently good. The only reason that human beings appear otherwise is that their experience of that ultimate essence has been hindered; it has been blocked like water behind a dam. The hindrances are the bricks of which the dam is built. As mindfulness dissolves the bricks, holes are punched in the dam and compassion and sympathetic joy come flooding forward. As meditative mindfulness develops, your whole experience of life changes. Your experience of being alive, the very sensation of being conscious, becomes lucid and precise, no longer just an unnoticed background for your preoccupations. It becomes a thing consistently perceived.
传统上，佛教徒都不愿意谈有关人类的本性，不过，愿意说的人会作出一般性的描述，谓我们的本性或佛性是清净的、圣洁的、且本质上是善良的。人并不如是表现，仅因为对那本性的体验被障蔽了，就像水坝里的水被堵住了一样。盖障就是那些建造水坝的砖块，当静观溶解那些砖块时，水坝就被洞穿，接着大量的悲心与喜心(四无量心之二)就会向外涌出。静观力随着禅修发展时，你的整个人生体验亦会改变，你活着的感受，亦即意识感觉本身会变得清晰明确，不再会因关注事物而不知不觉，而是一个可被持续知觉的东西。
Each passing moment stands out as itself; the moments no longer blend together in an unnoticed blur. Nothing is glossed over or taken for granted, no experiences labeled as merely 'ordinary'. Everything looks bright and special. You refrain from categorizing your experiences into mental pigeonholes. Descriptions and interpretations are chucked aside and each moment of time is allowed to speak for itself. You actually listen to what it has to say, and you listen as if it were being heard for the very first time. When your meditation becomes really powerful, it also becomes constant. You consistently observe with bare attention both the breath and every mental phenomenon. You feel increasingly stable, increasingly moored in the stark and simple experience of moment-to-moment existence.
经过的每一片刻都会各自显现，它们不再混淆不清。没有片刻的经验被掩饰或被视为理所当然，也没有经验被标志为「普通的」，所有片刻间的经验看起来都很活跃、明亮和特别，你不再把自己的经验在心内分门别类，描述与解释被弃置一旁，让每一片刻可各自为自己言说，你则老实地聆听着它要说的话，聆听时就好像是第一次听到一样。当你的禅修真的有力时，它亦会变得持久。你连续不断地留意观察呼吸与每一个心理现象，你感到越来越稳定，越来越能令心随时停泊在朴实而单纯的当下经验上。
Once your mind is free from thought, it becomes clearly wakeful and at rest in an utterly simple awareness. This awareness cannot be described adequately. Words are not enough. It can only be experienced. Breath ceases to be just breath; it is no longer limited to the static and familiar concept you once held. You no longer see it as a succession of just inhalations and exhalations; it is no longer some insignificant monotonous experience. Breath becomes a living, changing process, something alive and fascinating. It is no longer something that takes place in time; it is perceived as the present moment itself. Time is seen as a concept, not an experienced reality.
一旦你的心免受思想束缚，它会变得十分清醒，并安住于全然单纯的觉知之中，这觉知无法可被充分描述，文字并不足够，它只可被体验。呼吸不再只是呼吸，它不再是你曾经熟悉的静态呼吸概念，你不再仅仅视之为一连串的呼吸，它不再是些无关重要的单调感受，而是一个活生生的、不断改变的过程，它生气勃勃、引人入胜。它不再是时间中发生的事，而被视为当下的片刻本身，时间被认为是一种概念，而不是一种经验到的事实。
This is simplified, rudimentary awareness which is stripped of all extraneous detail. It is grounded in a living flow of the present, and it is marked by a pronounced sense of reality. You know absolutely that this is real, more real than anything you have ever experienced. Once you have gained this perception with absolute certainty, you have a fresh vantage point, a new criterion against which to gauge all of your experience. After this perception, you see clearly those moments when you are participating in bare phenomena alone, and those moments when you are disturbing phenomena with mental attitudes. You watch yourself twisting reality with mental comments, with stale images and personal opinions. You know what you are doing, when you are doing it. You become increasingly sensitive to the ways in which you miss the true reality, and you gravitate towards the simple objective perspective which does not add to or subtract from what is. You become a very perceptive individual. From this vantage point, all is seen with clarity. The innumerable activities of mind and body stand out in glaring detail. You mindfully observe the incessant rise and fall of breath; you watch an endless stream of bodily sensations and movements; you scan a rapid succession of thoughts and feelings, and you sense the rhythm that echoes from the steady march of time. And in the midst of all this ceaseless movement, there is no watcher, there is only watching.
这是简单化的基本觉知，当中已被去除一切无关的细节。它的基础是当刻活生生的流动，明显地富有现实感觉特色；你确实地知道这是真的，可说比你过去的任何经验更加真。一旦获得这种绝对确定的洞察，你便拥有一个新的有力观察点、一个新的标准，可用来衡量你的一切经验。经过这次洞察后，你会清楚地看到那些自己在单独参与纯粹现象时的片刻，也会看到那些自己以某些心态介入、干扰着现象时的片刻。你会观察到自心，正以某些评论、陈旧的印象与个人意见等扭曲着现实。无论做什么，你都会知道自己正在做什么；对于自己错过现实的方式，你会变得越来越敏感，而且，你会被吸引，趋向简单、客观的视察方式，不会对现实稍作加减。你变成了一位知觉非常敏锐的人，依此有利条件，一切都会被看得清清楚楚，无数的身心活动亦会细节鲜明地显现出来。你留意地观察着呼吸不停的起起伏伏，你观察到的身体感觉与活动，就好像一条不会停息、无穷无尽的河流一样；当你审视念念相续的思想与感受时，你又会感到时间稳步前进的回响节奏。此外，在所有这些不停的活动之中，并没有观察者(Watcher)，只有观察(Watching)本身。
In this state of perception, nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. Everything is seen to be in constant transformation. All things are born, all things grow old and die. There are no exceptions. You awaken to the unceasing changes of your own life. You look around and see everything in flux, everything, everything, everything. It is all rising and falling, intensifying and diminishing, coming into existence and passing away. All of life, every bit of it from the infinitesimal to the Indian Ocean, is in motion constantly. You perceive the universe as a great flowing river of experience. Your most cherished possessions are slipping away, and so is your very life. Yet this impermanence is no reason for grief. You stand there transfixed, staring at this incessant activity, and your response is wondrous joy. It's all moving, dancing and full of life.
在这种觉知状态中，没有事物在两个连续的剎那间可以保持不变，每一感知经验都在不停地转变，一切事物皆会生起、衰老与死亡，可以说无一例外。你醒觉到自己的生命在不停改变，你回顾周围，发觉每一事物皆在不断变迁、流动，每一事物，每一事物，每一事物……都在升起、落下，增强、减弱，出现、消失。生命里的一切，从极之微细的到太平洋那么大的东西，其内的每一部分都在持续变动。你洞察到天地万物就像一条流动着的经验大河，你最珍爱的财物在悄悄离开，你的生命也是一样。可是，没有理由为这无常而悲伤的，你站在那里，吓得不能动弹，注视着这飞奔不停的活动，你的反应是一种惊奇的喜悦，一切都在移动、舞动，并且充满生命。
As you continue to observe these changes and you see how it all fits together, you become aware of the intimate connectedness of all mental, sensory and affective phenomena. You watch one thought leading to another, you see destruction giving rise to emotional reactions and feelings giving rise to more thoughts. Actions, thoughts, feelings, desires -- you see all of them intimately linked together in a delicate fabric of cause and effect. You watch pleasurable experiences arise and fall and you see that they never last; you watch pain come uninvited and you watch yourself anxiously struggling to throw it off; you see yourself fail. It all happens over and over while you stand back quietly and just watch it all work.
当你继续观察这些改变时，你了解到所有一切是如何配合在一起，你也觉察到所有心理、感觉与感情现象间的紧密联系。你观察到一个思想引发起另一个思想，你看到破坏所引起的情绪反应、感受所引起的思潮。行动、思想、感受与欲望等，你了解到它们一切皆在因果的微妙结构中紧密地联系在一起。你看见愉快的经验生起与消失，也知道它们是不会持久的；你看见苦痛不请自来，也看见自己焦急地挣扎着想把它抛开；你也看见自己的失败。这一切皆一次又一次地重复发生，当你站在一旁静观它们运作时自会领悟。
Out of this living laboratory itself comes an inner and unassailable conclusion. You see that your life is marked by disappointment and frustration, and you clearly see the source. These reactions arise out of your own inability to get what you want, your fear of losing what you have already gained and your habit of never being satisfied with what you have. These are no longer theoretical concepts -- you have seen these things for yourself and you know that they are real. You perceive your own fear, your own basic insecurity in the face of life and death. It is a profound tension that goes all the way down to the root of thought and makes all of life a struggle. You watch yourself anxiously groping about, fearfully grasping for something, anything, to hold onto in the midst of all these shifting sands, and you see that there is nothing to hold onto, nothing that doesn't change.
从这人生实验室中，一个内心无懈可击的结论会自己弹出，让你知道：生命实有令人失望与挫败的标志，而你也清楚知道其原因所在。这些反应皆源于：(一)你无力取得你想要的东西，(二)你恐惧失去你已拥有的东西，以及(三)你贪得无厌、永不满足的习性。这些都不再是理论性的概念，你已亲身体验过，知道它们是真的。你感知到自己的恐惧，以及面对生死时的根本不安稳。这极度深切的压力(紧张)可一直追溯到思想的根部，并使全部生命成为一种挣扎。你观看着自己在焦虑地摸索，惶恐地在流沙中乱抓，希望可以抓到任何可以牢牢握住的东西，而你发觉没有东西可以握得住、没有东西是不变的。
You see the pain of loss and grief, you watch yourself being forced to adjust to painful developments day after day in your own ordinary existence. You witness the tensions and conflicts inherent in the very process of everyday living, and you see how superficial most of your concerns really are. You watch the progress of pain, sickness, old age and death. You learn to marvel that all these horrible things are not fearful at all. They are simply reality.
你明白到失落与悲伤的痛苦，你发觉自己要在日常生活中，日复日地被迫要适应痛苦的新发展，你目睹日常生活过程中所固有的压力与冲突，而你也了解到，自己的大多数顾虑皆浅薄不堪，你观看着痛苦、疾病、衰老与死亡的进展，你学识惊讶地赞叹：这些恐怖事情其实并不可怕，它们只不过是现实(Reality)而已。
Through this intensive study of the negative aspects of your existence, you become deeply acquainted with dukkha, the unsatisfactory nature of all existence. You begin to perceive dukkha at all levels of our human life, from the obvious down to the most subtle. You see the way suffering inevitably follows in the wake of clinging, as soon as you grasp anything, pain inevitably follows. Once you become fully acquainted with the whole dynamic of desire, you become sensitized to it. You see where it rises, when it rises and how it affects you. You watch it operate over and over, manifesting through every sense channel, taking control of the mind and making consciousness its slave.
通过对自己生命的负面进行透彻之研究，你深切地了解「苦(Dukkha)」── 所有生存皆不能令人满意的性质。你开始在人生的所有层面中知觉到「苦」，从最明显的到最微细的皆然。你明白到执取与苦恼的因果关系，无论你执取任何东西，苦痛都会无法避免地尾随而至。一旦熟悉了欲望的整个动态，你会对它敏感起来，你知道它从哪里生起，在何时生起，以及如何影响着你，你旁观着它的反覆运作，透过每一个感官通道表现出来，控制着心并使意识成为它的奴隶。
In the midst of every pleasant experience, you watch your own craving and clinging take place. In the midst of unpleasant experiences, you watch a very powerful resistance take hold. You do not block these phenomena, you just watch them, you see them as the very stuff of human thought. You search for that thing you call 'me', but what you find is a physical body and how you have identified your sense of yourself with that bag of skin and bones. You search further and you find all manner of mental phenomena, such as emotions, thought patterns and opinions, and see how you identify the sense of yourself with each of them. You watch yourself becoming possessive, protective and defensive over these pitiful things and you see how crazy that is. You rummage furiously among these various items, constantly searching for yourself--physical matter, bodily sensations, feelings and emotions--it all keeps whirling round and round as you root through it, peering into every nook and cranny, endlessly hunting for 'me'.
在每次愉快的经验中，你看到自己的渴爱与依恋执着出现；在不愉快的经验中，你看到自己的强力抗拒；而你不会妨碍这些现象发生，你只是观看着它们，你知道它们不过是人的思绪而已。你想寻找自称为「我」的东西，但你发现到的是一个躯体，以及你如何认同此袋皮包骨为「自我」的意识。进一步寻找，你发现到各式各样的心理现象，例如情绪、思维模式与种种意见，以及你如何认同每一心理现象为「自我」的意识。你看到自己越来越想拥有、保护与防卫这些令人怜悯的东西，也自知那是多么的疯狂、愚昧。你暴躁地在这些东西之中到处翻寻、搜索，不断寻找「自我」；当你彻底追究下去，查看每一个角落和罅隙，不断追寻「自我」时，那些东西仍继续旋转不休。
You find nothing. In all that collection of mental hardware in this endless stream of ever-shifting experience all you can find is innumerable impersonal processes which have been caused and conditioned by previous processes. There is no static self to be found; it is all process. You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home.
你什么也找不到。在这身心集合体内持续不断的经验流转中，你所能找到的，只有数不清的客观过程(Impersonal Processes)，它们皆各自随已逝去的过程为因缘而生起，没有固定不变的「自我」被发现，一切都是过程，你发现思想，却找不到思想的人；你发现情绪与欲望，却找不到实行的人，房子本身是空的，也没有人在家。
Your whole view of self changes at this point. You begin to look upon yourself as if you were a newspaper photograph. When viewed with the naked eyes, the photograph you see is a definite image. When viewed through a magnifying glass, it all breaks down into an intricate configuration of dots. Similarly, under the penetrating gaze of mindfulness, the feeling of self, an 'I' or 'being' anything, loses its solidity and dissolves. There comes a point in insight meditation where the three characteristics of existence--impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness-- come rushing home with concept-searing force. You vividly experience the impermanence of life, the suffering nature of human existence, and the truth of no self. You experience these things so graphically that you suddenly awake to the utter futility of craving, grasping and resistance. In the clarity and purity of this profound moment, our consciousness is transformed. The entity of self evaporates. All that is left is an infinity of interrelated non-personal phenomena which are conditioned and ever changing. Craving is extinguished and a great burden is lifted. There remains only an effortless flow, without a trace of resistance or tension. There remains only peace, and blessed Nibbana, the uncreated, is realized.
至此你对「自我」的观点彻底改变了，你开始看待自己有如报纸上的相片一样，以肉眼看时，相片有一明确的肖像；当用放大镜看时，它却全部分解为复杂的点状结构。同样地，在静观力的透视下，「自我」、「我」或「任何存在」的感觉都会溶解并失去其坚实性。随着内观禅修的进展，你会上升至某一点，瞥见(顿悟)三法印(存在共有的三个特性)── 无常、苦、无我，有力地烧毁诸种颠倒见解。你鲜明地体验到生命的无常、人生是苦的性质、以及无我的实相。你如是生动、确实地体会到这些特性后，突然醒悟到渴爱、执着与抗拒实全无意义。就在这意义深远的片刻明净之中，我们的意识转化了，「自我」的实体消失了，剩下来的只有无穷无尽的、互相联系的、非个人的(Non-personal)现象，它们缘生缘灭地不断变化着。渴爱熄灭了，重担消除了。余下的只有轻松自在、毫不费力的流动，没有丝毫抗拒或压力的痕迹；余下的只有安宁，可喜的涅槃与无生(The Uncreated)[1]终于实现了。
May all the merits accrued in this Dhamma dana go towards
the attainment of nibbana for all able beings in this very life time.
【注释】[1]无生(The Uncreated)： 涅槃的道理，又称不生不灭，或无生灭。另外，诸法之实相无生灭(无生无灭)。所有存在之诸法本空── 无实自体，故无生灭变化可言。但凡夫迷此无生之理，起生灭之烦恼，故流转生死，若依佛教修持，可破除生灭之烦恼，证得无生。
