健康

Staying Healthy

最近时常听到的一句话就是：“您要好好保重身体！”我的身体好像成了天底下至关重要的东西。自己也常常以“身安而后道隆”提醒自己注意日常保健，以免使不健康的身体成为修行障碍。

“Do take good care of your health!” These days, people always greet me with this bidding, as if my health has become the weightiest issue on earth. In fact, I often remind myself of the axiom: “Sound body first, then great achievement,” and I have kept up my daily health care, lest poor health should become an obstacle on the spiritual path.

今天看到一篇报道，联合国世界卫生组织对健康的定义是这样的：“健康不仅仅是没有疾病，而且是身体上、心理上和社会上的完好状态或完全安宁。”我一下子感到释然，原来与很多人相比，我都算是比较健康的人。至少，我没有那么多的不协调、不平衡、不适应、不安宁。虽然身体对人的影响是不言而喻的，但心理因素对生理的主导作用更是毋庸置疑的。虽然我的一些皮肉血骨或内部器官时常与我过不去，但与很多人心灵上的病痛相比，这肉体上的区区病痛，实在不足挂齿。

A report I read today states the World Health Organization’s definition of health: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Having read this, I immediately felt kind of relieved. So it turns out that I can be counted as quite healthy when compared with many others. At the very least, I have not been troubled by a lack of coordination, mental imbalance, ill adjustment, or restlessness. It goes without saying that the body will affect the mind, but unmistakably, mental factors also exert major effects on the body. For myself, ailments in my body’s components—bones, flesh, blood, or internal organs—have often plagued me, but these minor physical miseries are nothing when compared with the mental agonies suffered by many others.

我们时常因为过分重视肉体，为了这个肉身能舒适地存在，在世间的竞技场上苦心钻营、斤斤计较而导致心神不宁、情绪烦乱。作为修行人，因执著肉体而放弃精进的闻思修，去追求名闻利养，更会成为修行大障。形骸非亲，万物皆幻，放下对身体形骸的执著，抵制烦恼对我们心理健康的侵蚀，才是一个真正健康的人。

Normally, we tend to attach excessive value to our physical bodies. Striving for its comfort, we fight with great pains in the worldly arena and scheme for gains down to the last detail, until we are beset with a restless mind and confused emotions. If spiritual practitioners are over-attached to the corporeal body, great obstacles will arise on the path when they drop their study, contemplation, and meditation to pursue instead wealth and fame. But our bones and flesh do not really belong to us; all the phenomena in the world are but illusory. Only by letting go our attachment to the physical body and by protecting our minds from the erosion of destructive emotions can we claim ourselves to be truly healthy.

壬午年六月初七　　
2002年7月16日 　

7th of June, Year of RenWu
July 16, 2002