《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 70 (153):嘗試脫離凡俗

I believe that all the world's religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you're really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal (from the village to the forest, you might say, keeping with the theme of the antevasin) and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has be a big one, this metaphor—really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the biggest boat imaginable.

我相信世界上的所有宗教，基本上都擁有一種慾望，那就是找到某種使人靈感洋溢的隱喻。你若想與神息息相通，便會嘗試脫離凡俗，進入超凡之境（若繼續使用“安特瓦信”的主題，或許可以說是，離開村子前往森林），你需要某種崇高的思想送你去那裏。這必須是很大的隱喻——大而神奇，而且強力，因爲它必須帶你前往很遠的地方，它必須是足以想象得到的巨大船舶。

Religious rituals often develop out of mystical experimentation. Some brave scout goes looking for a new path to the divine, has a transcendent experience and returns home a prophet. He or she brings back to the community tales of heaven and maps of how to get there. Then others repeat the words, the works, the prayers, or the acts of this prophet, in order to cross over, too. Sometimes this is successful—sometimes the same familiar combination of syllables and devotional practices repeated generation after generation might carry many people to the other side. Sometimes it doesn't work, though. Inevitably even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma or stop working for everybody.

宗教儀式往往由神祕的探索演變而來。某個勇敢的探索者尋找通往神的新路，體驗超凡，成爲先知，然後返回家鄉。他或她給社區帶來天堂的故事和路線圖，而後由他人重述這位先知的文字、禱詞、作爲，以便和他一樣跨過界。有時得以成功——有時數代相傳的音節與宗教儀式將許多人帶到另一邊。然而，有時卻未能成功。無可避免地，即使最具原創性的新思想，終究也會成爲教條，或不再適合每個人。

The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit—tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God—but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panicstricken. It was a major religious crisis—how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

此地的印度人會講述一則勸世寓言，一名偉大聖人在道場中，總有一羣虔誠的信徒圍着他聽道。聖人及其信徒每天花數小時思索神的意義。唯一的問題是，聖人有一隻惱人的小貓，在禪坐時段經常穿過寺院，喵嗚呼嚕叫，干擾每個人。於是明智的聖人下令每天把貓綁在外頭的柱子上數個鐘頭，僅在禪坐時段，以防干擾任何人。這個習慣——把貓綁在柱子上，然後思索神的問題——隨着歲月流逝，轉化爲宗教儀式。除非先把貓綁在柱子上，否則誰也無法禪坐。然後有一天貓死了。聖人的追隨者驚恐萬分。這是嚴重的宗教危機——如今少了綁在柱子上的貓，如何能夠禱告？如何與神溝通？貓在他們心目中已成爲手段。

Be very careful, warns this tale, not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake. Especially in this divided world, where the Taliban and the Christian Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God, it may be useful to remember that it is not the tying of the cat to the pole that has ever brought anyone to transcendence, but only the constant desire of an individual seeker to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.

這則故事告誡大家，當心別太執著於重複宗教儀式本身。尤其在這分歧的世界，塔利班與基督教聯軍爲了誰有權說“神”這字眼、爲了誰有與神溝通的恰當儀式而持續打他們的國際商標戰時，或許我們更該牢記，引人通往超凡境界的，並非把貓綁在柱子上，而是個人追尋者渴望體驗神的永恆慈悲之決心。神性需要修煉，也需要彈性。

Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity.

因此你的工作——你若選擇接受這份工作——即是去尋找隱喻、儀式和良師，協助自己更靠近神。

The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggests: "People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate—and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean."

瑜伽經文說，神迴應凡人選擇敬奉的任何一種禱告與努力——只要誠心誠意禱告即可。奧義書有句話說：“人們依據自己的性情，以及自己認爲最佳或最恰當的方式而走上不同的道路，無論直路或彎路——每一條路都抵達神，有如河川匯流入海。”