《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 50 (107):放手領悟

The next morning in meditation, all my caustic old hateful thoughts come up again. I'm starting to think of them as irritating telemarketers, always calling at the most inopportune moments. What I'm alarmed to find in meditation is that my mind is actually not that interesting a place, after all. In actuality I really only think about a few things, and I think about them constantly. I believe the official term is "brooding." I brood about my divorce, and all the pain of my marriage, and all the mistakes I made, and all the mistakes my husband made, and then (and there's no return from this dark topic) I start brooding about David . . .

隔天早晨禪坐時，所有令人深惡痛絕的老舊思維再次出現。我開始把這些思維當做討人厭的電話推銷員，老是不合時宜地打電話來。我驚駭地發現，在禪坐中，自己的腦子並非是那麼有趣的地方。骨子裏其實我只想着幾件事情，而且老是在想這些事情。我想可以用“沉思”來形容。我沉思我的離婚、婚姻的痛苦、我犯過的錯、我先生犯過的錯，接着（從這黑暗主題開始，沒有任何倒退餘地），我開始沉思大衛……

Which is getting embarrassing, to be quite honest. I mean—here I am in this sacred place of study in the middle of India, and all I can think about is my ex-boyfriend? What am I, in eighth grade?

說實話，這令人有些尷尬。我是說——我在印度的修院中，卻只能想“前任男友”？我難道是初中生嗎？

And then I remember a story my friend Deborah the psychologist told me once. Back in the 1980s, she was asked by the city of Philadelphia if she could volunteer to offer psychological counseling to a group of Cambodian refugees—boat people—who had recently arrived in the city. Deborah is an exceptional psychologist, but she was terribly daunted by this task. These Cambodians had suffered the worst of what humans can inflict on each other—genocide, rape, torture, starvation, the murder of their relatives before their eyes, then long years in refugee camps and dangerous boat trips to the West where people died and corpses were fed to sharks—what could Deborah offer these people in terms of help? How could she possibly relate to their suffering?

而後我想起心理學家朋友黛博拉告訴過我的故事。20世紀80年代，費城當局請她爲一羣剛抵城不久的高棉難民——船民——提供義工心理輔導。黛博拉是傑出的心理學家，卻對這項任務感到畏懼。這些高棉人遭受過最慘的人類際遇——種族屠殺，姦淫擄掠、飢餓、眼睜睜看親人遭殺害，而後長年待在難民營，甘冒危險乘船前往西方，途中死了人，屍體喂鯊魚——黛博拉能爲這些人提供什麼幫助？她如何認同他們的苦難？

"But don't you know," Deborah reported to me, "what all these people wanted to talk about, once they could see a counselor?"

“可是你知不知道，”黛博拉跟我敘述，“這些人見到諮詢人員的時候，想談些什麼？”

It was all: I met this guy when I was living in the refugee camp, and we fell in love. I thought he really loved me, but then we were separated on different boats, and he took up with my cousin. Now he's married to her, but he says he really loves me, and he keeps calling me, and I know I should tell him to go away, but I still love him and I can't stop thinking about him. And I don't know what to do . . .

是這樣的：住難民營的時候，我遇上一個小夥子，我們墜入愛河。我以爲他真的愛我，之後我們被分開，住不同的船，他開始和我表妹交往。現在他們結了婚，卻說他真心愛我，不斷地打電話給我，我知道我該叫他滾蛋，但我仍愛他，想他。我不知該怎麼辦……

This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?" Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering. And both of them, unfortunately (or maybe obviously), are what I'm dealing with at this Ashram. When I sit in my silence and look at my mind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward.

這就是我們的真相。從集體來說，這是我們身爲人類的情緒風景。我遇過一位年近百歲的老太太，她告訴我：“有史以來，只有兩個問題使人類大動干戈。‘你愛我有多深？’‘誰做主？’”而其他的事情則多少都能控制。唯有這兩個愛與支配的問題擾亂每個人，使我們犯錯，導致戰爭、悲傷和苦難。不幸（或者明顯）的是，我在道場處理的正是這兩個問題。在靜坐觀心之時，僅浮現渴望與支配的問題使我焦慮，而焦慮阻礙我的成長。