《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 42 (91):訓練自己保持堅強
Here there is a promising eight-second pause in thoughts. But then...
此處，思維出現前途光明的八秒鐘停頓。可接着……Mind: Are you mad at me now?
頭腦：你還在生我的氣？And then with a big gasp, like I am coming up for air, my mind wins, my eyes fly open and I quit. In tears. An Ashram is supposed to be a place where you come to deepen your meditation, but this is a disaster. The pressure is too much for me. I can't do it. But what should I do? Run out of the temple crying after fourteen minutes, every day?
接着我喘了一大口氣，好比浮出水面吸氣，我的頭腦贏了，我睜開眼睛，投降了。我淚流滿面。照理說道場應該是讓你加強禪修的地方，然而這卻是一場災難，給我太大的壓力。我辦不到。可是該怎麼辦呢？每一天在十四分鐘過後跑出寺院痛哭？
This morning, though, instead of fighting it, I just stopped. I gave up. I let myself slump against the wall behind me. My back hurt, I had no strength, my mind was quivering. My posture collapsed like a bridge crumbling down. I took the mantra off the top of my head (where it had been pressing down on me like an invisible anvil) and set it on the floor beside me. And then I said to God, "I'm really sorry, but this is the closest I could get to you today."
然而這天早晨，我未與之作戰，只是停了下來。我放棄了。讓自己靠在身後的牆上。我背痛，沒有力氣，腦袋發顫。我的姿勢垮掉，猶如崩塌的橋。我卸除腦袋裏的咒語（咒語有如無形的鐵砧，壓在我身上），擱在身邊的地板上。而後對神說：“很抱歉，今天我只能靠你這麼近。”The Lakota Sioux say that a child who cannot sit still is a half-developed child. And an old Sanskrit text says, "By certain signs you can tell when meditation is being rightly performed. One of them is that a bird will sit on your head, thinking you are an inert thing." This has not exactly happened to me yet. But for the next forty minutes or so, I tried to stay as quiet as possible, trapped in that meditation hall and ensnared in my own shame and inadequacy, watching the devotees around me as they sat in their perfect postures, their perfect eyes closed, their smug faces emanating calmness as they surely transported themselves into some perfect heaven. I was full of a hot, powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remembering something my Guru once said—that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.
印第安部落拉克塔蘇族（Lakota Sioux）說，一個坐立不安的孩子是未發展完全的孩子。古老的梵語經文說：“依賴某些跡象，你能得知是否恰當實行禪坐。其中一個跡象是，一隻鳥棲息在你頭上，以爲你是無生命之物。”這尚未在我身上發生。不過，接下來的四十分鐘左右，我儘可能保持平靜，困在禪坐大堂中，對自身的缺陷深感羞愧，看着周圍的信徒體態完美地靜坐，閉着完美的眼睛，沾沾自喜的面容散發着冷靜，想必正把自己送往某種完美天堂。我充滿強烈、巨大的哀傷，很想痛快地大哭一場，卻極力阻止自己，想起我的導師曾說過——你永遠不該給自己崩潰的機會，因爲這會成爲一種習慣，一而再、再而三地發生。反而，你必須訓練自己保持堅強。But I didn't feel strong. My body ached in diminished worthlessness.
但我不覺得自己堅強。I wondered who is the "me" when I am conversing with my mind, and who is the "mind." I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling:
我的身體毫無價值地疼痛。我懷疑在跟自己的頭腦進行對話時，誰是“我”，誰是“頭腦”。我思索處理思考、吞噬靈魂的腦袋機器，懷疑自己究竟能否制伏它。而後，我想起電影《大白鯊》裏的一句臺詞，不禁笑了起來："We're gonna need a bigger boat."Eat, Pray, Love
“我們需要一艘大一點的船。”
