《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 41 (87):寺院的靈脩
We are all given work here, and it turns out that my work assignment is to scrub the temple floors. So that's where you can find me for several hours a day now—down on my knees on the cold marble with a brush and a bucket, working away like a fairy-tale stepsister. (By the way, I'm aware of the metaphor—the scrubbing clean of the temple that is my heart, the polishing of my soul, the everyday mundane effort that must be applied to spiritual practice in order to purify the self, etc., etc.)
我們每個人都有分內的工作，我被指派的工作是刷洗寺院地板。因此，現在每天都看得到我跪在冰冷的大理石地板上，拿着刷子和水桶，好似童話故事中的養女一樣賣力地工作數個小時（順便說一聲，我很清楚其中的隱喻——我刷洗乾淨的寺院是我的心，我擦亮的是我的靈魂，每日的平凡勞動必須應用在靈脩當中，以淨化自我，等等，等等。）My fellow floor-scrubbers are mainly a bunch of Indian teenagers. They always give teenagers this job because it requires high physical energy but not enormous reserves of responsibility; there's a limit to how much damage you can do if you mess up. I like my coworkers. The girls are fluttery little butterflies who seem so much younger than American eighteen-year-old girls, and the boys are serious little autocrats who seem so much older than American eighteen-year-old boys. Nobody's supposed to talk in the temples, but these are teenagers, so there's a constant chatter going on all the time as we're working. It's not all idle gossip. One of the boys spends all day scrubbing beside me, lecturing me earnestly on how to best perform my work here: "Take seriously. Make punctual. Be cool and easy. Remember—everything you do, you do for God. And everything God does, He do for you."
和我一同刷洗地板的同伴，多半是一羣印度少年。這項工作向來分派給少年，因爲需要高度體力，卻不須擔負龐大的責任；倘若搞成一團糟，造成的損壞總有限度。我喜歡我的共事者。女孩們像飛舞的小蝴蝶，似乎比美國的十八歲女孩看起來年輕，男孩子們則是嚴肅的小小獨裁者，似乎比美國的十八歲男孩年長。寺院內禁止說話，可是他們都是十幾歲的青少年，因此我們幹活兒的時候經常有人聊天聊個不停。不見得全是流言蜚語。有個男孩整天在我身旁洗刷，認真教導我如何在工作上有優良表現：“認真看待。準時完成。冷靜自在。記得——你做的一切都是爲神而做。神做的一切都是爲你而做。”It's tiring physical labor, but my daily hours of work are considerably easier than my daily hours of meditation. The truth is, I don't think I'm good at meditation. I know I'm out of practice with it, but honestly I was never good at it. I can't seem to get my mind to hold still. I mentioned this once to an Indian monk, and he said, "It's a pity you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem." Then the monk quoted to me from the Bhagavad Gita, the most sacred ancient text of Yoga: "Oh Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding. I consider it as difficult to subdue as the wind."
這是辛苦的體力勞動，但我每天的工作時刻都比每天的禪坐時刻容易得多。真相是，我想我不擅於禪坐。我已疏於禪坐，但事實上我也從不擅於禪坐。我似乎無法讓自己的心保持不動。我曾向一位印度僧侶提及此事，他說：“很遺憾，你是有史以來唯一有這問題的人。”而後僧侶給我引了最神聖古老的瑜伽經文《薄伽梵歌》中的一段話：“喔！克里希納，浮躁不安、剛強不屈的心，風一般難以遏制。”
Meditation is both the anchor and the wings of Yoga. Meditation is the way. There's a difference between meditation and prayer, though both practices seek communion with the divine. I've heard it said that prayer is the act of talking to God, while meditation is the act of listening. Take a wild guess as to which comes easier for me. I can prattle away to God about all my feelings and my problems all the livelong day, but when it comes time to descend into silence and listen . . . well, that's a different story. When I ask my mind to rest in stillness, it is astonishing how quickly it will turn (1) bored, (2) angry, (3) depressed, (4) anxious or (5) all of the above.
禪坐既是瑜伽的支柱亦是雙翼。禪坐是“方法”。禪坐有別於祈禱，儘管兩者皆尋求與神溝通。我曾聽說，祈禱是跟神說話，禪坐則是聆聽的動作。你猜猜看，哪個對我比較容易。我能一整天嘰嘰呱呱地跟神談論我的感覺和問題，可是一旦靜下來“聆聽”……那可就不同了。我請求腦子安靜片刻的時候，它總是馬上變得（一 ）無聊，（二）憤怒，（三）沮喪，（四）焦慮，（五）以上皆是。Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the "monkey mind"—the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but—whoop!—how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
就像所有的類人動物，我爲佛家所謂的“猿猴心”所苦——盪來盪去的思考，停下來的時候只爲搔癢、吐口水、嚎叫。從遙遠的過去到未知的未來，我的心自始至終任意擺盪 ，每分鐘涉及數十個想法，有如脫繮之馬，漫無目的。這本身不見得造成問題；問題在於，隨着思考而來的眷戀之情。快樂的思維使我快樂，可是不一會兒，我又突然進入過分的憂慮，搞糟心情；而後又記起憤怒的時刻，於是我又重新發起怒來；而後我的心靈決定應該開始自憐，於是寂寞立即接踵而來。畢竟，你的思維是什麼，你就是什麼樣的人。你的感情是思維的奴隸，你則是感情的奴隸。
