《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 38 (83):尋找內心的平靜

Such transfers of grace can occur in even the most fleeting of encounters with a great being. I once went to see the great Vietnamese monk, poet and peacemaker Thich Nhat Hanh speak in New York. It was a characteristically hectic weeknight in the city, and as the crowd pushed and shoved its way into the auditorium, the very air in the place was whisked into a nerve-racking urgency of everyone's collective stress. Then the monk came on stage. He sat in stillness for a good while before he began to speak, and the audience—you could feel it happening, one row of high-strung New Yorkers at a time—became colonized by his stillness. Soon, there was not a flutter in the place. In the space of maybe ten minutes, this small Vietnamese man had drawn every single one of us into his silence. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that he drew us each into our own silence, into that peace which we each inherently possessed, but had not yet discovered or claimed. His ability to bring forth this state in all of us, merely by his presence in the room—this is divine power. And this is why you come to a Guru: with the hope that the merits of your master will reveal to you your own hidden greatness.

此種感召即使在跟一個大人物的短暫接觸時也會出現。我曾去聽偉大的越南僧人、詩人、和平運動者一行禪師（Thich Nhat Hanh）在紐約演講。在那個典型的瘋狂之夜，羣衆推推搡搡擠入禮堂；禮堂內的氣氛迅即轉變成因集體壓力集結而成的緊張。而後禪師走上講臺。他靜靜地坐了好一陣子，然後開口說話。你感覺到正在發生這樣的事情，這些激動的紐約人逐漸被他的沉靜所統治。過不久，禮堂內沒有半點聲響。在十分鐘內，這位瘦小的越南禪師已把我們每個人捲入他的沉默中。或者更確切的說法是，他讓我們每個人捲入自己的沉默，捲入我們與生俱來、卻尚未發現或索求的平靜。他只要出現在禮堂，即誘導出我們每個人內心的平靜——這是神力。這是你尋求導師的原因：期望導師的優點向你展現你自身潛藏的偉大。

The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe:

古代印度聖賢寫過，有三個因素可以說明一個靈魂是否擁有宇宙間最至高無上的幸運：

1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry.

一、生爲人類，有探索意識的能力。

2. To have been born with—or to have developed—a yearning to understand the nature of the universe.

二、生來擁有——或培養出——瞭解宇宙本質的渴望。

3. To have found a living spiritual master.

三、找到世間的精神導師。

There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny's molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need. It was only one month after my first night of desperate prayer on my bathroom floor—a night spent tearfully begging God for answers—that I found mine, having walked into David's apartment and encountered a photograph of this stunning Indian woman. Of course, I was more than a bit ambivalent about the concept of having a Guru. As a general rule, Westerners aren't comfortable with that word. We have a kind of sketchy recent history with it. In the 1970s a number of wealthy, eager, susceptible young Western seekers collided with a handful of charismatic but dubious Indian Gurus. Most of the chaos has settled down now, but the echoes of mistrust still resonate. Even for me, even after all this time, I still find myself sometimes balking at the word Guru. This is not a problem for my friends in India; they grew up with the Guru principle, they're relaxed with it. As one young Indian girl told me, "Everybody in India almost has a Guru!" I know what she meant to say (that almost everyone in India has a Guru) but I related more to her unintentional statement, because that's how I feel sometimes—like I almost have a Guru. Sometimes I just can't seem to admit it because, as a good New Englander, skepticism and pragmatism are my intellectual heritage. Anyhow, it's not like I consciously went shopping for a Guru. She just arrived. And the first time I saw her, it was as though she looked at me through her photograph—those dark eyes smoldering with intelligent compassion—and she said, "You called for me and now I'm here. So do you want to do this thing, or not?"

有個理論說，只要有足夠的誠意尋找導師，即可找到。宇宙發生變動，命運的分子重新組織，你的道路與你需要的導師兩者所走的道路不久就會互相交會。我在浴室地板上絕望跪禱的第一個晚上——泣求神靈給我答案的晚上——過後大約一個月，我找到自己的導師；當時我走進大衛的公寓，意外地看見這位印度美女的照片。當然，對於擁有一位導師，我的看法矛盾。一般說來，西方人對導師一詞覺得不自在。我們和它在不久的過去有着某種過節。20世紀70年代，一羣富裕、充滿熱忱、年輕的西方探求者，和一羣具有領袖魅力但來歷不明的印度導師發生了衝突。其所造成的混亂大半已然平息，不信任感卻依然餘音繚繞。即便對我來說，即使經過這麼久的時間，我發現自己依然時而對“導師”一詞有所遲疑。對我的印度朋友們而言，這不是問題；他們在導師的原則下長大，因而處之泰然。有位印度姑娘告訴我：“印度每個人幾乎都有導師！”我明白她的意思（她是說，印度幾乎每個人都有導師），但我更同感於她無心的表達，因爲我有時的感覺——確實像是我“幾乎有個”導師。有時候，我似乎無法承認，因爲身爲一箇中規中矩的新英格蘭人，懷疑主義和實用主義是我的智力遺產。無論如何，我並非有意識地出門採購“導師”。她自然而然地到來。我頭一次看見她，彷彿她通過照片注視我——一雙黑色眸子，流露出智性的慈悲——說：“你需要我，現在我來了。所以，你是否想做這件事？”

Setting aside all nervous jokes and cross-cultural discomforts, I must always remember what I replied that night: a straightforward and bottomless , Pray, Love

暫時把緊張兮兮的玩笑話和跨文化的不安情緒 擱在一旁，我必須永遠牢記自己當天晚上的回答：直截了當、深不可測的“是”。