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我想講述的是關於慈悲的議題。慈悲有許多面貌:有些是激烈的,有些是憤怒的,有些是溫和的,有些是明智的。達賴喇嘛曾說過一句話,他說,「愛與慈悲是必需品,而非奢侈品,沒有它們,人類將無法生存。」我想補充的是,不僅人類無法生存,甚至地球上所有物種都將無法生存。大型貓科動物將無法生存,浮游生物亦然。
兩星期前,我在印度的班加羅爾,我相當榮幸能在班加羅爾郊區一間安寧療養院進行輔導工作。某天清晨我走進病房,在這間安寧療養院中有31位男性及女性正邁向死亡。我走到一位年老婦女的床邊,她呼吸相當急促、虛弱,顯然已邁向垂死階段。我看著她的臉,我審視坐在她身邊的兒子的臉,他的臉已被悲傷及混亂所撕裂。
我想起摩訶婆羅多這首偉大印度史詩中的一句話,「世上最奇妙的事是什麼,Yudhisthira?」Yudhisthira回答說,「世上最奇妙的事,就是我們身邊所有的人都會死亡,但我們卻無法意識到死亡也會降臨在我們身上。」我抬起頭來。照料這位臨終者的是來自班加羅爾附近村莊的年輕女性。我審視其中一位女性的臉。當天性中的慈悲確實展現時,我在她臉上看見力量的浮現。我看著她的手,她正替一位老人擦洗身體。
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I want to address the issue of compassion. Compassion has many faces. Some of them are fierce; some of them are wrathful; some of them are tender; some of them are wise. A line that the Dalai Lama once said, he said, "Love and compassion are necessities. They are not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive." And I would suggest, it is not only humanity that won't survive, but it is all species on the planet, as we've heard today. It is the big cats, and it's the plankton.
Two weeks ago, I was in Bangalore in India. I was so privileged to be able to teach in a hospice on the outskirts of Bangalore. And early in the morning, I went into the ward. In that hospice, there were 31 men and women who were actively dying. And I walked up to the bedside of an old woman who was breathing very rapidly, fragile, obviously in the latter phase of active dying. I looked into her face. I looked into the face of her son sitting next to her, and his face was just riven with grief and confusion.
And I remembered a line from the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic: "What is the most wondrous thing in the world, Yudhisthira?" And Yudhisthira replied, "The most wondrous thing in the world is that all around us people can be dying and we don't realize it can happen to us." I looked up. Tending those 31 dying people were young women from villages around Bangalore. I looked into the face of one of these women, and I saw in her face the strength that arises when natural compassion is really present. I watched her hands as she bathed an old man.
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我將目光移到另一位年輕女性臉上,她正替另一位臨終者擦臉,這讓我想起不久前才前往的地方。幾乎每年我都有幸能前往喜馬拉雅山及青藏高原出幾趟任務,我們在這些相當偏遠且沒有任何醫療服務的地方經營診所。
當我第一天抵達Humla區的Simikot時-它位於尼泊爾西部偏遠地帶,也是尼泊爾最貧困的地區,一位抓著一捆破布的老人走進診所。他走了進來,有人對他說了些什麼,然後我們意識到他是個失聰者。我們檢視那綑破布,只看到一雙眼睛。破布解開後顯現一位身體遭受大面積燒傷的小女孩。再次地,觀世音菩薩的眼和手觸及了我們。一位年輕女性,診所的醫療照護人員,她清理了這個嬰兒的傷口並包紮起來。
我對觀世音菩薩的手和眼並不陌生,它們也曾觸及我。它們在那時觸及了我,它們在我68年的人生中一直觸及著我,它們在我四歲時觸及了我。當時我失去視力,身體部分癱瘓,我家人請來一位母親曾是奴隸的女性照顧我。那位女性擁有的不是情感上的慈悲,她擁有的是驚人的力量。那確實是她的力量,我深信那讓我擁有某種堅強和早熟的特質,那曾是我生命中的指路明燈。
因此,我們可以這麼問,慈悲包含了什麼?它擁有不同的面貌,有參照性和非參照性慈悲。但首先,慈悲包含了清楚瞭解苦難本質的能力,這是一種真正堅定不移,並體認到我也屬於這苦難一部份的能力。但這是不夠的。因為慈悲能活化運動皮質層,這意味著我們渴望,我們確實渴望使苦難轉化。如果我們相當幸運,就能參與轉化苦難的過程。但慈悲還包含另一個部份,這個部份相當重要。這個部分就是我們不能受到結果的羈絆。
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My gaze went to another young woman as she wiped the face of another dying person. And it reminded me of something that I had just been present for. Every year or so, I have the privilege of taking some missions into the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. And we run clinics in these very remote regions where there's no medical care whatsoever.
And on the first day at Simikot in Humla, far west of Nepal, the most impoverished region of Nepal, an old man came in clutching a bundle of rags. And he walked in, and somebody said something to him, we realized he was deaf, and we looked into the rags, and there was this pair of eyes. The rags were unwrapped from a little girl whose body was massively burned. Again, the eyes and hands of Avalokiteshvara. It was the young women, the health aids, who cleaned the wounds of this baby and dressed the wounds.
I know those hands and eyes; they touched me as well. They touched me at that time. They have touched me throughout my 68 years. They touched me when I was four and I lost my eyesight and was partially paralyzed. And my family brought in a woman whose mother had been a slave to take care of me. And that woman did not have sentimental compassion. She had phenomenal strength. And it was really her strength, I believe, that became the kind of mudur and premature that has been a guiding light in my life.
So we can ask: What is compassion comprised of? And there are various facets. And there's referential and non-referential compassion. But first, compassion is comprised of that capacity to see clearly into the nature of suffering. It is that ability to really stand strong and to recognize also that I'm not separate from this suffering. But that is not enough, because compassion, which activates the motor cortex, means that we aspire, we actually aspire to transform suffering. And if we're so blessed, we engage in activities that transform suffering. But compassion has another component, and that component is really essential. That component is that we cannot be attached to outcome.
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至今我接觸瀕死之人已有40多年光陰,我有幸能在高度保安的情況下與死囚接觸了六年時間,我從本身接觸瀕死之人及培訓照護人員的生命體驗中相當清楚地意識到,任何與結果的羈絆將嚴重扭曲我本身的能力,導致全面災難性的後果。
當我在監獄系統工作時,對我來說,有一點相當明確:這房間裡很多人,還有幾乎所有我接觸過的死刑犯,他們自身慈悲的種子從未受到澆灌。慈悲事實上是一種人類與生俱來的本質,它存在於每個人心中,但激發及喚醒慈悲的條件是某種特殊的條件。以某種程度來說,我擁有這樣的條件,那是來自於我兒時罹患的疾病。Eve Ensler,你們之後會聽到她的演講,藉由她經歷過的各種苦難澆灌,不可思議地激發了內在慈悲的條件。
令人驚訝的是,慈悲也有敵人。這些敵人就是憐憫、道德敗壞及恐懼等心態。你們知道,我們擁有一個被恐懼癱瘓的社會,被恐懼癱瘓的世界。當然,在這癱瘓的環境中,我們的慈悲能力也處於癱瘓狀態。恐懼這個字眼是全球性的,恐懼的感覺也是全球性的,所以我們的工作在某方面來說,就是解決這個意識狀態,解決這種已瀰漫全球人心的意識原型。
現在我們知道,以神經科學的角度來說,慈悲擁有一些非常特殊的性質。例如:當人們生存於苦難中時會培養出慈悲心,他們遠比其他人更能感受苦難。然而,他們復原的速度也快得多,這就是所謂的復原力。我們當中有很多人認為,慈悲會讓我們筋疲力竭,但我向你們保證,慈悲是真正能激勵我們的東西。
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Now I worked with dying people for over 40 years. I had the privilege of working on death row in a maximum security for six years. And I realized so clearly in bringing my own life experience, from working with dying people and training caregivers, that any attachment to outcome would distort deeply my own capacity to be fully present to the whole catastrophe.
And when I worked in the prison system, it was so clear to me, this: that many of us in this room, and almost all of the men that I worked with on death row, the seeds of their own compassion had never been watered. That compassion is actually an inherent human quality. It is there within every human being. But the conditions for compassion to be activated, to be aroused, are particular conditions. I had that condition, to a certain extent, from my own childhood illness. Eve Ensler, whom you'll hear later, has had that condition activated amazingly in her through the various waters of suffering that she has been through.
And what is fascinating is that compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear. And you know, we have a society, a world, that is paralyzed by fear. And in that paralysis, of course, our capacity for compassion is also paralyzed. The very word terror is global. The very feeling of terror is global. So our work, in a certain way, is to address this imago, this kind of archetype that has pervaded the psyche of our entire globe.
Now we know from neuroscience that compassion has some very extraordinary qualities. For example: A person who is cultivating compassion, when they are in the presence of suffering, they feel that suffering a lot more than many other people do. However, they return to baseline a lot sooner. This is called resilience. Many of us think that compassion drains us, but I promise you it is something that truly enlivens us.
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另一項與慈悲有關的是,它確實能增進所謂的神經整合功能。它與大腦所有部分都息息相關,此外,在Emory及Davis等校的許多研究者已發現,慈悲能增強我們的免疫系統。嘿,我們生活在一個相當有害的世界。(笑聲)大多數人在社會心理、物質毒藥及我們世界的毒素當中逐漸衰弱。但慈悲,慈悲的產生確實驅動了我們的免疫力。
你們知道,如果慈悲對我們這麼有益,我想提出一個問題:為什麼我們不以慈悲教養孩子?(掌聲)如果慈悲對我們這麼有益,為什麼我們不以慈悲培訓健康照護人員,使他們能做他們該做的事,真正使苦難轉化?如果慈悲對我們這麼有益,為什麼我們不投票給慈悲?為什麼我們不投票給以慈悲為本的政府人士?這樣我們就可以擁有一個更加充滿關懷的世界。在佛教中,我們說,「它需要堅強的背面和柔軟的表面。」它需要背後巨大的支持力量,讓自己堅持在慈悲的條件當中,這就是堅定的心理特質。
但它也需要一個柔軟的表面-就是真正敞開心胸面對世界的能力,並擁有一個不設防的心靈。在佛教中,這個典型就是觀世音菩薩。這是一個女性典型,她能感受到這個世界苦難的呼聲,她豎起10000隻手臂,每隻手中都有一種解放的工具,每隻手的手掌中都有眼睛,這些是智慧之眼。我想說的是,千百年來,婦女擁有、體現並親密接觸了觀世音菩薩的典型,她能感受到這個世界苦難的呼聲。
幾千年來,女性體現了來自慈悲的力量,以一種未受過濾、直接的方式感受苦難本身,她們為社會注入慈悲心。在過去一天半的時間裡,我們在一位接一位站上這個講台的女性身上都確實能感受到這一點,她們藉由直接行動將慈悲付諸實行。Jody Williams曾說過:冥想是件好事。抱歉,妳必須多少做點冥想,Jody。退一步,讓妳母親放心點,好吧?
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Another thing about compassion is that it really enhances what's called neural integration. It hooks up all parts of the brain. Another, which has been discovered by various researchers at Emory and at Davis and so on, is that compassion enhances our immune system. Hey, we live in a very noxious world. (Laughter) Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion, the generation of compassion, actually mobilizes our immunity.
You know, if compassion is so good for us, I have a question. Why don't we train our children in compassion? (Applause) If compassion is so good for us, why don't we train our health care providers in compassion so that they can do what they're supposed to do, which is to really transform suffering? And if compassion is so good for us, why don't we vote on compassion? Why don't we vote for people in our government based on compassion? So that we can have a more caring world. In Buddhism, we say, "it takes a strong back and a soft front." It takes tremendous strength of the back to uphold yourself in the midst of conditions. And that is the mental quality of equanimity.
But it also takes a soft front -- the capacity to really be open to the world as it is, to have an undefended heart. And the archetype of this in Buddhism is Avalokiteshvara, Kuan-Yin. It's a female archetype: she who perceives the cries of suffering in the world. She stands with 10,000 arms, and in every hand, there is an instrument of liberation, and in the palm of every hand, there are eyes, and these are the eyes of wisdom. I say that, for thousands of years, women have lived, exemplified, met in intimacy, the archetype of Avalokitesvara, of Kuan-Yin, she who perceives the cries of suffering in the world.
Women have manifested for thousands of years the strength arising from compassion in an unfiltered, unmediated way in perceiving suffering as it is. They have infused societies with kindness, and we have really felt that as woman after woman has stood on this stage in the past day and a half. And they have actualized compassion through direct action. Jody Williams called it: It's good to meditate. I'm sorry, you've got to do a little bit of that, Jody. Step back, give your mother a break, okay.
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但另一方面,你必須走出你的洞穴,你必須像無著菩薩(第四世紀著名印度佛教聖者)那樣走入這個世界。在洞穴中閉關12年祈願得見彌勒佛之後,他說,「我要離開這裡了。」他沿著小徑走下,看見小徑上有個東西。他仔細一看,是一隻狗,於是他跪了下來。他看見那隻狗腿部有個大傷口,傷口中長滿了蛆,他伸出舌頭將蛆舔開,這樣才不會傷害到它們。就在那一刻,那隻狗變成愛和仁慈的彌勒佛。
我認為,今日的婦女和女孩們必須以一種充滿力量的方式與男性合作,與她們的父親、兒子、兄弟、水電工、築路工人、照護人員、醫生、律師、我們的總統以及所有眾生合作。這房間裡所有女性都是火海中的蓮花,希望我們能將這種女性力量運用在每個地方。
謝謝。
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But the other side of the equation is you've got to come out of your cave. You have to come into the world like Asanga did, who was looking to realize Maitreya Buddha after 12 years sitting in the cave. He said, "I'm out of here." He's going down the path. He sees something in the path. He looks, it's a dog, he drops to his knees. He sees that the dog has this big wound on its leg. The wound is just filled with maggots. He puts out his tongue in order to remove the maggots, so as not to harm them. And at that moment, the dog transformed into the Buddha of love and kindness.
I believe that women and girls today have to partner in a powerful way with men -- with their fathers, with their sons, with their brothers, with the plumbers, the road builders, the caregivers, the doctors, the lawyers, with our president, and with all beings. The women in this room are lotuses in a sea of fire. May we actualize that capacity for women everywhere.
Thank you.