So together we are going to investigate whether desire is one of the major causes of disorder; we must explore desire, not condemn it, not escape from it, not try to suppress it. Most religions have said, ‘Suppress desire’—which is absurd. So let us look at it. What is desire? Put that question to yourself. Probably most of us have not thought about it at all. We have accepted it as a way of life, as the natural instinct of a man or a woman, and so we say, ‘Why bother about it?’. Those people who have renounced the world, those who have entered monasteries, and so on try to sublimate their desires in the worship of a symbol or a person. Please bear in mind that we are not condemning desire. We are trying to find out what is desire, why man has, for millions of years, been caught not only physically but also psychologically in the trap of desire, in the network of desire.

所以，我們將一起來探究欲望是不是混亂的主要根源之一；我們必須探索欲望，而不是譴責它、逃避它，也不要試圖壓抑它。大部分宗教都說過：“壓制欲望”——那很荒唐。所以讓我們來看看它。欲望是什么？問問自己這個問題。也許我們大多數(shù)人根本沒想過這個問題。我們把它作為一種生活方式，作為男人或女人自然的本能接受了下來，所以我們說：“為什么要費心考慮它呢？”那些拋棄了世界、進入修道院之類地方的人，試圖通過膜拜某個象征或者某個人，來升華他們的欲望。請謹記在心，我們并非在譴責欲望。我們在試著弄清楚欲望是什么，以及為什么數(shù)百萬年以來，人類無論身心都被困在欲望的陷阱、欲望之網(wǎng)中。

We also ought to talk over together love, sorrow, and death. Please, all this is much too serious as it affects your daily life. This is not something you play with intellectually; it concerns your life—not somebody else’s life—the way you live after all these million years. Look what your lives are, how empty, shallow, violent, brutal, inconsiderate, thoughtless. Look at it. All this has created such havoc in the world. You all want to have high positions, achieve something, become something. And seeing all this, there is great sorrow, isn’t there? Every human being in this world, whether he is highly placed or is just an ignorant villager, goes through great sorrow. He may not recognize the nature and the beauty and the strength of sorrow, but he goes through pain like you do. Human beings have gone through sorrow for a million years. They haven’t solved the problem; they want to escape from it. And what is the relationship of sorrow to love and death? Can there be an end to sorrow? This has been one of the questions mankind has asked for a million years. Is there an end to all the pain, the anxiety, the grief of sorrow?

我們也應(yīng)該一起來探討愛、悲傷和死亡。請注意，這一切都是太嚴肅的話題了，因為它們影響著你的日常生活。這不是一場智力游戲，這與你的生活緊密相關(guān)——不是別人的生活——而是你幾百萬年以來的生活方式。看看你的生活是什么，它是多么空虛、淺薄、暴力、殘酷、冷漠、自私?？纯此?。這一切在世界上造成了如此嚴重的破壞。你們都希望坐擁高位，功成名就。而看到了這一切，你就會感到巨大的悲傷，不是嗎？這世上的每一個人，無論身居高位或是一個愚昧的村民，都經(jīng)歷著巨大的悲傷。他也許意識不到悲傷的本質(zhì)、美和力量，但是他像你一樣經(jīng)歷著痛苦。人類已然歷經(jīng)了一百萬年的悲傷，他們沒有解決這個問題，他們想要逃避它。而悲傷與愛和死亡又有著怎樣的關(guān)系？悲傷能夠終結(jié)嗎？這是人類問了一百萬年的問題之一。這所有的痛苦、焦慮和沉痛的悲傷是否有盡頭？

Sorrow is not only your own particular sorrow; there is also the sorrow of mankind. Historically, there have been five thousand years of war. That means every year some people kill others for the sake of their tribe, their religion, their nation, their community, their individual protection, and so on. Have you ever realized what wars have done, the havoc they have created? How many millions have cried, how many millions have been wounded, left without arms, without legs, without eyes, even without a face? You people don’t know anything about all this. So is there an end to sorrow and all the pain therein? And what is sorrow? Don’t you know sorrow? Don’t you? Are you ashamed to acknowledge it? When your son or daughter or somebody whom you think you love is taken away, don’t you shed tears? Don’t you feel terribly lonely because you have lost a companion forever? We are not talking about death but about this immense thing that man goes through without ever having a solution.

悲傷不僅僅是你自己特有的悲傷，還有人類的悲傷。從歷史上看，戰(zhàn)爭已經(jīng)存在了五千年。這意味著每年都有一些人在殺害另一些人，為了他們的部落、他們的宗教、他們的國家、他們的團體、他們個人的安全，等等等等。你可曾意識到戰(zhàn)爭都做了些什么，它們制造了怎樣的浩劫？你可知有幾百萬人在哭泣，有幾百萬人受了傷，失去了手臂、腿腳和眼睛，甚至連面孔也失去了？你們這些人根本不知道這些。那么悲傷以及其中所有的痛苦能夠終結(jié)嗎？而悲傷又是什么？你們難道不了解悲傷嗎？不了解嗎？你們羞于承認這一點嗎？當你的兒子、女兒或者你認為自己愛著的某個人被奪走了，你難道不會流淚嗎？你難道不會因為永遠失去了某個人的陪伴而感到極其孤獨嗎？我們現(xiàn)在談的不是死亡，而是人類經(jīng)歷的這個從來都未能解決的龐然大物。