..續本文上一頁roviding a useful term, Buddhism also offers an effective strategy for dealing with the feelings behind it — feelings that our own culture finds threatening and handles very poorly. Ours, of course, is not the only culture threatened by feelings of samvega. In the Siddhartha story, the father”s reaction to the young prince”s discovery stands for the way most cultures try to deal with these feelings: He tried to convince the prince that his standards for happiness were impossibly high, at the same time trying to distract him with relationships and every sensual pleasure imaginable. Not only did he arranged an ideal marriage for the prince, but he also built him a palace for every season of the year, bought him only the best clothes and toiletries, sponsored a constant round of entertainments, and kept the servants well paid so that they could put at least a semblance of joy into their job of satisfying the prince”s every whim. To put it simply, the strategy was to get the prince to lower his aims and to find satisfaction in a happiness that was less than absolute and not far from pure. If the young prince were alive today, the father would have other tools for dealing with the prince”s dissatisfaction──including psychotherapy and religions counseling── but the basic strategy would be the same: to distract the prince and dull his sensitivity so that he could settle down and become a well-adjusted, productive member of society.
佛教不僅提供了這個有用的詞彙，更提供了對治它表達的感受的有效策略——我們的本土文化覺察其威脅性，卻素無良方。當然，並非僅西方文化受厭離感的威脅。在悉達多的故事裏，面對王子的新生情緒，父王的回應代表著多數文化的應對方式: 他試圖說服王子，他的快樂標准高不可及，同時試以婚姻關系與各樣感官極樂轉移其注意力。父王不僅替他安排了一樁理想婚姻，還爲他蓋起宮殿，每季各居一處。不僅爲他購置華服美飾，還使他的周圍娛樂不斷; 受到優待的仆役們極盡能事，奉承王子的一應興致。其策略簡單說，是令王子降低目標，從遠離絕對、遠非清淨的世俗生活中覓得快樂。如果年輕的王子活在今日，那位父王對付王兒的不滿情緒則另有其招──其中會包括心理療法與宗教咨詢──不過基本策略不變: 分散注意力，麻醉敏感度，使他安定下來，成爲適應社會、有事生産的一員。
Fortunately, the prince was too eagle-eyed and lion-hearted to submit to such a strategy. And again, fortunately, he was born in a society that offered him the opportunity to find a solution to the problem of samvega that did justice to the truths of his heart.
所幸的是，王子有著鷹眼獅心，未曾屈從此計; 更有幸的是，他出生的社會爲他提供了尋找厭離感的解答與求證心靈真谛 的機會。
The first step in that solution is symbolized in the Siddhartha story by the prince”s reaction to the fourth person he saw on his travels outside of the palace: the wandering forest contemplative. Compared to what he called the confining, dusty path of the householder”s life, the prince saw the freedom of the comtemplative”s life as the open air. Such a path of freedom, he felt, would allow him the opportunity to find the answers to his life-and-death questions, and to live a life in line with his highest ideals, "as pure as a polished shell."
在悉達多的故事裏，那個解答的初步象征，正落在王子離宮出遊時遇見的第四人──叢林遊方者時的反應上。較之被他稱爲“局限多塵”的世俗生活，王子視這位行者的人生如天空般遼闊。他感到這條自由之道將令他有機會求解生死問題，同時過一種符合自己最高理想的生活，“如磨光的珠貝般純潔。”
The emotion he felt at this point is termed pasada. Like samvega, pasada covers another complex set of feelings usually translated as "clarity and serene confidence" ──mental states that keeps samvega from turning into despair. In the prince”s case, he gained a clear sense of his predicament, together with a confidence that he had found the way out.
這個時刻他感受的情緒，便稱爲清淨(pasada)。如同厭離感，該詞也包含一組複雜的感受，通常解作“清明而安詳的信心”──這類心態使厭離感不至淪爲絕望。在王子的故事裏，他對自己的困境有了清晰的了解，同時又對找到超越老、病、死的出路升起了信心。
As the early Buddhist teachings freely admit, the predicament is that the cycle of birth, aging, and death is meaningless. They don”t try to deny this fact and so don”t ask us to be dishonest with ourselves or to close our eyes to reality. As one teacher has put it, the Buddhist recognition of the reality of suffering — so important that suffering is honored as the first noble truth — is a gift, in that it confirms our most sensitive and direct experience of things, an experience that many ot…
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