解析辨識

　　[作者] 坦尼沙羅尊者

　　[中譯]良稹

　　De-perception

　　by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

　　Meditation teaches you the power of your perceptions. You come to see how the labels you apply to things, the images with which you visualize things, have a huge influence over what you see, how they can weigh you down with suffering and stress. As the meditation develops, though, it gives you the tools you need to gain freedom from that influence.

　　禅定使你了解辨識的力量。你會發現，給事物賦予的標簽與觀察前的先入印象，怎樣大幅度地左右你的知見，而這些東西的苦與張力怎樣給你造成負擔。不過，隨著禅定的進步，你會獲得工具，脫離那類影響。

　　In the beginning, when you first notice the power of perception, you can easily feel overwhelmed by how pervasive it is. Suppose you”re focusing on the breath. There comes a point when you begin to wonder whether you”re focusing on the breath itself or on your idea of the breath. Once this question arises, the normal reaction is to try to get around the idea to the raw sensation behind it. But if you”re really sensitive as you do this, you”ll notice that you”re simply replacing one caricature of the breath with another, more subtle one. Even the raw sensation of breathing is shaped by how you conceptualize raw sensation. No matter how hard you try to pin down an unfiltered experience of breathing, you still find it shaped by your idea of what breathing actually is. The more you pursue the reality of the breath, the more it recedes like a mirage.

　　你最初意識到辨識的力量時，很容易對它的普遍存在有應接不暇感。譬如作呼吸禅定，到了某個程度，你會開始思索，自己到底在專注呼吸本身，還是呼吸的概念。這個問題一旦升起，通常的反應是，試著繞過概念，去觀察它背後的原始覺受。不過假如你在觀察時真正敏感，就會注意到，你只是以另一種對呼吸更精細的描繪方式，替代原先的概念罷了。即使呼吸的原始覺受，也成型于你對原始覺受這個概念的把握方式。無論你作多少努力，試圖確定未經過濾的呼吸體驗，你還是發現，它成型于你對呼吸究竟是什麼這個觀念。你越追蹤呼吸的實相，它越後退，如海市蜃樓。

　　The trick here is to turn this fact to your advantage. After all, you”re not meditating to get to the breath. You”re meditating to understand the processes leading to suffering so that you can put an end to them. The way your relate to your perceptions is part of these processes, so that”s what you want to see. You have to treat your experience of the breath, not as an end in itself, but as a tool for understanding the role of perception in creating suffering and stress.

　　技巧在于把此事轉爲己用。說到底，你作禅定非爲理解呼吸。你作禅定是爲了理解苦的升起過程，達到苦的終結。呼吸與辨識怎樣相關，便是這些過程的一部分，因此你要觀察的正是它。你必須把體驗呼吸作爲手段，而不是目的，透過它，理解辨識在苦與張力製造中的作用。

　　You do this by de-perception: questioning your assumptions about breathing, deliberately changing those assumptions, and observing what happens as a result. Now, without the proper context, de-perception could easily wander off into random abstractions. So you take the practice of concentration as your context, providing de-perception both with a general direction and with particular tasks that force it to bump up against the operative assumptions that actually shape your experience of the present.

　　The general direction lies in trying to bring the mind to deeper and more long-lasting levels of stillness so as to eliminate more and more subtle levels of stress. You”re not trying to prove which perceptions of the breath depict it most truly, but simply which ones work best in which situations for eliminating stress. The objectivity you”re looking for is not the objectivity of the breath, but the objectivity of cause and effect.

　　The particular tasks that teach you these lessons begin with the task of trying to get the mind to stay comfortably focused for long periods of time on the breath — and right there you run into two operative assumptions: What does it mean to breathe

　　 What does it mean to be focused

　　這裏的做法是，解析辨識: 質疑有關呼吸的假定，刻意改變它們，觀察結果如何。當然，缺乏適當的背景，拆解辨識很容易淪爲隨機雜念。因此，你就把修定作爲背景，如此既提供一個總體趨向，也提供一些具體任務，迫使它沖擊塑造當下體驗的那些操作假設。

　　總體趨向是，試著把心帶入越來越深度、持久的靜止層次，以便消解程度越來越精細的張力。你並非要證實哪些呼吸辨識最真實地反映呼吸，而只是體驗哪些辨識對于消解哪類張力最有效。你尋找的客觀性，並非是呼吸的客觀性，而是因果的客觀性。

　　使你學得這類知識的具體任務，起始于試著讓心舒適、長久地專注于呼吸——當下你就有了兩個操作假定: 呼吸意味著什麼

　　 專注意味著什麼

　　It”s common to think of the breath as the…

《解析辨識》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…