解析辨识
[作者] 坦尼沙罗尊者
[中译]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.
禅定使你了解辨识的力量。你会发现，给事物赋予的标签与观察前的先入印象，怎样大幅度地左右你的知见，而这些东西的苦与张力怎样给你造成负担。不过，随着禅定的进步，你会获得工具，脱离那类影响。
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.
你最初意识到辨识的力量时，很容易对它的普遍存在有应接不暇感。譬如作呼吸禅定，到了某个程度，你会开始思索，自己到底在专注呼吸本身，还是呼吸的概念。这个问题一旦升起，通常的反应是，试着绕过概念，去观察它背后的原始觉受。不过假如你在观察时真正敏感，就会注意到，你只是以另一种对呼吸更精细的描绘方式，替代原先的概念罢了。即使呼吸的原始觉受，也成型于你对原始觉受这个概念的把握方式。无论你作多少努力，试图确定未经过滤的呼吸体验，你还是发现，它成型于你对呼吸究竟是什么这个观念。你越追踪呼吸的实相，它越后退，如海市蜃楼。
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.
技巧在于把此事转为己用。说到底，你作禅定非为理解呼吸。你作禅定是为了理解苦的升起过程，达到苦的终结。呼吸与辨识怎样相关，便是这些过程的一部分，因此你要观察的正是它。你必须把体验呼吸作为手段，而不是目的，透过它，理解辨识在苦与张力制造中的作用。
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
这里的做法是，解析辨识: 质疑有关呼吸的假定，刻意改变它们，观察结果如何。当然，缺乏适当的背景，拆解辨识很容易沦为随机杂念。因此，你就把修定作为背景，如此既提供一个总体趋向，也提供一些具体任务，迫使它冲击塑造当下体验的那些操作假设。
总体趋向是，试着把心带入越来越深度、持久的静止层次，以便消解程度越来越精细的张力。你并非要证实哪些呼吸辨识最真实地反映呼吸，而只是体验哪些辨识对于消解哪类张力最有效。你寻找的客观性，并非是呼吸的客观性，而是因果的客观性。
使你学得这类知识的具体任务，起始于试着让心舒适、长久地专注于呼吸——当下你就有了两个操作假定: 呼吸意味着什么
专注意味着什么
It”s common to think of the breath as the…
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