Everyone dies. Why then do so many have a fear of death? Lyricist and writer Prasoon Joshi seeks Sadhguru’s answers on why we see death as a sinister process.
每个人都会死。那为什么还有很多人惧怕死亡？词作者和作家Prasoon Joshi向萨古鲁咨询为什么我们会把死亡看成是一个凶险的过程。
Prasoon Joshi: Why is death always portrayed as dark and sinister? You called it somewhere “cosmic joke,” but most civilizations refer to it with some sort of heaviness. Why is there a fear of death in most people, Sadhguru?
Prasoon Joshi：萨古鲁，为什么死亡总是被描绘成黑暗的、凶险的？你曾称它是“宇宙的玩笑”，但是多数文化提及死亡的时候都有些沉重。为什么大多数人都会畏惧死亡呢？
Sadhguru: If we look at how we have perceived and portrayed death in India, you will see that death is not seen as sinister. The dark thing about death is the loss for the living. If people lose something precious to them – it could be things; it could be people – they will break down. So it is darkness only for the living, but death itself has always been portrayed as a grand event in this culture. It is only now that Indians are imitating the West and walking with heads down when someone dies.
Sadhguru（萨古鲁）：如果我们看看在印度人们是如何理解和描述死亡的话，你会发现死亡并没有被看成是凶险的。死亡的黑暗面是使活着的人有所丧失。如果人们失去了对他们来说非常宝贵的东西——也可能是物；也可能是人——他们就会崩溃。因此只有对活着的人而言是黑暗的，但在印度文化里死亡本身一直被描绘成是一桩盛大的事件。只是在现代，印度人才开始模仿西方，当有人死去时就低头走路。
Above all, there are wonderful stories. The legend goes that Shiva has made the Maha Shmashan his earthly abode and is waiting there. Every time somebody dies, he dances in celebration. What kind of a pervert is he that if somebody dear to me dies, he will dance and celebrate?
首先，有许多奇妙的故事。传说Shiva（湿婆）把 “大火葬场” 作为他在地球上的住所并在那里等着。每次有人死了，他就会跳舞庆祝。如果一个对我很重要的人死了，他就跳舞庆祝，那他是一个多么变态的人？
The soap bubble
肥皂泡
Let’s look at the fundamental aspects of life. In the experience of most human beings, life is just their body, their thoughts, and their emotions. If we pay some attention to the nature of our lives, we can clearly see that both the body and the mind are accumulations. Beyond these accumulations, there is life. To use an analogy – when you were a child and you blew a soap bubble, the bubble was real, but what was inside the bubble was just the same atmosphere that is all over. When the bubble burst, a drop of soap water fell on the floor, but where the content of the bubble went, you could never see, because it is part of everything.
让我们来看看生命的基本层面。在多数人的经验中，生命就是他们的身体、他们的思想和他们的情感。如果我们稍微关注一下生命的本质，我们可以清楚地看到身体和头脑都是累积的结果。超越这些累积物之外的，才是生命。打个比方——当你是个孩子时，你吹了一个泡泡，泡泡是真的，但泡泡里面却是跟周围一样的空气。泡泡破裂时，一滴肥皂水掉落在地上，但泡泡里面的东西去了哪里，你永远都看不到，因为它是整个存在的一部分。
This is the nature of life. The whole cosmos is a living mass of life. When the bubble burst and this air or this life that was trapped in the bubble got released, what is happening on the other side is way bigger than what can happen within the trap of physicality. Shiva is laughing, singing, and dancing because one life got released from the mortal coil.
这就是生命的本质。整个宇宙就是一个巨大的生命体。当泡泡破裂，困在泡泡里的气体或生命得以释放时，在另一个世界所发生的事远远比在这个物质牢笼里发生的要广大得多。Shiva欢声大笑、载歌载舞是因为一个生命从必死的圈里得到了解脱。
Fear of death – Social conditioning
惧怕死亡——社会的驯化
Prasoon Joshi: Once, there was a death in the family and I went there. There was a kid playing and he happened to go over the dead body, as if it was a thing lying there. People pulled him away, but the child did not register why. Is fear of death a conditioned process. Is it inculcated into us that we should perceive the fact that somebody is gone as such a big event or a calamity?
Prasoon Joshi：有一次，一户人家死了一个人，我去了。有个小孩在玩耍，碰巧跨过那具尸体，就好像躺在那里的只是一个东西。大人把他拉开，但小孩并不明白为什么。对死亡的畏惧是被训练出来的吗？是不是我们被灌输了这样的观念，应该把某人的离去看成是一件大事，或是一个灾难？
Sadhguru: Seeing death as a tragedy is physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially a reality – existentially, it is not. A child is an offspring of life – he is not yet a slave of social conditioning. He would even play with the dead; it would not matter. But because adults feel this is inappropriate, they will try to condition the child. When somebody very dear to them dies, most people actually feel as if this is the end of the world. But after some time, they will come around.
Sadhguru（萨古鲁）：把死亡看做是悲剧，从生理、精神、情感以及社会角度来说都是现实——然而从存在的层面而言，却不是这样的。一个孩子是生命的延续——他还不是被社会驯化的奴隶。他甚至可以和死人玩耍；这没关系的。但因为成年人觉得这样不合适，他们就会驯化这个孩子。当他们很亲近的人死去时，大多数人真心觉得似乎到了世界末日。但过一段时间之后，他们就缓过来了。
Children do not have this time-lag – they come around quickly, because they are less influenced by what is happening in society. How society handles death has a purely mental and emotional basis, which means, it is our making – we could make it whichever way we want. Maybe the so-called educated people have given it up, but otherwise, if somebody dies in this country, they will beat the drum and have a party. I am not trying to belittle the loss that a person goes through. But all mental factors – your thoughts, your emotions, your social opinions and situations – are only relevant to a certain extent. Existentially, what you think, what you feel, what your society thinks, is absolutely irrelevant. That is why we always position Shiva, one who we consider as the highest, on the edge of society. He is always on the cremation ground.
孩子就不会有这种时间差——他们很快就没事了，因为他们受社会上所发生事情的影响较小。社会对待死亡的方式纯粹是基于思想和情感的需要，也就是说，这是我们自己制造的——我们可以制造成我们想要的任何方式。或许那些所谓的受教育的人已经不这样做了——否则，如果在这个国家有人死了，他们会敲锣打鼓、聚会庆祝。我并不是有意轻视一个人所经历的那种痛失亲人的感受。但所有思想层面的因素——你的想法、你的情绪、你的社会观念和处境——只是在一定程度上是有意义的。从存在的层面来说，你在想什么、你感受到什么、你的社会在想什么，都是完全无意义的。那也是为何我们总是把人们心中至高无上的Shiva置于社会的边缘。他总是在火葬场。
This mortal coil
这个必死的圈
This is how every yogi starts his life. From the age of eight to seventeen, I spent an enormous amount of time in the cremation ground – it simply intrigued me. I would just sit there. People would come and set fire to the body. You know, firewood is expensive, so some people want to save on the wood. I do not know if any of you witnessed this – when the body gets cremated, the first thing that burns up is the neck, and unless they made the wood arrangement very large, invariably, the halfway burnt skull rolls off. This happens after three-and-a-half to four hours. By that time, no relative is there – they are all gone within one or two hours. So I would pick up the skulls and put them back on the pyre.
每一个瑜伽士都是这样开始他的生命的。从8岁到17岁期间，我在火葬场那里度过了很多时光——它就是非常吸引我。我只是坐在那儿。人们会过来把尸体点燃。你知道，木柴是很贵的，所以有些人想节约木头。我不知道你们是否有见过这样的场面——当尸体开始焚烧，首先烧熔的是脖子，除非他们弄了非常多的木头，否则烧了一半的头颅总会掉下来。这会发生在烧了三个半到四个小时的时候。到了那个时候，已经没有亲人在那了——他们都会在一至两个小时之内就走了。所以我就会捡起头颅把它们放回火葬的柴堆里。
Everyone talked about so many things – I wanted to see it myself. I spent days and nights in the cremation ground, not even knowing why. Today, we send those who are seriously on the path to the cremation ground to spend a certain amount of time there, because mortality has to sink into you. You must understand the essential nature of your life. Only when you realize you are mortal, the longing to know that which is beyond will arise.
每个人都会谈论各种东西——而我想要眼见为实。我没日没夜地待在火葬场，都不知道为什么。现在，我们把那些真正走在灵性修行道路上的人送到火葬场去，在那里待一段时间，因为人是必死的这一观念一定要深入其心。你必须要明白你生命的核心本质。只有当你意识到你终有一死时，你才会渴望去了解如何超越。
If you think of God, you will not become spiritual – you could actually become very stupid. You will think that you can do idiotic things in your life, and with a prayer, everything will be fixed. You do not do your job properly, but you think you will produce good results. You do not study for your exam, and you think you will be first in class because of your prayer. The moment you address the mortal nature of who you are, the longing to know what this is all about, and what is beyond this thing that people are here today, gone tomorrow, will become a natural quest. That is the spiritual process.
当你想到上帝的时候，你不会变得具有灵性——实际上你可能会变得非常愚蠢。你会以为你可以在你的生命中做愚蠢的事，只要祈祷，所有事情都会被处理好。你不好好做事，却以为依然会有好的结果。你不为考试好好学习，以为祈祷一下你就会拿到全班第一名。一旦当你开始面对你的必死本质时，你就会很自然渴望了解这些都是怎么回事，为什么一个人今天还在明天就走了，这背后还有什么。这就是灵性进程。
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