A few years ago, I set out on a mission to find God. Now, I'm going to tell you right up front that I failed, which, as a lawyer, is a really hard thing for me to admit. But on that failed journey, a lot of what I found was enlightening. And one thing in particular gave me a lot of hope. It has to do with the magnitude and significance of our differences.
幾年前, 我展開了一項尋找神的任務。 我先告訴各位,我失敗了, 身為律師, 我真的很難承認這件事。 但,在那趟失敗的旅程中, 許多發現都相當有啟發性。 其中特別有一項, 給了我許多希望。 它和我們的差異的大小 以及重要性有關。
So, I was raised in America by Indian parents -- culturally Hindu, but practicing a strict and relatively unknown religion outside of India called Jainism. To give you an idea of just how minority that makes me: people from India represent roughly one percent of the US population; Hindus, about 0.7 percent; Jains, at most .00046 percent. To put that in context: more people visit the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory each year than are followers of the Jain religion in America. To add to my minority mix, my parents then decided, "What a great idea! Let's send her to Catholic school" --
我在美國長大,父母是 印度人——文化上是印度, 但他們信仰的是在印度外的宗教, 嚴格且相對不太為人所知, 叫做耆那教。 讓各位知道一下這種宗教 讓我變成多麼少數: 美國人口中,約有 1% 來自印度; 印度人大約是 0.7%; 耆那教徒,最多 0.00046%。 用情境來比喻: 每年造訪佛蒙特州泰迪熊工廠的人數 都比美國的耆那教徒還多。 我的少數狀況又再上一層樓, 因為我父母決定: 「好棒的點子!咱們送她 去讀天主教學校。」——
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
where my sister and I were the only non-white, non-Catholic students in the entire school.
全校只有我和我妹妹是 非白人、非天主教的學生。
At the Infant Jesus of Prague School in Flossmoor, Illinois -- yes, that's really what it was called -- we were taught to believe that there is a single Supreme Being who is responsible for everything, the whole shebang, from the creation of the Universe to moral shepherding to eternal life. But at home, I was being taught something entirely different. Followers of the Jain religion don't believe in a single Supreme Being or even a team of Supreme Beings. Instead, we're taught that God manifests as the perfection of each of us as individuals, and that we're actually spending our entire lives striving to remove the bad karmas that stand in the way of us becoming our own godlike, perfect selves. On top of that, one of the core principles of Jainism is something called "non-absolutism." Non-absolutists believe that no single person can hold ownership or knowledge of absolute truth, even when it comes to religious beliefs. Good luck testing that concept out on the priests and nuns in your Catholic school.
在伊利諾州佛羅斯的 布拉格聖嬰耶穌學校—— 是的,校名真的就是這樣—— 我們被教導要相信 有唯一的至高神存在, 祂要對一切負責, 所有的狀況, 從創造宇宙,到道德指引, 到永生,都歸祂管。 但在家裡, 我被教導的又完全不同了。 耆那教的追隨者 不相信單一的至高神, 甚至不相信一組至高神。 反之,我們被教導的是, 我們每個人身上的完美, 就是神現形的方式, 我們其實窮盡我們的一生, 努力消除不好的「業」, 因為它阻擋我們,不讓我們 成為那個如神般的完美自己。 最重要的是,耆那教的核心原則之一 是所謂的「非絕對主義」。 非絕對主義者認為,沒有一個人 能夠持有絕對真相的所有權或知識, 即使在宗教信仰上也一樣。 若想在你的天主教學校中 對神父和修女完整測試 那個概念,祝你好運。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
No wonder I was confused and hyperaware of how different I was from my peers. Cut to 20-something years later, and I found myself to be a highly spiritual person, but I was floundering. I was spiritually homeless. I came to learn that I was a "None," which isn't an acronym or a clever play on words, nor is it one of these. It's simply the painfully uninspired name given to everyone who checks off the box "none" when Pew Research asks them about their religious affiliation.
難怪我當時會困惑, 且非常能意識到我和 我的同儕有多麼不同。 跳到二十多年後, 我發現我自己是個高度靈性的人, 但我在掙扎。 在精神世界中,我無家可歸。 我漸漸了解,我是一個 「無信仰者(none)」, 它不是字首縮寫或是 在文字上賣弄小聰明, 也不是這些之一。 (註:修女 nun,英語發音近似) 它很單純,就是一個 痛苦且沒激情的名字, 給予那些被皮尤研究中心 (註:美國一民調和智庫機構) 問到宗教信仰時,勾選「無」的人。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Now, a couple of interesting things about Nones are: there are a lot of us, and we skew young. In 2014, there were over 56 million religiously unaffiliated Nones in the United States. And Nones account for over one-third of adults between the ages of 18 to 33. But the most interesting thing to me about Nones is that we're often spiritual. In fact, 68 percent of us believe, with some degree of certainty, that there is a God. We're just not sure who it is.
關於無信仰者,有一些有趣的事: 我們人數很多, 我們偏年輕。 2014 年,有 5600 萬人 沒有宗教信仰, 這是美國的數據。 18 至 33 歲的成年人中 有三分之一以上是無信仰者。 但,關於無信仰者 我覺得最有趣的是, 我們通常都是靈性的人。 事實上,我們當中 有 68% 的人相信 在某種程度上必然有神存在。 我們只是不確定祂是誰。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So the first takeaway for me when I realized I was a None and had found that information out was that I wasn't alone. I was finally part of a group in America that had a lot of members, which felt really reassuring. But then the second, not-so-reassuring takeaway was that, oh, man, there are a lot of us. That can't be good, because if a lot of highly spiritual people are currently godless, maybe finding God is not going to be as easy as I had originally hoped.
當我了解到我是個無信仰者, 且找出了那些資訊之後, 我學到的第一件事是, 我並不孤單。 終於,在美國,我隸屬一個 人數眾多的團體了, 這感覺挺令人寬慰的。 但我學到的第二件事 就不那麼令人寬慰了, 那就是,喔,天,我們人數好多啊。 那不可能是好事, 因為,如果目前有很多 高度靈性的人不信仰神, 那麼,也許找到神並沒有 我原本希望的那麼容易。
So that is when I decided that on my spiritual journey, I was going to avoid the obvious places and skip the big-box religions altogether and instead venture out into the spiritual fringe of mediums and faith healers and godmen. But remember, I'm a non-absolutist, which means I was pretty inclined to keep a fairly open mind, which turned out to be a good thing, because I went to a witch's potluck dinner at the LGBT Center in New York City, where I befriended two witches; drank a five-gallon jerrican full of volcanic water with a shaman in Peru; got a hug from a saint in the convention center -- she smelled really nice --
那時,我下定決心, 在我的靈性之旅中, 我要避開明顯的地方, 且略過所有的大型宗教, 取而代之,我要冒險 進入靈性的邊緣, 去探索靈媒、 信念治癒者 及神人。 但,切記,我是個非絕對主義者, 這表示我很傾向保持很開放的心胸, 結果發現,這是件好事, 因為我去參加了女巫的攜菜聚餐, (註:每人各自帶菜共享) 位在紐約市的 LGBT 多元中心。 (註:同性戀、雙性戀和跨性別族群) 我和兩位女巫交了朋友; 喝了滿滿五加崙汽油桶的火山水, 和秘魯的黃教僧一起喝; 在會議中心得到聖人的一個擁抱, 她真的很好聞;
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
chanted for hours in a smoke-filled, heat-infused sweat lodge on the beaches of Mexico; worked with a tequila-drinking medium to convene with the dead, who oddly included both my deceased mother-in-law and the deceased manager of the hip-hop group The Roots.
在滿是煙且很熱的印第安 蒸汽浴室中吟誦了數小時, 位在墨西哥的海灘上; 和喝龍舌蘭酒的靈某一起召喚亡者, 奇特的是她納入的人 同時有我已故的岳母 以及嬉哈扎根樂團 (The Roots)的已故經理。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Yeah, my mother-in-law told me she was really happy her son had chosen me for his wife. Duh! But --
是的,我的岳母告訴我, 她非常高興 她兒子選擇和我結婚。 那還用說!但
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Yeah. But the manager of The Roots said that maybe I should cut back on all the pasta I was eating. I think we can all agree that it was lucky for my husband that it wasn't his dead mother who suggested I lay off carbs.
是啊。 但扎根樂團的經理 說我也許應該要把 我在吃的義大利麵減量。 我想,我們都認同 我先生很幸運,不是他的已故母親 建議我停止吃碳水化合物。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I also joined a laughing yoga group out of South Africa; witnessed a woman have a 45-minute orgasm -- I am not making this up -- as she tapped into the energy of the universe -- I think I'm going to go back there --
我也加入了一個 來自非洲的笑瑜伽團體; 我目擊了一位女子, 高潮長達四十五分鐘—— 不是我編造的—— 當時她是在利用宇宙的能量—— 我想我要再回去那裡——
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
called God from a phone booth in the Nevada desert at Burning Man, wearing a unitard and ski goggles; and I had an old Indian guy lie on top of me, and no, he wasn't my husband. This was a perfect stranger named Paramji, and he was chanting into my chakras as he tapped into the energy forces of the Universe to heal my "yoni," which is a Sanskrit word for "vagina."
在內華達州的燃燒人節慶上 從一間電話亭打電話給神, 穿著彈力緊身衣和滑雪護目鏡; 我還讓一位老印度人躺在我上面, 不,他不是我老公。 這位素未平生的陌生人叫帕拉姆先生, 他在對著我的脈輪吟誦, 同時他利用宇宙的能量 來治癒我的「yoni」, 這個字是梵文,意思是「陰道」。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I was going to have a slide here, but a few people suggested that a slide of my yoni at TED -- even TEDWomen -- not the best idea.
我本來要放一張投影片的, 但有些人建議, 在 TED 放我的 yoni 投影片, 就算在 TEDWomen, 不是個最好的主意。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Very early in my quest, I also went to see the Brazilian faith healer John of God at his compound down in Brazil. Now, John of God is considered a full-trance medium, which basically means he can talk to dead people. But in his case, he claims to channel a very specific group of dead saints and doctors in order to heal whatever's wrong with you. And although John of God does not have a medical degree or even a high school diploma, he actually performs surgery -- the real kind, with a scalpel, but no anesthesia. Yeah, I don't know. He also offers invisible surgery, where there is no cutting, and surrogate surgery, where he supposedly can treat somebody who is thousands of miles away by performing a procedure on a loved one.
在追尋之旅的非常初期, 我也去見了巴西的 信念治癒者,神的約翰, 地點在巴西,他的院子中。 神的約翰被認為是完全出神的靈媒, 基本上,這意味著他能和死人說話。 但在他的案例中,他聲稱 他溝通的是一個非常明確的族群: 死掉的聖人和醫生, 目的是要治癒你的任何問題。 雖然神的約翰沒有醫學學位, 他甚至沒有高中畢業, 他會真的進行手術, 真正的手術,要用解剖刀的, 但不用麻醉。 是啊,我不知道。 他也提供隱形手術,不會有切口, 還有代理手術, 用這種手術,他可以 治療在數千英哩外的人, 只要把治療程序用在他愛的人身上。
Now, when you go to visit John of God, there are all kinds of rules and regulations. It's a whole complicated thing, but the bottom line is that you can visit John of God and present him with three things that you would like fixed, and he will set the dead saints and doctors to work on your behalf to get the job done.
當你去造訪神的約翰時, 有各種規則和規定要遵守。 那是非常複雜的, 但若能遵守,你最後 就能見到神的約翰, 告訴他三樣你想要修好的事物, 他會讓死掉的聖人和醫生來代表你 把事情搞定。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Now, before you snicker, consider that, at least according to his website, over eight million people -- including Oprah, the Goddess of Daytime TV -- have gone to see John of God, and I was pre-wired to keep an open mind. But to be honest, the whole thing for me was kind of weird and inconclusive, and in the end, I flew home, even more confused than I already started out. But that doesn't mean I came home empty-handed.
在你竊笑之前, 先想想, 至少,根據他的網站, 超過八百萬人—— 包括歐普拉, 白天電視節目的女神—— 都去見過神的約翰, 而我預先就採取了開放的心胸。 但,老實說,對我而言, 這整件事挺詭異且沒有說服力, 最終,我飛回家, 比我一開始時還更困惑。 但那並不表示我兩手空空地回家。
In the weeks leading up to my trip to Brazil, I mentioned my upcoming plans to some friends and to a couple of colleagues at Google, where I was a lawyer at the time. And I might have mentioned it to a couple more people because I'm chatty, including my neighbor, the guy who works at the local coffee shop I go to each morning, the checkout lady at Whole Foods and a stranger who sat next to me on the subway. I told each of them where I was going and why, and I offered to carry three wishes of theirs down to Brazil, explaining that anyone going to see John of God could act as a proxy for others and save them the trip. And to my surprise, my in-box overflowed. Friends told friends who told friends, and those friends apparently told more friends, other strangers and the guys at their coffee shops, until it seemed that days before I left for Brazil that there was no one who did not have my email address. And at the time, all I could conclude was that I had offered too much to too many. But when I actually reread those messages a few years later, I noticed something completely different. Those emails actually shared three commonalities, the first of which was rather curious.
在我為巴西之旅做準備的那幾週, 我向一些朋友提到我後續的計畫, 也對 Google 的幾個同事提到, 當時我在那裡當律師。 我可能還有向一些其他人提到, 因為我很愛聊天, 包括我的鄰居、 在我每天早上要去的 當地咖啡廳工作的一個人、 全食超市結帳台的女員工, 以及在地鐵上坐 我旁邊的一個陌生人。 我告訴這些人,我要去哪裡, 以及為什麼去, 我自願幫他們帶三個願望到巴西, 我解釋說,任何人 只要去見神的約翰, 就能夠當其他人的代理人, 幫其他人省下一趟旅行。 我很意外,我的收件匣爆滿了。 朋友告訴朋友,朋友再告訴朋友, 顯然那些朋友又再告訴更多朋友、 其他陌生人,及在咖啡廳的其他人, 當我要前往巴西的前幾天, 已經傳到沒人不知道 我的電子郵件地址了。 那時,我唯一的結論是, 我自願提供的協助太多, 且提供給太多人。 但,幾年後,我重新讀了那些訊息, 我注意到了完全不一樣的東西。 那些電子郵件其實有三項共通性, 第一項還蠻異常的。
Almost everyone sent me meticulous details about how they could be reached. I had told them, or their friends had told them, that along with the list of the three things they wanted fixed, I needed their photo, their name and their date of birth. But they gave me full addresses, with, like, apartment numbers and zip codes, as if John of God was going to stop by their house and see them in person or send along a package. It was as if, in the highly unlikely event that their wishes were granted by John of God, they just wanted to make sure that they weren't delivered to the wrong person or the wrong address. Even if they didn't believe, they were hedging their bets.
幾乎每個人都寄給我太細節的資訊, 說明如何聯絡到他們。 我有告訴過他們, 或他們的朋友有告訴過他們, 除了寫一張猜單列出三件 他們想要修補的事情之外, 我也需要他們的 照片、姓名,以及生日。 但他們給我完整的地址, 有門牌號碼和郵遞區號, 好像神的約翰會 順道造訪他們家 親自會見他們, 或是寄個包裏過去似的。 那就好像是,如果他們的 願望被神的約翰給實現, 雖然不太可能, 他們就是想要確保願望不會被送給 錯的人或是錯的地址。 即使他們並不相信, 他們也是腳踏兩條船。
The second commonality was just as curious, but far more humbling. Virtually everyone -- the stranger on the subway, the guy at the coffee shop, the lawyer down the hall, the Jew, the atheist, the Muslim, the devout Catholic -- all asked for essentially the same three things. OK, there were a couple of outliers, and yes, a few people asked for cash. But when I eliminated what were ultimately a handful of anomalies, the similarities were staggering. Almost every single person first asked for good health for themselves and their families. Almost universally, they next asked for happiness and then love, in that order: health, happiness, love. Sometimes they asked for a specific health issue to be fixed, but more often than not, they just asked for good health in general.
第二項共通性也一樣異常, 但更會讓人謙卑。 差不多是每個人—— 地鐵上的陌生人、 咖啡廳的人、 走道另一頭的律師、 猶太人、無神論者、 穆斯林、虔誠的天主教徒—— 基本上,都想要同樣的三樣東西。 是有些離群值,而且有人想要現金。 但當我把一些最終被歸為 離群值的資料去除之後, 相似性挺驚人的。 幾乎每個人 都先祈求自己與家人的健康。 幾乎所有人 接著就會祈求快樂, 然後就是愛。 依這個順序: 健康、快樂、愛。 有時,他們會明確祈求 某個健康議題能被解決, 但多數時候他們祈求一般性的健康。
When it came to happiness, they each phrased it slightly differently, but they all asked for the same specific subtype of happiness, too -- the kind of happiness that sinks in and sets down roots in your soul; the kind of happiness that could sustain us, even if we were to lose absolutely everything else.
至於快樂, 他們每個人的表達方式都不太一樣, 但他們也都會明確希望 能得到某種類的快樂—— 能滲入你的靈魂當中, 並且在那兒深深紮根的那種快樂; 即使在我們肯定會失去其他一切, 仍然會支持著我們的那種快樂。
And for love, they all asked for the kind of romantic love, the soul mate that we read about in epic romantic novels, the kind of love that will stay with us till the end of our days.
至於愛, 他們都祈求要那種浪漫的愛, 我們在史詩浪漫小說中 讀到的心靈伴侶, 在我們生命結束之前都會 一直與我們同在的那種愛。
Sorry, that's my husband.
抱歉,那是我先生。
Crap! Now I forgot my place.
糟糕!我忘了我說到哪裡了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
So by and large, all of these friends and strangers, regardless of their background, race or religion, all asked for the same things, and they were the same things that I really wanted, the simplified version of the basic human needs identified by social scientists like Abraham Maslow and Manfred Max-Neef. No one asked for answers to the big existential questions or for proof of God or the meaning of life like I had set out to find. They didn't even ask for an end to war or global hunger. Even when they could have asked for absolutely anything, they all asked for health, happiness and love.
所以,總的來說, 所有這些朋友和陌生人, 不論是什麼背景、種族,或宗教, 他們都祈求同樣的東西。 我也真的很想要這些東西, 基本人類需求的簡化版本, 由社會科學家,像亞伯拉罕馬斯洛 (Abraham Maslow) 及曼佛雷德麥克斯尼夫 (Manfred Max-Neef)所確認的。 沒有人尋求關於存在之大哉問的解答, 或神存在的證據,或人生的意義, 就像我最初想要找尋的。 他們甚至沒有祈求戰爭 或是全球饑荒能終止。 即使當他們可以祈求任何事物, 他們仍然都祈求健康、快樂和愛。
So now those emails had a third commonality as well. Each of them ended in the exact same way. Instead of thanking me for carting their wishes all the way to Brazil, everyone said, "Please don't tell anyone." So I decided to tell everyone --
那些電子郵件還有第三項共通性。 它們的結尾都一樣。 他們不是謝謝我 把他們的願望一路運送到巴西去, 每個人反而都說: 「請不要告訴任何人。」 所以我決定告訴所有人。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
right here on this stage, not because I'm untrustworthy, but because the fact that we have so much in common feels especially important for us all to hear, especially now, when so many of the world's problems seem to be because we keep focusing on the things that make us different, not on what binds us together.
就在這講台上, 並不是因為我不值得信任, 而是因為我們有這麼多相同之處, 我們能聽到這些是特別 重要的,特別是現在, 世界上好多問題 起因似乎都是我們不斷聚焦在 讓我們不同的事物, 而不是結合我們的事物。
And look -- I am the first to admit that I am not a statistician, and that the data I presented to you that I just accumulated in my in-box is more anecdotal than scientific, more qualitative than quantitative. It is, as anyone who works with data would tell you, hardly a statistically significant or demographically balanced sample. But nonetheless, I find myself thinking about those emails every time I reflect back on the bias and prejudice that I've faced in my life, or when there's another hate crime or a senseless tragedy that underscores the disheartening sense that our differences might be insurmountable. I then remind myself that I have evidence that the humbling, unifying commonality of our humanity is that, even when presented with the opportunity to ask for anything at all, most of us want the same things, and that this is true no matter who we are, what name we call our god, or which religion, if any, we call home.
還有,聽著,我是第一位 承認自己不是統計學家的人, 而我剛與各位分享的資料, 那些我的收件匣裡累積的資料, 比較偏向軼事,而非科學, 比較偏向質化,而非量化。 任何在處理資料的人都會告訴你, 這樣本實在沒有統計顯著性, 在人口統計特徵上也不平衡。 但不論如何,我自己 會想著這些電子郵件, 每當我回頭反思我人生中 所面對的偏見與成見時, 都會去想這些郵件。 或是當又發生了仇恨犯罪, 或無理的悲劇時, 這些事會讓人很沮喪, 覺得我們的差異可能 永遠無法被克服。 接著,我會提醒我自己 我有證據證明 我們的人性當中 讓人謙卑且一致的共通性是, 當有機會可以祈求 任何東西的時候, 大部分人想要的都一樣, 這是真的,不論我們是怎樣的人, 不論我們稱神為什麼名字, 不論我們的歸屬是 哪種宗教,如果有的話。
I then also note that apparently some of us want these things so badly that we would email a None, a spiritually confused None like me -- some might say otherwise confused as well -- and that we would seek out this stranger and email her our deepest wishes, just in case there is the remote possibility that they might be granted by someone who is not a god, much less our god, someone who is not even a member of our chosen religion, someone who, when you look at him on paper, seems like an unlikely candidate to deliver.
接著,我也注意到, 很顯然,有些人非常想要這些東西, 甚至會寫電子郵件給「無信仰者」, 在靈性上很困惑的無信仰者,就像我—— 有人可能會說, 我在非靈性上也很困惑—— 我們會找到這個陌生人, 把我們最深的願望用電子郵件寄給她, 只是以防萬一,萬一有一點點可能 這些願望可能會被某人實現, 這個人不是神, 更不是我們的神, 這個人甚至不是我們 所選擇之宗教的成員, 當你在書面上看到這個人時, 可能不覺得他會是實現願望的候選人。
And so now, when I reflect back on my spiritual quest, even though I did not find God, I found a home in this: even today, in a world fractured by religious, ethnic, political, philosophical, and racial divides, even with all of our obvious differences, at the end of the day, and the most fundamental level, we are all the same.
所以,現在, 當我回頭反思我的靈性追尋之旅, 雖然我沒有找到神, 我在這當中找到了家: 即使現今,在一個因為宗教、 人種、政治觀、哲學觀 和種族分歧的世界, 即使我們很明顯有著歧見和差異, 到頭來, 在最根本的層面上, 我們都是一樣的。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)