I think it's safe to say that all humans will be intimate with death at least once in their lives. But what if that intimacy began long before you faced your own transition from life into death? What would life be like if the dead literally lived alongside you?
總有一次,人生要面對死亡交迫, 我覺得這樣說 並不為過。 但若天命未到, 死亡威脅提前到來, 又會怎樣? 實際舆死亡相伴的生活 又是怎樣的?
In my husband's homeland in the highlands of Sulawesi island in eastern Indonesia, there is a community of people that experience death not as a singular event but as a gradual social process. In Tana Toraja, the most important social moments in people's lives, the focal points of social and cultural interaction are not weddings or births or even family dinners, but funerals. So these funerals are characterized by elaborate rituals that tie people in a system of reciprocal debt based on the amount of animals -- pigs, chickens and, most importantly, water buffalo -- that are sacrificed and distributed in the name of the deceased. So this cultural complex surrounding death, the ritual enactment of the end of life, has made death the most visible and remarkable aspect of Toraja's landscape. Lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, funeral ceremonies are a raucous affair, where commemorating someone who's died is not so much a private sadness but more of a publicly shared transition. And it's a transition that's just as much about the identity of the living as it is about remembrance of the dead.
在印尼東部蘇拉威西(Sulawesi)島一帶的高地, 也就是外子的故鄉那兒, 有一民族 是在漸進的社會經驗中 體驗死亡, 而非一生一次的大事。 在當地的塔納托拉雅(Tana Toraja), 葬禮是生活中最重要的社交場合 和社會文化交流, 更甚婚禮、新生兒誕生, 重要性甚至超越家庭晚餐。 繁複的儀式 是這些葬禮的特徵, 這些儀式以禮尚往來的互惠系統 將人緊密融入, 牲口數量就是這系統的基礎, 如豬 、雞 與最重要的水牛, 這些獻祭會以死者名義分給眾人。 因此這個瑩繞著死亡的文化情節, 以儀式演繹生命的終點, 並成為托拉雅當地 最顯著特殊的在地景觀。 為期數天 到數週不等的葬禮 是一場喧鬧的盛事; 在這場合中,紀念死者不僅是 個人哀傷的情緒, 更是眾人共同的過渡時期。 這段時間 對生者的認同 和對死者的悼念是一樣的。
So every year, thousands of visitors come to Tana Toraja to see, as it were, this culture of death, and for many people these grandiose ceremonies and the length of the ceremonies are somehow incommensurable with the way that we face our own mortality in the West. So even as we share death as a universal experience, it's not experienced the same way the world over. And as an anthropologist, I see these differences in experience being rooted in the cultural and social world through which we define the phenomena around us. So where we see an unquestionable reality, death as an irrefutable biological condition, Torajans see the expired corporeal form as part of a larger social genesis. So again, the physical cessation of life is not the same as death. In fact, a member of society is only truly dead when the extended family can agree upon and marshal the resources necessary to hold a funeral ceremony that is considered appropriate in terms of resources for the status of the deceased. And this ceremony has to take place in front of the eyes of the whole community with everyone's participation.
每年都有數以千計的訪客 一如往昔地來到塔納托拉雅, 見識死亡文化。 對許多人而言, 這些鋪張冗長的典禮 與西方對後事的態度 程度上似乎有點相近。 所以,死亡雖是我們共同的經驗, 但經歷因地而異。 我是人類學家, 我認為文化和社會結構 產生這些風俗差異, 讓我們據以解釋週遭的環境。 在我們眼中毋庸置疑的事實, 也就是死亡為不可避免的生理狀態; 托拉雅人卻認為, 腐朽的身軀是以成員身分擴充社會規模。 這裡再次凸顯的是,生理上性命的終結 不等於死亡。 事實上,社會成員「真正」死亡 是在所屬的大家庭同意後, 再張羅必需品 來舉辦葬禮, 喪禮合宜與否,端看喪葬資源 是否與死者社會地位相符。 而且,葬禮 必須在所有成員的見證 與參與下進行。
So after a person's physical death, their body is placed in a special room in the traditional residence, which is called the tongkonan. And the tongkonan is symbolic not only of the family's identity but also of the human life cycle from birth to death. So essentially, the shape of the building that you're born into is the shape of the structure which carries you to your ancestral resting place. Until the funeral ceremony, which can be held years after a person's physical death, the deceased is referred to as "to makala," a sick person, or "to mama," a person who is asleep, and they continue to be a member of the household. They are symbolically fed and cared for, and the family at this time will begin a number of ritual injunctions, which communicates to the wider community around them that one of their members is undergoing the transition from this life into the afterlife known as Puya.
一個人的肉體死亡後, 另闢特殊房間停靈, 而房間所在的傳統屋宇叫作 tongkonan。 這種房屋, 不論對家族識別或人的生死循環來說, 都具有象徵意義。 基本上, 你出生的住所, 和帶你回到 先靈安息處的房屋很像。 喪禮可能在肉體死亡後數年才舉行, 在此之前,往生者仍算是家族成員, 人們稱他們為 to makala,也就是「病人」的意思; 或是 to mama, 也就是 「沉睡者」。 這時屍體仍被象徵性地供養照顧, 而家人將會著手一連串的敕令儀式, 與周遭那個更大的「社群」溝通, 告訴他們 有一位家族成員, 正由今生邁向來世, 這轉換期稱作 Puya。
So I know what some of you must be thinking right now. Is she really saying that these people live with the bodies of their dead relatives? And that's exactly what I'm saying.
我知道此刻你們一定在想: 「難不成她說的是, 這些傢伙與親人的屍體同住?」 沒錯!我的意思就是這樣!
But instead of giving in to the sort of visceral reaction we have to this idea of proximity to bodies, proximity to death, or how this notion just does not fit into our very biological or medical sort of definition of death, I like to think about what the Torajan way of viewing death encompasses of the human experience that the medical definition leaves out. I think that Torajans socially recognize and culturally express what many of us feel to be true despite the widespread acceptance of the biomedical definition of death, and that is that our relationships with other humans, their impact on our social reality, doesn't cease with the termination of the physical processes of the body, that there's a period of transition as the relationship between the living and the dead is transformed but not ended. So Torajans express this idea of this enduring relationship by lavishing love and attention on the most visible symbol of that relationship, the human body. So my husband has fond memories of talking to and playing with and generally being around his deceased grandfather, and for him there is nothing unnatural about this. This is a natural part of the process as the family comes to terms with the transition in their relationship to the deceased, and this is the transition from relating to the deceased as a person who's living to relating to the deceased as a person who's an ancestor. And here you can see these wooden effigies of the ancestors, so these are people who have already been buried, already had a funeral ceremony. These are called tau tau.
對這與屍共處、 與死為鄰的想法, 還有這與我們生物和醫學上 所定義的死亡不符; 與其強烈排斥, 我反而認為, 看待死亡的方式, 托拉雅人 涵蓋了醫學定義 所遺漏的人類經驗。 即使多數人接受生醫領域對死亡的定義 我認為 托拉雅人的社會認知和文化再現, 是我們當中許多人也相信的。 那就是, 人類彼此的關係, 及其對社會現實的影響, 不會因生理機能終止, 就嘎然中止; 會有一段生死交替的轉換期, 但非就此結束。 對托拉雅人來說, 軀體是人際關係最明顯的象徵, 他們以對遺體滿滿的關愛 表達這種恆久關係的概念。 我先生就有 與自己的祖父遺體玩耍說話、 朝夕相處的愉快回憶。 對他來說,這沒什麼好奇怪的! 這是很自然的過程, 與死者關係的轉變, 家人都能 泰然處之。 生前是 家裡的其中一人; 死後就變成祖先。 現在你們看到的是 他們祖先的木雕像, 這些人的葬禮已經辦過, 也已經下葬。 這些木雕稱作 tau tau。 所以葬禮本身
So the funeral ceremony itself embodies this relational perspective on death. It ritualizes the impact of death on families and communities. And it's also a moment of self-awareness. It's a moment when people think about who they are, their place in society, and their role in the life cycle in accordance with Torajan cosmology.
體現了這種 以關係為基礎的死亡觀。 死亡對家人和社群的影響, 在葬禮中變成了儀式, 葬禮也是自覺的時刻; 人們在這時思考自己究竟是誰? 在社會中的地位, 於托拉雅宇宙觀相應的生命循環中, 自己又扮演何種角色? 有一句托拉雅諺語說,
There's a saying in Toraja that all people will become grandparents, and what this means is that after death, we all become part of the ancestral line that anchors us between the past and the present and will define who our loved ones are into the future. So essentially, we all become grandparents to the generations of human children that come after us. And this metaphor of membership in the greater human family is the way that children also describe the money that they invest in these sacrificial buffaloes that are thought to carry people's soul from here to the afterlife, and children will explain that they will invest the money in this because they want to repay their parents the debt for all of the years their parents spent investing and caring for them.
所有人都會變成祖父母, 意思是去世後, 我們都會變成先祖。 正是這種世系 在過去與現在間支持我們, 並決定我們所愛的人 未來會是怎樣的角色。 所以, 就本質來說, 我們都會成為 人類未來世代的祖先。 這種以加入人類社會成員比喻的方式, 也是當地談論購買獻祭水牛時, 兒女的講法; 他們相信, 水牛能將人類的靈魂送往來世。 而且兒女會解釋, 他們花這筆錢 是為了報答父母這些年來, 為了照顧自己 還有在自己身上投資 所花的費用。 但水牛獻祭與儀式
But the sacrifice of buffalo and the ritual display of wealth also exhibits the status of the deceased, and, by extension, the deceased's family. So at funerals, relationships are reconfirmed but also transformed in a ritual drama that highlights the most salient feature about death in this place: its impact on life and the relationships of the living.
所展示的財富, 顯示了往生者的地位, 當然也應證了其家族的勢力。 所以關係在葬禮中再次獲得確認, 但也在儀式演示中有所轉變, 這儀式所凸顯的是 死亡在此地最重要的特徵: 對生命及生者關係的影響。 托拉雅人如此重視死亡,
So all of this focus on death doesn't mean that Torajans don't aspire to the ideal of a long life. They engage in many practices thought to confer good health and survival to an advanced age. But they don't put much stock in efforts to prolong life in the face of debilitating illness or in old age. It's said in Toraja that everybody has sort of a predetermined amount of life. It's called the sunga'. And like a thread, it should be allowed to unspool to its natural end.
不表示他們未曾嚮往 長壽的理想, 他們有許多 促進健康 和延年益壽的作法; 但面臨耗弱健康的疾病 及衰老時,他們不會費盡心思 延長壽命。 據傳在托拉雅, 每個人的壽命是註定的, 這種天命稱作 sunga。 就像從捲軸拉出一條線, 總會有盡頭。 當死亡融入生活中的
So by having death as a part of the cultural and social fabric of life, people's everyday decisions about their health and healthcare are affected. The patriarch of my husband's maternal clan, Nenet Katcha, is now approaching the age of 100, as far as we can tell. And there are increasing signs that he is about to depart on his own journey for Puya. And his death will be greatly mourned. But I know that my husband's family looks forward to the moment when they can ritually display what his remarkable presence has meant to their lives, when they can ritually recount his life's narrative, weaving his story into the history of their community. His story is their story. His funeral songs will sing them a song about themselves. And it's a story that has no discernible beginning, no foreseeable end. It's a story that goes on long after his body no longer does.
社會文化結構, 人們日常健康及養生的選擇 也跟著受影響。 我先生母系一脈的族長 Nenet Katcha, 看得出來已經快100歲了, 而且越來越明顯的是, 他即將踏上今生到來世的旅程 (Puya)。 他去世時悼念儀式會很盛大, 但我知道,我丈夫一家 所盼望的那個時刻, 是他不凡生平 對一家人的影響, 可讓他們表現在儀式中; 那時他們可照例 陳述他的生前事蹟, 將他的故事 編入族群的歷史中。 他的故事就是族群的故事, 為他安排的送葬歌曲也將是關於眾人的。 歌曲的故事看不出從何開始, 也不知何處結束, 會是一個在他軀體消失後 不斷延續的故事。 人們問我,是否害怕或厭惡
People ask me if I'm frightened or repulsed by participating in a culture where the physical manifestations of death greet us at every turn. But I see something profoundly transformative in experiencing death as a social process and not just a biological one. In reality, the relationship between the living and the dead has its own drama in the U.S. healthcare system, where decisions about how long to stretch the thread of life are made based on our emotional and social ties with the people around us, not just on medicine's ability to prolong life. We, like the Torajans, base our decisions about life on the meanings and the definitions that we ascribe to death.
處於一個 死亡意象 隨處可見的文化中? 但以社會歷程, 而非生理過程看待死亡, 讓我看到一些深刻的轉變。 事實上,在美國的醫療體系下, 生者與死者間的關係也有特別之處, 對壽命的決定, 不只取決於醫療技術, 還有我們跟週遭的人之間的 情感與社會關係。 我們和托拉雅人一樣, 以自身加諸於死亡的 意義和定義, 為生命做決定。 我不是建議在座的各位,
So I'm not suggesting that anyone in this audience should run out and adopt the traditions of the Torajans. It might be a little bit difficult to put into play in the United States. But I want to ask what we can gain from seeing physical death not only as a biological process but as part of the greater human story. What would it be like to look on the expired human form with love because it's so intimately a part of who we all are? If we could expand our definition of death to encompass life, we could experience death as part of life and perhaps face death with something other than fear. Perhaps one of the answers to the challenges that are facing the U.S. healthcare system, particularly in the end-of-life care, is as simple as a shift in perspective, and the shift in perspective in this case would be to look at the social life of every death. It might help us recognize that the way we limit our conversation about death to something that's medical or biological is reflective of a larger culture that we all share of avoiding death, being afraid of talking about it. If we could entertain and value other kinds of knowledge about life, including other definitions of death, it has the potential to change the discussions that we have about the end of life. It could change the way that we die, but more importantly, it could transform the way that we live.
立刻採納 托拉雅人的傳統。 在美國 要做到這些有些困難, 但我想問的是,將生理上的死亡, 看成更偉大的人類歷史,而不僅是一種生物性過程, 我們將學到什麼呢? 以愛看待遺體, 因為那幾乎就是我們群體的一部份, 若這樣看又會怎樣呢? 若我們將生命 包含於廣義的死亡定義, 就能把死亡經歷當作生命的一部份, 面對它時 就不會只有恐懼。 也許當前美國面臨的醫療體系挑戰, 尤其是臨終照護, 解決方式之一 可能簡單到只要轉變看法; 以臨終照護來說, 就是檢視死亡的社會性。 這樣做將讓我們發現, 我們論及死亡時 侷限在生物醫療方面, 反映出我們都有逃避死亡, 忌諱相關話題的文化傾向。 如果我們願意重視 並接納其他關於生命的見解, 包括死亡的不同定義, 就可能改變 我們對死亡的相關論述。 這可能改變我們死亡的方式, 但更重要的是, 這能改變我們活下去的方式。
(Applause)
(印尼語)(掌聲)