We're here to celebrate compassion. But compassion, from my vantage point, has a problem. As essential as it is across our traditions, as real as so many of us know it to be in particular lives, the word "compassion" is hollowed out in our culture, and it is suspect in my field of journalism. It's seen as a squishy kumbaya thing, or it's seen as potentially depressing. Karen Armstrong has told what I think is an iconic story of giving a speech in Holland and, after the fact, the word "compassion" was translated as "pity."
今天我们在这里庆祝“同情”。 然而在我看来,关于同情 有一个问题。 在我们的整个传统中,“同情”是非常重要的, 如同我们很多人真的认为它 特别在生活中的重要性一样, 但“同情”这个词已经从我们的文化中消失了, 在我从事新闻业中,这就让人怀疑。 这也令人纠结。 或者它可能也被看成是件令人沮丧的事。 克伦·阿姆斯特朗曾说过这样一个具有代表意义的故事 关于她在荷兰的一个演讲 接着,故事结束后,这个词“同情” 被解释为“遗憾”。
Now compassion, when it enters the news, too often comes in the form of feel-good feature pieces or sidebars about heroic people you could never be like or happy endings or examples of self-sacrifice that would seem to be too good to be true most of the time. Our cultural imagination about compassion has been deadened by idealistic images. And so what I'd like to do this morning for the next few minutes is perform a linguistic resurrection. And I hope you'll come with me on my basic premise that words matter, that they shape the way we understand ourselves, the way we interpret the world and the way we treat others.
现在当新闻里出现“同情”这个词的时候, 常常出现在这样的形式中 感觉良好的专题报道 关于一些人的花边新闻 关于那些你永远不可能喜欢的人 或者说一些完美的结局 关于自我牺牲的例子 太美好以至于不可能是真的 在多数情况下。 同情在我们的文化里 已经被理想地束缚住了。 我今天在这里想要说的是 在接下来的时间里 来展示一场语言复兴。 并且我希望大家能跟我一起参与到我基本的假设中 理解这些话的含义, 它们塑造了我们理解我们自身的方式, 我们诠释这个世界的方式 以及我们对待他人的方式。
When this country first encountered genuine diversity in the 1960s, we adopted tolerance as the core civic virtue with which we would approach that. Now the word "tolerance," if you look at it in the dictionary, connotes "allowing," "indulging" and "enduring." In the medical context that it comes from, it is about testing the limits of thriving in an unfavorable environment. Tolerance is not really a lived virtue; it's more of a cerebral ascent. And it's too cerebral to animate guts and hearts and behavior when the going gets rough. And the going is pretty rough right now. I think that without perhaps being able to name it, we are collectively experiencing that we've come as far as we can with tolerance as our only guiding virtue.
当这个国家 第一次遇到真正的差异 在二十世纪60年代的时候, 我们选择容忍 作为核心的市民美德 以这种方式对待多样性。 现在如果你在词典中查找这个词“容忍” 它表示允许,纵容 和忍耐。 在这个词来源的医学领域, 它是在一种不利的环境中 关于鉴定繁荣的程度。 容忍算不上是一种美德; 更多的可能是一种理性的认可。 而且太过于理性 而不去激励勇气和内心 以及行为 当事情变得复杂时。 而且现在事情已经很复杂。 我想如果不能给这命名, 我们都在经历着的是 我们尽我们的最大努力 以容忍作为我们唯一的美德指导。
Compassion is a worthy successor. It is organic, across our religious, spiritual and ethical traditions, and yet it transcends them. Compassion is a piece of vocabulary that could change us if we truly let it sink into the standards to which we hold ourselves and others, both in our private and in our civic spaces. So what is it, three-dimensionally? What are its kindred and component parts? What's in its universe of attendant virtues? To start simply, I want to say that compassion is kind. Now "kindness" might sound like a very mild word, and it's prone to its own abundant cliche. But kindness is an everyday byproduct of all the great virtues. And it is a most edifying form of instant gratification.
而同情是一个合格的选择。 它是有组织的, 跨越我们的宗教信仰,精神以及道德传统, 并且超越这些。 同情是这样一个单词 能够改变我们,如果我们真的让我们自己沉浸在 这样一种标准中,我们用这种标准衡量自己和他人, 无论是在我们的私人空间或者公共领域。 那么它是什么,三维的? 它同类的词语和组成部分又是什么? 伴随它的美德又有哪些? 我们先简单的说, 我想说同情是美好的。 仁慈也许听上去是一个很温和的词语, 而且很容易成为陈词滥调。 但在所有的美德中, 善良确实是一个日常用语。 而且它是一个最有教育意义的形式 能带来立即的喜悦和满足。
Compassion is also curious. Compassion cultivates and practices curiosity. I love a phrase that was offered me by two young women who are interfaith innovators in Los Angeles, Aziza Hasan and Malka Fenyvesi. They are working to create a new imagination about shared life among young Jews and Muslims, and as they do that, they cultivate what they call "curiosity without assumptions." Well that's going to be a breeding ground for compassion.
同情同时也是好奇。 同情产生好奇并培养好奇。 我非常喜欢这样一个短语 是两位年轻的女士曾告诉我的 她们是在洛杉矶,是不同宗教团体的改革者, 阿紫扎·哈散和马尔卡·芬叶夫维斯。 她们正在努力创造一种新的展望 关于年轻的犹太人和穆斯林人来分享生活。 她们做着这项工作,创造了 “不带偏见的好奇心”的说法。 这样就为滋生同情感准备了良好温床。
Compassion can be synonymous with empathy. It can be joined with the harder work of forgiveness and reconciliation, but it can also express itself in the simple act of presence. It's linked to practical virtues like generosity and hospitality and just being there, just showing up. I think that compassion also is often linked to beauty -- and by that I mean a willingness to see beauty in the other, not just what it is about them that might need helping. I love it that my Muslim conversation partners often speak of beauty as a core moral value. And in that light, for the religious, compassion also brings us into the territory of mystery -- encouraging us not just to see beauty, but perhaps also to look for the face of God in the moment of suffering, in the face of a stranger, in the face of the vibrant religious other.
同情和移情是一种近义词。 只要努力就可以成功的把 宽恕和和解结合起来。 同时它也可以通过 很容易的做法表现出来。 它和美德的表现相联系 就像是慷慨和热情一样 就在那里, 自己表现出来。 在我看来同情 常常和美的事物一致-- 我的意思是说 一种在彼此中间发现美的意愿, 不只是关于 那些可能需要帮助的人。 我喜欢我的穆斯林朋友 和我交谈的时候常常提到的道德的核心是美。 同样,对于宗教来说, 同情同样带领我们 进入一个神秘领域-- 鼓励我们去发现 不仅仅是美, 也许同样也寻求神性 无论是在困境中, 在面临危险的时候, 或者在面对另一种迥异的宗教的时候。
I'm not sure if I can show you what tolerance looks like, but I can show you what compassion looks like -- because it is visible. When we see it, we recognize it and it changes the way we think about what is doable, what is possible. It is so important when we're communicating big ideas -- but especially a big spiritual idea like compassion -- to root it as we present it to others in space and time and flesh and blood -- the color and complexity of life.
我不确定我是不是可以给你们展示 容忍的样子, 但是我可以让你们看到同情是什么样—— 因为它是可见的。 当我们见到它的时候我们能认出它 而且它改变我们断定是非的标准, 以及什么是可能的。 它非常重要 当我们在交流一些大的思想的时候—— 尤其是像同情这样博大的精神思想—— 在我们向别人展示时将原有的思想根除 无论在哪里,什么时候,跟任何人-- 生活都是丰富多彩的。
And compassion does seek physicality. I first started to learn this most vividly from Matthew Sanford. And I don't imagine that you will realize this when you look at this photograph of him, but he's paraplegic. He's been paralyzed from the waist down since he was 13, in a car crash that killed his father and his sister. Matthew's legs don't work, and he'll never walk again, and -- and he does experience this as an "and" rather than a "but" -- and he experiences himself to be healed and whole. And as a teacher of yoga, he brings that experience to others across the spectrum of ability and disability, health, illness and aging. He says that he's just at an extreme end of the spectrum we're all on. He's doing some amazing work now with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And Matthew has made this remarkable observation that I'm just going to offer you and let it sit. I can't quite explain it, and he can't either. But he says that he has yet to experience someone who became more aware of their body, in all its frailty and its grace, without, at the same time, becoming more compassionate towards all of life.
同情的确与体格特征有关系。 我最开始是清楚地认识到这一点 是从马修·桑福德那里。 我不认为你们能意识到这点 当你看到他的照片的时候, 因为他是位半身麻痹患者。 他从13岁开始就瘫痪了, 在一次交通事故中,他的父亲和姐姐也在这场车祸中遇难。 马修的腿不好使了,他永远都不能再走路, 而且——在这里的确应该用“而且” 而不是“但是” 而且他让自己 变得痊愈,变得完整。 作为一个瑜伽教练, 他把他的经验教给其他人 关于拥有能力和无能之间, 关于健康,疾病以及衰老。 他说他只是一个极端 在这个我们都存在的范围内。 他现在正在 和那些从伊拉克和阿富汗战场上回来的老兵们一起做一些很了不起的工作。 马修说出了他非常有见地的结论 而我也正准备展示给你们。 我不能很透彻地解释,他也不能。 但是他说他已经感受过 成为一个了解自己身体的人, 感受到它的优雅与脆弱, 但是,他却没有 变得对生命更加多愁善感。
Compassion also looks like this. This is Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier helped found the L'Arche communities, which you can now find all over the world, communities centered around life with people with mental disabilities -- mostly Down syndrome. The communities that Jean Vanier founded, like Jean Vanier himself, exude tenderness. "Tender" is another word I would love to spend some time resurrecting. We spend so much time in this culture being driven and aggressive, and I spend a lot of time being those things too. And compassion can also have those qualities. But again and again, lived compassion brings us back to the wisdom of tenderness. Jean Vanier says that his work, like the work of other people -- his great, beloved, late friend Mother Teresa -- is never in the first instance about changing the world; it's in the first instance about changing ourselves. He's says that what they do with L'Arche is not a solution, but a sign. Compassion is rarely a solution, but it is always a sign of a deeper reality, of deeper human possibilities.
同情也很像这样。 这是让·凡尼尔, 让·凡尼尔帮助建立了阿切社区, 你可以在全世界找到这些社区, 这些社区以 在精神上有疾病的患者为中心—— 大多数人都很消沉。 让·凡尼尔建立的那些社区, 就如同他自己, 流露出温柔的情意。 “温柔”是另一个词 我想花点时间对它重新进行解释。 我们在这种驱赶性和侵略性的文化中 花费了太多时间, 我也同样在这些事情上花费了大量时间。 同情也同样拥有这些品质。 但是一次又一次地,长盛不衰的同情 把我们带回温柔的智慧中。 让·凡尼尔说 他的工作, 和其他人的工作一样—— 他伟大的,受人尊敬的已故朋友特丽莎修女-- 不是从一开始就想改变世界; 而是想改变我们自己。 他说他们为阿切社区所做的事情 不是一种解决办法,而是一个信号。 同情仅仅是一种解决办法, 但是它常常是一种更深层次的现实标志, 发挥人类更大的潜能。
And compassion is unleashed in wider and wider circles by signs and stories, never by statistics and strategies. We need those things too, but we're also bumping up against their limits. And at the same time that we are doing that, I think we are rediscovering the power of story -- that as human beings, we need stories to survive, to flourish, to change. Our traditions have always known this, and that is why they have always cultivated stories at their heart and carried them forward in time for us. There is, of course, a story behind the key moral longing and commandment of Judaism to repair the world -- tikkun olam.
同情被释放在 更加广阔的范围内 通过标志和故事, 而不是数据以及政策。 我们也同样需要这些东西, 但是我们也同样在拓展它们的极限。 在我们做这些的同时, 我认为我们正在复兴故事的力量—— 作为人类,我们需要故事 去存活,去发展, 去改变。 我们的传统一直都了解这点, 这就是为什么人们一直能从内心深处创造出故事 并把这些故事流传下来给我们大家看。 当然,有个故事 关于那些主要道德的约束 以及犹太教的戒律 来修复这个世界——修善世界(tikkun olam)。
And I'll never forget hearing that story from Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who told it to me as her grandfather told it to her, that in the beginning of the Creation something happened and the original light of the universe was shattered into countless pieces. It lodged as shards inside every aspect of the Creation. And that the highest human calling is to look for this light, to point at it when we see it, to gather it up, and in so doing, to repair the world. Now this might sound like a fanciful tale. Some of my fellow journalists might interpret it that way. Rachel Naomi Remen says this is an important and empowering story for our time, because this story insists that each and every one of us, frail and flawed as we may be, inadequate as we may feel, has exactly what's needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.
当雷切尔·内奥米·雷曼医生讲给我这个故事时, 我印象深刻, 她祖父讲给她听,她又讲给我听, 在创始之初 突然间 宇宙最初的光 被打碎成千千万万个碎片。 它就以碎片的形式 存在于被造物的每一方之中。 人类最高的使命 就是去找寻那光,一看到就指出给他人看, 去收集那光, 就这样修复世界。 这听起来好像一个幻想故事。 我的一些同行可能就会以此来诠释这个故事。 雷切尔·内奥米·雷曼说 对于我们的时代 这是一个重要的具有力量的故事, 因为故事告诉我们 我们每一个个体, 尽管我们自身可能很脆弱,也有很多过失, 尽管我们可能觉得自己非常无力, 其实我们每个人都拥有 那份可以修复世界的力量 我们可以真切的看到,触到这份力量。
Stories like this, signs like this, are practical tools in a world longing to bring compassion to abundant images of suffering that can otherwise overwhelm us. Rachel Naomi Remen is actually bringing compassion back to its rightful place alongside science in her field of medicine in the training of new doctors. And this trend of what Rachel Naomi Remen is doing, how these kinds of virtues are finding a place in the vocabulary of medicine -- the work Fred Luskin is doing -- I think this is one of the most fascinating developments of the 21st century -- that science, in fact, is taking a virtue like compassion definitively out of the realm of idealism. This is going to change science, I believe, and it will change religion.
像这样的故事, 这样的象征, 在这样一个渴求将同情 给予众多不幸的世界 在一个不幸足以将我们击垮的世界 这样的故事和象征无疑是有力的武器。 雷切尔·内奥米·雷曼 自己实际上就在将同情 重新置于与科学并重的位置上 就在她所从事的医学领域 通过训练新的医生 雷切尔·内奥米·雷曼所做的 的这种趋势 这些在医学领域中 树立道德的趋势-- 弗雷德·鲁斯金在做同样的事-- 在我看来这 是21世纪最令人折服的贡献之一-- 事实上,科学 正将同情这样的道德品质 剥离出理想主义。 我相信,这将会改变科学 亦将会改变宗教。
But here's a face from 20th century science that might surprise you in a discussion about compassion. We all know about the Albert Einstein who came up with E = mc2. We don't hear so much about the Einstein who invited the African American opera singer, Marian Anderson, to stay in his home when she came to sing in Princeton because the best hotel there was segregated and wouldn't have her. We don't hear about the Einstein who used his celebrity to advocate for political prisoners in Europe or the Scottsboro boys in the American South.
但是,这里有一张面孔 来自20世纪科学界 这可能会使你惊讶 在一场关于同情的辩论中。 我们都知道爱因斯坦 他发现了质能守恒定律E=mc二次方 然而我们却并不熟悉这样的一个爱因斯坦: 非洲裔美国歌手玛利亚·安德森 因宗族隔离而无法入住普林斯顿当地宾馆时 爱因斯坦邀请她 住在自己的住所里。 爱因斯坦以自己的影响来宣扬 释放欧洲的政治犯 和美国南部的 斯科茨伯勒男孩(Scottsboro boys九个黑人男孩被指控强奸两位白人女性而被判刑)。
Einstein believed deeply that science should transcend national and ethnic divisions. But he watched physicists and chemists become the purveyors of weapons of mass destruction in the early 20th century. He once said that science in his generation had become like a razor blade in the hands of a three-year-old. And Einstein foresaw that as we grow more modern and technologically advanced, we need the virtues our traditions carry forward in time more, not less. He liked to talk about the spiritual geniuses of the ages. Some of his favorites were Moses, Jesus, Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi, Gandhi -- he adored his contemporary, Gandhi. And Einstein said -- and I think this is a quote, again, that has not been passed down in his legacy -- that "these kinds of people are geniuses in the art of living, more necessary to the dignity, security and joy of humanity than the discoverers of objective knowledge."
爱因斯坦坚信 科学可以超越 民族和种族的分歧。 但他亲眼见到物理学家和化学家 在20世纪早期 成为大规模杀伤性武器的批发商。 他曾说过,科学在他的年代里 就像是 在三岁孩子手中的一把刀刃。 而爱因斯坦预见了 随着我们变得越来越现代 科技越来越发达, 我们需要这种美德 在我们的传统中流传 应该是更多,而不是更少。 他喜欢谈论各个时代的精神领袖。 其中有摩西, 耶稣,释迦摩尼,圣方济各, 甘地——他崇拜他同时代的伟人,甘地。 爱因斯坦说—— 我认为这是一句名言, 同样,没有在他的遗嘱中传下来的—— 他说“这样的人 在生活的艺术中是天才, 更多地倾向于 人类的尊严,安全和快乐 而不是客观认识的发现者。”
Now invoking Einstein might not seem the best way to bring compassion down to earth and make it seem accessible to all the rest of us, but actually it is. I want to show you the rest of this photograph, because this photograph is analogous to what we do to the word "compassion" in our culture -- we clean it up and we diminish its depths and its grounding in life, which is messy. So in this photograph you see a mind looking out a window at what might be a cathedral -- it's not. This is the full photograph, and you see a middle-aged man wearing a leather jacket, smoking a cigar. And by the look of that paunch, he hasn't been doing enough yoga. We put these two photographs side-by-side on our website, and someone said, "When I look at the first photo, I ask myself, what was he thinking? And when I look at the second, I ask, what kind of person was he? What kind of man is this?"
现在我援引爱因斯坦的话 看起来并没有实实在在地解释同情 也没有使我们更好地理解, 但事实上这话的确解释了同情。 请看 这张照片剩下的部分 因为这张照片 表达了和我们文化中的“同情”所代表的含义—— 我们把它擦干净 我们简化它的深度和基础 因为这些都容易造成麻烦。 就如同这张照片 大家看到心灵向窗口外望去 它注视的也许是教堂-其实不是。 这是一整张照片 一个中年男人穿着皮夹克 在抽着一根雪茄。 看着他肚子上的赘肉, 就知道他没有足够瑜伽。 我们把这两幅照片并排放在网络上, 有人说,“当我看第一张照片的时候, 我问自己,他在想什么呢? 而当我看到第二张时,我想 他是个什么样的人?他是那种人?”
Well, he was complicated. He was incredibly compassionate in some of his relationships and terribly inadequate in others. And it is much harder, often, to be compassionate towards those closest to us, which is another quality in the universe of compassion, on its dark side, that also deserves our serious attention and illumination. Gandhi, too, was a real flawed human being. So was Martin Luther King, Jr. So was Dorothy Day. So was Mother Teresa. So are we all. And I want to say that it is a liberating thing to realize that that is no obstacle to compassion -- following on what Fred Luskin says -- that these flaws just make us human.
其实,他是复杂的。 在他的一些关系中 他特别有同情心 但却在其他方面有所欠缺。 其实,对我们最亲近的人 我们往往最富有同情心, 在同情领域,另一黑暗的方面 往往被人忽视, 故而值得我们深思并受此启发。 甘地也非完人。 马丁·路德·金也是这样,多萝西·黛也是这样。 特丽莎修女也是这样。 我们都是这样。 我想说 意识到人人都可以富有同情心 是解放心智的-- 弗雷德·鲁斯金也说-- 缺陷造就了人生。
Our culture is obsessed with perfection and with hiding problems. But what a liberating thing to realize that our problems, in fact, are probably our richest sources for rising to this ultimate virtue of compassion, towards bringing compassion towards the suffering and joys of others. Rachel Naomi Remen is a better doctor because of her life-long struggle with Crohn's disease. Einstein became a humanitarian, not because of his exquisite knowledge of space and time and matter, but because he was a Jew as Germany grew fascist. And Karen Armstrong, I think you would also say that it was some of your very wounding experiences in a religious life that, with a zigzag, have led to the Charter for Compassion. Compassion can't be reduced to sainthood any more than it can be reduced to pity.
我们的文化追捧完美 千方百计掩饰问题。 但是,一个开放的态度是 意识到我们的问题 实际上就是我们最富贵的财富, 这一财富使我们得以企及最完满的同情 使得让同情 解除他人的苦难,带给他人欢乐。 雷切尔·内奥米·雷曼因为终生 与克罗恩病魔作战斗而成为出色的医生。 爱因斯坦成为一个人道主义者, 不是因为他关于时空和物质的 创新学识, 而是因为当德国遍布法西斯主义者时,他是一个犹太人。 克伦·阿姆斯特朗,我想你们可能会说 这是你们宗教生活中 最为受伤的一些经历 历经曲折 最终收获了同情宪章。 同情,正如它不能简单归结为可怜一样 也不能归结为圣人圣言。
So I want to propose a final definition of compassion -- this is Einstein with Paul Robeson by the way -- and that would be for us to call compassion a spiritual technology. Now our traditions contain vast wisdom about this, and we need them to mine it for us now. But compassion is also equally at home in the secular as in the religious.
所以我想提议 为同情下一个新的定义—— 一个混同保罗·罗伯逊的爱因斯坦式版本-- 那就是 把同情当做一种灵性科技。 现在我们的传统中 遍布各种相关的智慧, 现在我们需要挖掘它们。 但是同情在世俗生活中 同样如鱼得水。
So I will paraphrase Einstein in closing and say that humanity, the future of humanity, needs this technology as much as it needs all the others that have now connected us and set before us the terrifying and wondrous possibility of actually becoming one human race.
我想借用爱因斯坦的名言来结束: 人性 人类的未来, 需要这种科技 就如同我们同时需要其它这一切 以使这一骇人却又奇妙的可能性 成为现实: 即最终我们 能够真正成为人类,都能够亲如一家。
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
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