【原文】
The ego's greatest enemy is the present moment, which is to say, life itself.
【译文】
自我的最大敌人，就是当下，就是生活本身。
【心得】
前面提到过，过去与将来乃是思维的产物，它们都不是存在着的事物，也不是生活的一部分。而当下存在着的才是生活。生活是如何站在自我的对立面上的？我拭目以待。
啊哈，Ego在这里又出现了。那么我就试着在这里回答一下我在《超越思考 之十》中提出的问题吧。
如何区别ego和self这两个在这个语境下都可以译成“自我”的词实在是让我有点儿不知所措。在一般西方读者心中，二者的区别，根据这里，这里和这里，是这样的：Self是客观的，真实的自己。而Ego是Self的一部分，是思维的产物，是主观的，是我们认为自己是怎样的，或者别人认为我们是怎样的。
因为思维和意识的有限性，我们常常并不能认识完全的self。我们对于self的认知和理解也就是ego。ego中充满了各种对于self的猜想，误解。
关于佛洛伊德对于self和ego的理解，请参见维基百科 （这里有段来自wikipedia的摘抄，可以参考）。需要指出的是，本系列中作者的Self和ego概念，并非完全遵从弗洛伊德的定义。
如果把思维比作一面镜子，这个镜子并不平整光亮，就像先人们使用的铜镜，并不能反映出细节。或者把思维比作微风习习下的波动的湖面。把Self 放到思维的铜镜或者湖面之前，镜子里的湖面上的倒影，就是ego.
要不要把Ego和self在翻译上用不同的词呢？用哪两个词呢？
【原文】
Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness.
【译文】
不要刻意寻找幸福。找也找不到，因为寻找是与幸福对立的。幸福永远难以捉摸，但是从不幸中解脱的自由却是触手可得的：只需直面事实，不编造故事。不幸会掩盖你自然的良好状态和内在平和，而这些才是真正幸福的源泉。
【心得】
幸福就是没有不幸。
人生来每天都会经历各种痛苦，是注意力放在这些痛苦的事情上，会加重不幸发生的概率。总是和不幸打交道，幸福便无法进入你的生活。
而事情就是事情，引起不幸的，是我们对事情的反应。从不幸中解脱的方法，无非是把自己的对事情的反应与事情本身分开来看。有些我们能改变，有些不能。利用可以改变的那部分，我们就会从不幸中走出来。这，正是迈向幸福的第一步。什么是不可以改变的？已经发生的事情。什么是可以改变的？我们的反应。 倒霉了别沮丧。沮丧会让你更倒霉。
对于这个原则的应用，请看我的这一篇文章。
【原文】
Is it possible to let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are? In other words, can you cease looking into conceptual definition to give you a sense of self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity?
The more you make your thoughts into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.
Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself. When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be.
【译文】
能放弃“你应该或者需要知道你是谁”这一执念么？能停止在概念性定义中寻找自我么？ 能停止在思考中确认身份么？
你越是想通过思考来确认自己的身份，便越是自建藩篱，与自己的灵性维度相隔离。
通过思考来定义自我只会限制自我。 当你接受自己的无知，你就能进入一种平和透彻的状态，接近你的真实自我。这是靠思考则永远不能达到的。
【心得】
我一直都不是很清楚，self与ego是怎样的关系。中文都翻译成自我或者自己，好像二者是一会事儿似的。在心理学的研究中，不同的理论流派对这两个术语的定义也有不同。在日常对话中，二者又常常混淆。这篇文章里面没有对这两个词进行专门的定义，有时我觉得他们被用来表示同样的意思，有的则不是。迷糊。
【原文】
When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to you life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness, from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified with.
【译文】
人们失去对奇迹的感知能力已久。当人性不能驾驭思考，反而被思考所占有那时起，这种感知就消失了。
如果你不用词语或者标签来四处标记这个世界，奇迹就会重返你的生活。深刻感也会重返你的生活。事物保持崭新与鲜活。所有奇迹中做独特的，就是对本质的自我的全新经验。这经验先于任何词语，思考，思维标签或者形象。要想达到这个全新境界，你必须将你对自我和对存在的感知从与他们交织在一起的纷繁复杂的事物中清理出来。换句话说，要用心甄选。
【心得】
在输入这一段的时候，忽然想起笛卡尔的“我思故我在”这句哲学名言。我似乎从来也没有认真想过这句话真正含义是什么。于是我搜索了一下，看到了这篇文章。豁然开朗。笛卡尔认为纯理性的思考/怀疑是判断真理的标准。而进行怀疑和思考的先觉条件必定是有一个思考者。换句话说，就是我思故我在。不是说思考决定了人的存在，而是因为看到了思考这个行为，则可以推知有个思考者存在。
我在翻译的这些《超越思考》系列文字，是让人们作为思考者的同时要觉知自己的思考。思考并不决定我们是谁，而作为思考者，我们不但对自己的思考有一个感知，而且可以进一步的对其采取行动——作者在这里推崇的行动只是关照与关注。
【原文】
Neither concept or mathematical formulae can explain the infinite. No thought can encapsulate the vastness of the totailiy. Reality is a unified whole, but thought cuts it up into fragments. This gives rise to fundamental misperceptions, for example, that there are separate things and events, or that this is the cause of that. Every thought implies a perspective , and every perspective, by its very nature, implies limitation, which ultimately means that it is not true, at least not absolutely. Only the whole is true, but the whole cannot be spoken or thought. Seen from beyond the limitations of thinking and therefore incomprehensible to the human mind, everything is happening now. All that ever has been or will be is now, outside of time, which is a mental construct.
【译文】
没有概念或者公式能阐明“无穷”，也没有什么思想可以涵盖宇宙整体的广袤。现实是联合的统一体。思想只会将其分割。分割的结果是造成种种的根本性误解：比如事物可以独立存在，或这件事是那件事的原因。每个想法背后都有一种观点，而每种观点本质上意味着有限。这些有限的观点不是真理，至少不是绝对真理。只有完整性是真理，这一真理无法言传也不能思辨。超越了思想的界限，站在无法为人类思维所理解的角度来看，所有的事物只在当下①。那些在当下之外的曾经的存在的和未来的事物，只不过是心理观念罢了。
【心得】
我这里不明白的是，作者一直在强调完整性，一直强调思考会割裂完整性，而在这里他却给事件打上了时间标签，写上了当下，过去和未来。
按照他的观点，过去和未来的事物，是非存在的，没有的。过去的已经消失，未来的仍未出现。真正的存在的，是互相联系的宇宙统一体，且只存于当下。可是，若无过去和未来，那么这两个词为什么会在人的语言中出现的呢？也许他会说过去和未来乃思维的产物，是幻想吧。
很想了解作者怎样看待并阐述时间在这个统一世界里有怎样的意义。
【注释】
①作者有一本非常有名的书《the power of now》，中文译名是《当下的力量》。同已经发表的书保持一致性，这里把Now 翻译成“当下”。
【原文】
See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is ware of it.
In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind.
【译文】
尝试一下你是否能抓住，或者说注意到，“头脑中的声音”，当它正抱怨什么的时候抓个正着。认清它的本性：它是自我的声音，一个惯性思维模式，仅此而已。当你抓住它，你便能意识到“你”并非那个声音，而是注意到它的那个人。
事实上，你是觉察到这个声音的意识。那声音作为思考者在台前亮相，意识则作为观察这在台后监控。认识到这点，你便从自我中解放，从（之前）没有受到监控的思维中获得自由。
【评论】
人不仅能思考，而且还能意识到自己思考。人不仅有认知世界的能力，而且还有认知自己的认知的能力。后者，在心理学中被称为元认知。
元认知使得人类能够认识，掌握并控制自己的思想。这是人类比大多数动物先进的地方。拥有这一能力，人类对外部世界的反应就不再是简单的条件反射。认识到人可以主宰自己的思想和行动，我们就赋予了自己极大的力量。这种力量，能带领我们排除内在或外在的干扰，达到平和。
可悲的是，大多数人并不运用自己的能力来观察自己的思维，人们让思维掌控自己，根据思维采取行动。思维经常会失去自我纠错能力，引领人们的行为进入迷雾与歧途。只有经常认识并检查自己的思维，才能能让自己脱离思维的藩篱，更加自由的认识世界，认识自己。
认识自己的思维，可以通过自省和冥想，成为观察者。
I always take a shopping list with me to the CVS and RiteAid store to remind me what to buy and how much I am I am going to save to play the drugstore game. That’s a great habit I must say. But I want to know more than what items should I put in the cart, like how much the total price is before and after I use any coupon, how much can I save using coupon, how should I pay the subtotal, that is to say, how much should I pay by ECB (UPR for RiteAid) and cash, and how much will I earn through their program. Of course I will know all after I check out. But knowing these before I head to the cashier will be ideal. It will help me to make better decision. A planner will be useful in this case.
I was about to make one from scratch when I found this planner for CVS from http://bargainbriana.com. This planner is an Excel file. What you need to do is just entering the price of the item you want to buy, the value of coupons and the ECBs. The spreadsheet calculates everything for you: You will know instantly how much you need to pay, how much you are going to save or earn. It’s so great. But do not download it yet, cause I have more for you.
Based on the planner for CVS, I made one for RiteAid. Again, it will calculate everything for you before your RiteAid trip. I put the two worksheet in the same Excel file. If you only do CVS and RiteAid, you can just keep the one you need and delete the other one. And if you do both drugstores like me, you will find it so useful. I enter the information about the items I will buy in the spreadsheet and then print it out to bring it to the store as a shopping list. If I end up buying more or less than what I planned, I edit the exit file when I am back from the shopping trip to reflect what was really done, and then save the file as a new name to document the what I did. It’s good for both planning and tracking my spending.
OK, enough talking. you can download it here.
One more thing, when calculate the sale tax, I use 7.00% tax rate. If you have items with different tax rate, the result will not be accurate. The difference will not be significant though. Just a heads up.
Enjoy! Let me know what you think about it.
This week I visited CVS twice on 8/6 and 8/7.
The first time I got Colgate toothpaste, Gillette razor and two Sobe Life water ($16 tag price), used $6.75 coupon and $7.99 ECB. Paid 0.98 out of pocket and got 7.00 ECB.
Then I found out I was about to be out of Vitamin C. I found out CVS has Ester-C BOGO and I had 2 $3/1 coupons. I just cannot miss this deal. So came the second trip to CVS. This time I got 2 bottles of Ester-C and another Colgate toothpaste ($24.57 tag price), used $6 coupon and $8 ECB. Paid $0.74 out of pocket and got another $2 ECB to roll next week.
So, two trips to CVS, got $40.58 worth of product. Paid $1.72 out of pocket.
Good deal!
The trip to Rite Aid was also fun except that I forgot to spend my UPRs. Have to spend them next week.
At Rite Aid, I got $38.45 worth of product, used $15.25 coupons, paid $20.89 out of pocket and earned 6.55 UPRs + $10.99 SCR.
【原文】
Choose an object lose to you —— a pen, a chair, a cup, a plant—— and explore it visually, that is to say, look at it with great interest, almost curiously. Avoid any objects with strong personal associations that remind you of the past, such as where you bought it, who gave it to you, and so on. Also avoid anything that has writing on it such as a book or a bottle. It would stimulate thought. Without staining, relaxed but alert, give your complete attention to the object, every detail of it. If thoughts arise, don’t get involved in them. It is not the thoughts you are interested in, but the act of perception itself. Can you take the thinking out of the perceiving? can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out? After a couple of minutes or so, let your gaze wander around the room or wherever your are, your alert attention lighting up each thing that it rests upon.
Then, listen to any sounds that may be present. Listen to them in the same way as you looked at the things around you. Some sounds may be natural —— water, wind, birds——while others are man-made. Some may be pleasant, others unpleasant. However, don’t differentiate between good and bad. Allow each sound to be as it is, without interpretation. Here too, relaxed but alert attention is the key.
When we perceive without interpreting or mental labelling, which means without adding thought to our perceptions, we can still sense the deeper connectedness underneath our perception of seemingly separate things.
【译文】
在你周围选一件物品——可以是笔，椅子，水杯或者盆栽——仔细观察一下。带着极大的兴趣甚至是好奇来观察。不要选那些待遇个人感情的物品，它们能勾起你旧时回忆，比如你是从哪里买的啦，是谁送给你的啦等等。也不要选那些有字的物品，比如书或者瓶子——字能引发思考。不要把玩，把全部的注意都投放在这个物品上，不放过每一个细节。放松但保持警觉。如果有念头或想法出现，不要管它们。你需要关心的不是想法，而只是观察。你能把想法从观察中剔除么？你能只是看而不让头脑里的声音评判，比对，下结论或者试图理解它么？这样过几分钟，让你的视线在你的周围漂移一会儿。你的警觉的注意就会使每一件进入视线的物品都鲜活起来。
然后，听一下周围的声音。用你观察周围物品的同样方式来倾听，继续保持放松且警觉的注意。有些是自然的声响——水流，风动，鸟鸣，有些则是人类活动的声响。有些悦耳，有些难听。但，请不要区分好坏，也不要试图解释。体验每种声音的原汁原味。①
当我们只是接收周围环境而不对其进行解释或者分类，也就是说不对我们的感知觉赋予想法的时候，我们仍然察觉到那些貌似分离的知觉之间的深层联系。
【评论】
通常，人们是通过思维来了解一件事物的，通过把事物分类，与其他事物类比等等方式。这里，我们遇到了另外一种说法，即便是没有思维的参与，不对事物进行思考辨别，而只是简单的观察与感受，事物之间的紧密联系一样会显现出来。不进行思考的观察才是更直接的了解世界的方式。思考会让我们忽略很多细节。而没有了细节变成了头脑中的概念的事物，离真实相差很远。
【注释】
① 这段我调整了原文语序。不然，怎么读也不通畅。
【原文】
This is most people’s reality: As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego. They are imprisoned in thought forms, in object consciousness。
You do not awaken spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming cease, or at least you become aware of it and thus are able to observe it as it happens. It is through this constant naming that the ego remains in place as the unobserved mind. Whenever it ceases and even when you just become aware of it, there is inner space, and you are not possessed by the mind any more.
【译文】
大多数人只要观察到点儿什么，那虚幻的自我就要开始对其命名，解释，与已知事物比对；还要表示喜欢或厌恶，将其打上“好”或“坏”的标签，最终将它以思维的形式囚禁在主观的意识当中。
这种强迫症似的无意识的命名行为不停止，你就无法清醒，充满灵性。你至少得意识到到这一行为，才能关照它的发生。自我（ego）通过不断的给事物命名才得以不被观察，并在心智中存有一席之地。当命名停止，或者当人们注意到这一行为时，内在空间才开始形成，你也将不再被心智所掌控。
【评论】
当人的注意力在外在世界，只能被外在世界的纷繁浮躁所俘虏，征服。心智被扰乱。只有通过对内的观察，才能使得内心平静下来，厘清各种头绪，并获得掌控力。