Are we wasting our lives? By that word ‘wasting’ we mean dissipating our energy in various ways, dissipating it in specialized professions. Are we wasting our whole existence, our life? If you are rich you may say, ‘Yes, I have accumulated a lot of money, it has been a great pleasure.’ Or if you have a certain talent, that talent is a danger to a religious life. Talent is a gift, a faculty, an aptitude in a particular direction, which is specialization. Specialization is a fragmentary process. So you must ask yourself whether you are wasting your life. You may be rich, you may have all kinds of faculties, you may be a specialist, a great scientist or a businessman, but at the end of your life has all that been a waste? All the travail, all the sorrow, all the tremendous anxiety, insecurity, the foolish illusions that man has collected, all his gods, all his saints and so on—have all that been a waste? You may have power, position, but at the end of it—what? Please, this is a serious question that you must ask yourself. Another cannot answer this question for you.

我們是在浪費自己的生命嗎？用“浪費”這個詞，我們的意思是指以各種方式、在各種專門化的職業(yè)中耗散我們的能量。我們是在浪費我們的整個生命、我們的生活嗎？如果你很富有，你也許會說：“是的，我積攢了很多錢財，這是一種巨大的快感?！被蛘撸绻阌心撤N天賦，那天賦對宗教生活來說就是一種危險。天賦是在某個特定的方向上具有的天分、才能和天資，那是一種專門化，而專門化是一個支離破碎的過程。所以你必須問問你自己是不是在浪費自己的生命。你也許很富有，也許擁有各種才能，也許是個專家，是個大科學家或者是個商人，但是，在你生命的盡頭，那一切是不是一種浪費？所有的痛楚、所有的悲傷、所有巨大的焦慮感、不安全感，人類搜集的各種愚蠢的幻覺，他所有的神明、所有的圣人等等——這一切是不是一種浪費？你也許擁有權力、地位，但是到了最后——又能怎樣呢？拜托，這是一個很嚴肅的問題，你必須問問你自己，別人無法替你回答這個問題。

So we have separated living from dying. The dying is the end of our life. We put it as far away as possible—a long interval of time—but at the end of the long journey we die. And what is it that we call living? Earning money, going to the office from nine to five, over-worked either in a laboratory or in an office or in a factory, and the endless conflict, fear, anxiety, loneliness, despair, depression—this whole way of existence is what we call life, living. And to that we hold. But is that living? This living is pain, sorrow, anxiety, conflict, every form of deception, and corruption. Where there is self-interest there must be corruption. This is what we call living. We know that, we are very familiar with all that, that is our daily existence. And we are afraid of dying, which is to let go of all the things that we have known, all the things that we have experienced and gathered—the lovely furniture and the beautiful collection of pictures and paintings. And death comes and says, ‘You cannot have any of those things any more.’ So we cling to the known, afraid of the unknown.

所以我們把生與死分離了開來。死亡就是我們生命的結束，我們竭盡所能把它推得遠遠的——推到一段漫長的時間之后——然而，就在這段漫長旅程的盡頭，我們還是會死去。而什么又是那個我們叫做生活的東西呢？賺錢，朝九晚五地上班去，要么在實驗室，要么在辦公室或者工廠里加班加點，還有無盡的沖突、恐懼、焦慮、孤獨、絕望和沮喪——這整個生存方式，我們稱之為生活、生存，并且緊緊抓住不放。然而這是生活嗎？這種生活就是痛苦、悲傷、焦慮、沖突，是各種形式的欺騙和腐敗，而哪里有自私自利哪里就必然會有腐敗。這就是我們叫做生活的東西。我們知道這些，我們對這一切都非常熟悉，這就是我們的日常生活。同時我們也害怕死亡，死亡就是放開我們已知的一切，我們經歷過和積攢起來的一切——漂亮的家具，收藏的美麗照片和畫作。然后死亡來臨并且說：“所有這些東西你都不能再擁有了?！彼晕覀儓?zhí)著于已知，害怕未知。