So together we are going to investigate whether desire is one of the major causes of disorder; we must explore desire, not condemn it, not escape from it, not try to suppress it. Most religions have said, ‘Suppress desire’—which is absurd. So let us look at it. What is desire? Put that question to yourself. Probably most of us have not thought about it at all. We have accepted it as a way of life, as the natural instinct of a man or a woman, and so we say, ‘Why bother about it?’. Those people who have renounced the world, those who have entered monasteries, and so on try to sublimate their desires in the worship of a symbol or a person. Please bear in mind that we are not condemning desire. We are trying to find out what is desire, why man has, for millions of years, been caught not only physically but also psychologically in the trap of desire, in the network of desire.

所以，我们将一起来探究欲望是不是混乱的主要根源之一；我们必须探索欲望，而不是谴责它、逃避它，也不要试图压抑它。大部分宗教都说过：“压制欲望”——那很荒唐。所以让我们来看看它。欲望是什么？问问自己这个问题。也许我们大多数人根本没想过这个问题。我们把它作为一种生活方式，作为男人或女人自然的本能接受了下来，所以我们说：“为什么要费心考虑它呢？”那些抛弃了世界、进入修道院之类地方的人，试图通过膜拜某个象征或者某个人，来升华他们的欲望。请谨记在心，我们并非在谴责欲望。我们在试着弄清楚欲望是什么，以及为什么数百万年以来，人类无论身心都被困在欲望的陷阱、欲望之网中。

We also ought to talk over together love, sorrow, and death. Please, all this is much too serious as it affects your daily life. This is not something you play with intellectually; it concerns your life—not somebody else’s life—the way you live after all these million years. Look what your lives are, how empty, shallow, violent, brutal, inconsiderate, thoughtless. Look at it. All this has created such havoc in the world. You all want to have high positions, achieve something, become something. And seeing all this, there is great sorrow, isn’t there? Every human being in this world, whether he is highly placed or is just an ignorant villager, goes through great sorrow. He may not recognize the nature and the beauty and the strength of sorrow, but he goes through pain like you do. Human beings have gone through sorrow for a million years. They haven’t solved the problem; they want to escape from it. And what is the relationship of sorrow to love and death? Can there be an end to sorrow? This has been one of the questions mankind has asked for a million years. Is there an end to all the pain, the anxiety, the grief of sorrow?

我们也应该一起来探讨爱、悲伤和死亡。请注意，这一切都是太严肃的话题了，因为它们影响着你的日常生活。这不是一场智力游戏，这与你的生活紧密相关——不是别人的生活——而是你几百万年以来的生活方式。看看你的生活是什么，它是多么空虚、浅薄、暴力、残酷、冷漠、自私。看看它。这一切在世界上造成了如此严重的破坏。你们都希望坐拥高位，功成名就。而看到了这一切，你就会感到巨大的悲伤，不是吗？这世上的每一个人，无论身居高位或是一个愚昧的村民，都经历着巨大的悲伤。他也许意识不到悲伤的本质、美和力量，但是他像你一样经历着痛苦。人类已然历经了一百万年的悲伤，他们没有解决这个问题，他们想要逃避它。而悲伤与爱和死亡又有着怎样的关系？悲伤能够终结吗？这是人类问了一百万年的问题之一。这所有的痛苦、焦虑和沉痛的悲伤是否有尽头？

Sorrow is not only your own particular sorrow; there is also the sorrow of mankind. Historically, there have been five thousand years of war. That means every year some people kill others for the sake of their tribe, their religion, their nation, their community, their individual protection, and so on. Have you ever realized what wars have done, the havoc they have created? How many millions have cried, how many millions have been wounded, left without arms, without legs, without eyes, even without a face? You people don’t know anything about all this. So is there an end to sorrow and all the pain therein? And what is sorrow? Don’t you know sorrow? Don’t you? Are you ashamed to acknowledge it? When your son or daughter or somebody whom you think you love is taken away, don’t you shed tears? Don’t you feel terribly lonely because you have lost a companion forever? We are not talking about death but about this immense thing that man goes through without ever having a solution.

悲伤不仅仅是你自己特有的悲伤，还有人类的悲伤。从历史上看，战争已经存在了五千年。这意味着每年都有一些人在杀害另一些人，为了他们的部落、他们的宗教、他们的国家、他们的团体、他们个人的安全，等等等等。你可曾意识到战争都做了些什么，它们制造了怎样的浩劫？你可知有几百万人在哭泣，有几百万人受了伤，失去了手臂、腿脚和眼睛，甚至连面孔也失去了？你们这些人根本不知道这些。那么悲伤以及其中所有的痛苦能够终结吗？而悲伤又是什么？你们难道不了解悲伤吗？不了解吗？你们羞于承认这一点吗？当你的儿子、女儿或者你认为自己爱着的某个人被夺走了，你难道不会流泪吗？你难道不会因为永远失去了某个人的陪伴而感到极其孤独吗？我们现在谈的不是死亡，而是人类经历的这个从来都未能解决的庞然大物。