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.

我们是在浪费自己的生命吗？用“浪费”这个词，我们的意思是指以各种方式、在各种专门化的职业中耗散我们的能量。我们是在浪费我们的整个生命、我们的生活吗？如果你很富有，你也许会说：“是的，我积攒了很多钱财，这是一种巨大的快感。”或者，如果你有某种天赋，那天赋对宗教生活来说就是一种危险。天赋是在某个特定的方向上具有的天分、才能和天资，那是一种专门化，而专门化是一个支离破碎的过程。所以你必须问问你自己是不是在浪费自己的生命。你也许很富有，也许拥有各种才能，也许是个专家，是个大科学家或者是个商人，但是，在你生命的尽头，那一切是不是一种浪费？所有的痛楚、所有的悲伤、所有巨大的焦虑感、不安全感，人类搜集的各种愚蠢的幻觉，他所有的神明、所有的圣人等等——这一切是不是一种浪费？你也许拥有权力、地位，但是到了最后——又能怎样呢？拜托，这是一个很严肃的问题，你必须问问你自己，别人无法替你回答这个问题。

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.

所以我们把生与死分离了开来。死亡就是我们生命的结束，我们竭尽所能把它推得远远的——推到一段漫长的时间之后——然而，就在这段漫长旅程的尽头，我们还是会死去。而什么又是那个我们叫做生活的东西呢？赚钱，朝九晚五地上班去，要么在实验室，要么在办公室或者工厂里加班加点，还有无尽的冲突、恐惧、焦虑、孤独、绝望和沮丧——这整个生存方式，我们称之为生活、生存，并且紧紧抓住不放。然而这是生活吗？这种生活就是痛苦、悲伤、焦虑、冲突，是各种形式的欺骗和腐败，而哪里有自私自利哪里就必然会有腐败。这就是我们叫做生活的东西。我们知道这些，我们对这一切都非常熟悉，这就是我们的日常生活。同时我们也害怕死亡，死亡就是放开我们已知的一切，我们经历过和积攒起来的一切——漂亮的家具，收藏的美丽照片和画作。然后死亡来临并且说：“所有这些东西你都不能再拥有了。”所以我们执着于已知，害怕未知。