今日推荐：懒惰的三种形式

英文原文：The Three Kinds of Laziness

We speak of three kinds of laziness. The first is simply to spend all your time eating and sleeping. The second is to tell yourself, "Someone like me will never manage to perfect themselves." In the Buddhist context, such laziness makes you feel that it's pointless even trying, you'll never attain any spiritual realization. Discouragement makes you prefer not even to begin making any effort. And the third kind... is to waste your life on tasks of secondary importance, without ever getting down to what's most essential. You spend all your time trying to resolve minor problems, one after another in an endless sequence, like ripples on the surface of a lake. You tell yourself that once you've finished this or that project you'll start giving some meaning to your life.

我们说的懒惰有三种形式。第一种，整天就是吃和睡。第二种，是告诉自己，“有一类人，就像我这种，是永远管理不好自己的。”在佛教思想中，这种懒惰会让你认为努力也是白费的，你永远无法获得精神上的救赎。缺乏自信使得你去试一下的想法都不会有。这第三种是，把生命浪费在那些此等的事情上，从不着手去解决问题的本质。如此一来，你会浪费所有的时间都在想办法解决次要问题，一个接一个，永远没有尽头，就像湖面的涟漪。你甚至感觉良好的告诉自己，一旦完成了这个或那个目标，你将会去做一些更有意义的事情。

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The antidote to the first kind of laziness— only wanting to eat and sleep— is to reflect on death and the impermanent nature of everything. We never know when we're going to die or what circumstances are going to lead to our death. So there isn't a moment to lose in getting down to what's really essential. The antidote to the second kind of laziness — feeling too discouraged to commit ourselves to spiritual practice—is to reflect on the benefits that such inner transformation will bring. The antidote to the third kind—attending to details rather than to the essentials—is to realize that the only way to get to the end of our endless projects is to drop them, and then turn to what gives life its meaning without waiting any longer. Life is short, and if we want to develop our inner qualities it's never too soon to start getting down to it.
克服第一种懒惰——生活中只有吃和睡——的方法是反省死亡，反省万物终归尘土的自然属性。我们不知道何时就将死去，何事将会导致我们死去。所以，只要抓住生命的本质，就没有什么得与失。克服第二种懒惰——丧失信心，没有勇气追求更崇高的目标——的方法是反省这种内心变化将会带来的益处。克服第三种懒惰——纠缠于枝节、抓不住本质——的方法是明白，结束这没完没了琐事的唯一方法就是抛弃它们，转而去做对生命更有意义的事情，不用再等待。人生短暂，如果你想提高人生的质量，现在就该开始去做，做这种事永远都不会太早。

—Matthieu Ricard，佛教徒，分子生物学博士，上文来自他的书《The Monk and the Philosopher“》中一段和他的思想导师的对话。