0:00
So, we've just seen that according to the second noble truth, the source of dukkha, the source of suffering and unsatisfactoriness is our craving, our attempt to hang onto things that don't last, including pleasure.
所以,我们刚刚看到,根据第二真谛,dukkha的源头,受苦和不满足的源头,是我们的渴望,我们企图抓住那些不能持久的事物,包括快乐。
0:16
And I used powdered sugar donuts as my own personal example of that.
我用个人经历中的甜甜圈作为例子来解释这个真谛。
0:21
The Buddha, as we saw, said that our failure to kind of grasp this dynamic was just another example of our failing to see the world clearly. Now, in this segment of lecture one, we're going to drill down a little into the biological mechanics of craving and of the evaporation of pleasure, and we're going to ask why it is that if the Buddha was right, why it is that we do fail to get the picture about pleasure and how fleeting it is.
佛陀,像我们之前看到的,他说我们抓住那些无常事物的失败,只是我们没看清楚这个世界的另一个例子。在第一讲的这一部分,我们将要深入一点,到渴望、到快乐消逝的生物力学。我们将问,如果佛陀是对的,那它为什么会是那样的。为什么我们不能了解快乐和快乐是怎样的短暂。 (fail to get the picture: 不能了解 how fleeting it is:怎样的短暂)
0:54
Now, in Buddhist writing, when the Buddha talks about our failure to see things clearly, he often uses a word that is typically translated as delusion. But, I want to emphasize that sometimes that word is a little bit of an overstatement, so for example, when I'm gazing at powdered sugar donuts, there's no point where I'm thinking that there are foreign agents conspiring to assassinate me or anything. There's not even a point where I think the pleasure is going to last forever. In fact, well do
在佛教著作中,当佛陀谈论我们看不清事物时,他常用的一个词,被翻译成“妄念”。但是我想强调,有时候,这个词有点过度夸张了。例如,当我凝视着甜甜圈时,我不会去想有外国特工密谋暗杀我或者别的什么事情。我甚至也不会去想快乐会永恒。事实上,你认为,它会持续10分钟吗? (there's no point where I'm thinking that :我不会去想 There's not even a point where I think:我甚至也不会去想)
you think it's going to last for ten minutes, I'd probably say no. But at the same time, as I look forward to eating those donuts, I'm thinking a lot more about the pleasure than about the evaporation of the pleasure. And I'm certainly not thinking about, well, maybe the sugar rush will subside and then I'll feel all unsettled. I'm just focused on that moment of pleasure. Now in other cases, something more like delusion may actually happen with infatuation. If you've ever had a
我很可能会说,不会。但是同时,当我期待吃那些甜甜圈时,我想的更多的是那些快乐的东西,而不是快乐的消逝。我当然也不会想到:也许甜甜圈带来的快乐会消退,然后我就会心神不宁。我只会专注那一刻的快乐。另一方面,更像妄念的东西,也许真的跟痴念一起发生。如果你有过
serious crush on someone, you may recall that you had a pretty distorted view of things. You had a lot of trouble seeing any blemishes or deficiencies in the person. It was all good, right? And there was this idea that, wow, should you ever be so lucky to find yourself in a relationship with that person, everything would be better, probably eternally. And relationships, needless to say are, in fact, more complicated.
对某人的迷恋,你可能会记得,你对一些事情有过相当扭曲的观念,你很难看到那个人的缺点。ta所有的东西都很好,对吗?你会有这样的想法:哇,如果我能幸运地和ta恋爱,所有事情都会变好,也许会永远地变好。不用说,恋爱关系,事实上,关系非常复杂。
【注释: And there was this idea that, wow, should you ever be so lucky to find yourself in a relationship with that person, everything would be better, probably eternally. 用颠倒主、谓语词序手段表示假设条件从句;假设条件从句中谓语有were,had,should,could等时,则可去掉if,把这些词提到从句最前面,即可构成假设条件从句的另一种句型。
与现在事实相反的假设,主句用动词原形。P347《英语阅读参考手册》,叶永昌著,电子工业出版社。】
2:31
And so too with say, a job you really want. If you really want that thing you're looking forward to it, thinking about all the great things it's going to bring, you're not thinking about the hassles that all jobs bring, and there may be a sense that if you can just get this job, then you can relax. Then you will have arrived. Of course, you haven't really arrived. The gratification is not going to last forever. It never lasts forever.
也可以说,一个你特别想要的工作。如果你真的想要那个,你会期待它,会想所有它会带来的好处,你不会想任何工作都会带来的麻烦,这其中有个意思是,如果你刚好能得到这个工作,你就能放松。然后你就能到达。当然你不会真的到达。满足不会永远持续,永远不会。
2:57
Now, if you want to look at parts of the brain that are relevant to the failure of gratification to last forever. One obvious candidate would be the neurotransmitter dopamine. If you read much in the Popular Science press you probably read about dopamine as the pleasure chemical, the reward chemical. The true story is actually a lot more complicated than that. The effects dopamine has depend on the part of the brain you're in, which neurons are involved, which receptors are
现在,如果你想要看看大脑中这个无法永久满足的部分,一个显而易见的候选者将是神经递质多巴胺。如果你看了足够多的科普文章,你很可能看过多巴胺是快乐的化学物质,是奖励的化学物质。真实的故事其实比这个更复杂一些。多巴胺的作用取决于大脑的这一部分,这部分神经元也参与了,它的受体也参与了,等等。
involved, and so on. There's also the question of does dopamine actually cause pleasure, or just correlated with pleasure. For our purposes, the mere correlation is pretty much enough, a fact that dopamine seems to be correlated with pleasure. So we're going to look at a little data from a study in which they monitored very precisely the neurons in monkeys that are involved in the release of dopamine and are in a part of the brain where dopamine seems to be correlated with pleasure and reward.
这里也有一些问题,关于多巴胺真的会产生快乐吗?还是只与快乐相关?就我们的目的而言,单纯的相关性就已经足够了,多巴胺看起来与快乐相关。所以我们将要看一点科研数据,他们非常精确地监测了猴子的神经元,这些神经元参与了多巴胺的释放,位于大脑中多巴胺似乎与快乐和奖励相关的部分。
4:02
So what they did, they gave a little fruit juice to a monkey, and here's what happen. So that is a dopamine spike. If you want to ask how long does that last, how long are we talking about along that horizontal axis, well that's about a third of a second of dopamine spike. So assuming that, in this monkey, dopamine is correlated with pleasure, that's pretty brief pleasure. If monkeys could talk he might have said, this particular monkey might have said, wow, that was impermanent. Maybe the monkey condition is very much like the human condition and pleasure just tends to evaporate pretty rapidly. And if that is the case, then that's all the more reason to look at natural selection as a possible explanation for why pleasure does evaporate, if monkeys and humans are exhibiting some of the same dynamics.
他们做的事情是,他们给了一点果汁给猴子,下面是发生的事情。这是一个多巴胺高峰。如果你想要问这个高峰会持续多久,在这个水平轴上会持续多久,答案是大概1/3秒。所以,假设,在这个猴子身上,多巴胺与快乐相关,那确实是很短暂的快乐。如果猴子能说话它也许会说,这个特别的猴子会说,哇,这就是无常。也许猴子的状况非常像人类的状况,快乐只是趋向于快速蒸发。如果情况是这样的,那么更有理由把自然选择看作是一个可能的解释,对于快乐为什么消逝的解释。如果猴子和人类表现出同样某些运作方式。
5:05
So the question is, why does natural selection build brains like this, where pleasure is so fleeting? Why not just leave that dopamine spigot on? You could keep dishing out dopamine for ten seconds, 20 seconds, in principle, but that doesn't happen. Why is that? And why do we seem not to really get the picture in our everyday lives about how rapidly the pleasure is going to dissipate.
所以问题是,为什么自然选择像这样建造大脑,让快乐转瞬即逝?为什么不把那个多巴胺的塞子拔掉?原则上,你能提供多巴胺10秒,20秒。但是这并没有发生。为什么?为什么在每天的日常生活里,我们看起来没有真正地了解到快乐是如何快速地消散。
【注释:get the picture: 了解】
5:34
Why did natural selection design our brains like this? Now, as I've said before, whenever I say something is designed by natural selection, design should be in quotes. Natural selection is not a conscious designer. Still, it does create animals that look as if they were designed by a pretty smart designer with one thing in mind, to get them to get their genes into the next generation. So it is a fair thing to do, as a kind of thought experiment, to put ourselves in the shoes of natural selection and ask, if we were designing organisms, how would we design their brains? If we wanted them to get their genes in their next generation, granted that eating helps them do that by keeping them alive, sex obviously helps them do that.
为什么自然选择这样设计我们的大脑。现在,像我之前说过的,无论何时,我说有些东西是被自然选择设计的,“设计”应该打上引号。自然选择不是一个有意识的设计者。尽管如此,它确实创造了动物,就像他们是被一个非常聪明设计者设计的一样,设计的唯一目的是,让动物把自己的基因传递到下一代。所以这是一个很公平的事情,有点儿像一个思想实验,把我们自己倒到自然选择的位置上,然后问,如果我们要设计生物,我们将要怎样设计它们的大脑?如果我们想要他们传递基因到下一代,假设,吃,让他们存活,以便帮他们做到这件事,性则帮他们完成这件事。
【注释:to put ourselves in the shoes of natural selection 放到自然选择的位置上】
6:22
And even with humans and nonhuman primates, things like elevating their social status helps them do that, because it seems to be the case that in primates and some other parts of the animal kingdom, social status is correlated with getting genes into the next generation. So it is a fair question. How would you design these brains if you were natural selection? I would submit that there are three principles of design that would make sense if you want animals to reach these
甚至对于人类和非人类的灵长类动物,像提升社会地位那样的事情能够帮助他们做到那一点。因为,在灵长类动物和其他一些动物王国里的部分动物,社会地位与传递基因到下一代相关。所以这是一个合理的问题:如果你是自然选择,你怎样设计这些大脑?我将提出三个设计原则,如果你想要动物们达成目标这些原则是说得通的。
goals. Okay, first of all, when animals do reach the goals, they have food, they have sex, they should get some pleasure. Pleasure is what reinforces behavior, makes animals more likely to do whatever led them to the goal in the first place. Principle number two, the pleasure should not last forever. Obviously, if you ate one meal and just blissed out and never felt the unpleasant sensation of hunger again, you would never eat again, and you would die, okay? And if you had sex and then just kind of basked in the afterglow for a really long time, thinking about how wonderful it had been,
首先,当动物达到目标时,比如他们吃东西,他们发生性行为,他们应该得到快乐;快乐会强化行为,让动物们更可能做任何让他们最快达成目标的事情。原则二,快乐不应该长久持续。显然,如果你吃了一顿饭就感到幸福了,再也感觉不到饥饿的不适感了,你就再也不会吃东西了,然后你就死了。对吗?如果你发生性行为,之后在很长一点时间里都感到满足,想着它是多么美好,
and meanwhile, in your species, some other animal had sex, said well that was great, but said I'm starting to feel restless, I think I'm going to go get some food or do something to elevate my social status, or maybe go find some more sex. Well, that animal's going to get more genes in the next generation than you will. So, these genes for restlessness And for not being satisfied for very long, that that animal has are going to do better than your genes.
同时,你的同类,其他的一些动物,有了性行为,它说这很好,但是说我开始感到不安,我想我应该弄点吃的,或者做点什么来提升下我的社会地位,或者发生更多的性行为。那么,那个动物就比你传递了更多的基因到下一代中。所以,那类动物的不安的基因、不能长时间感到满足的基因,将比你的基因表现更好。
8:11
The third principle of design, I would submit, is that
我提出的第三个设计原则,是
8:17
animals should focus more on the pleasure that reaching goals will bring than on the subsequent evaporation of the pleasure.
相比快乐随后的消逝,动物会更关注快乐,达到目标的快乐。
8:31
Obviously, if you're focused on that pleasure, if you're focused on how good it's going to feel to reach the goal, you'll reach the goal. Whereas if you're sitting there thinking, pleasure's going to be over in a nanosecond, why work so hard? Well, you're going to probably wind up sitting in your room alone, full of ennui, reading existential philosophy or something. And that's definitely no way to get your genes into the next generation.
显然,如果你专注于那种快乐,如果你专注于达成目标的那种良好感觉,你将达成目标。而如果你坐在那里想,快乐将会在一纳秒后结束,为什么要这么努力工作?你将可能整天独自地坐在你的房间里,充满倦怠,阅读存在主义的哲学或者什么东西。这显然没法让你的基因传递到下一代。
9:00
So, I would say that these three principles of design, they make sense in terms of natural selection, and they help make sense of Buddhist teaching, right? The Buddha said that pleasure tends to evaporate, and it leaves us unsatisfied. And it seems to be the case that pleasure is designed to evaporate so that it will leave us unsatisfied. And we will be motivated to go out and do more work and check off more bullet points on natural selection's agenda. The Buddha said we seem not to get
所以,我会说,这三个设计原则,根据自然选择它们是说得通的。他们也有助于理解佛教的教义,对吧?佛陀说,快乐往往会消逝,它让我们永不满足。情况似乎是这样的:快乐被设计成要有逝的特性,所以它让我们不满足。我们将被激励着出去,做更多工作,在自然选择的日程表上完成更多的事项。佛陀说我们看起来不了解快乐。
the picture about pleasure. We focus on the pleasure and not on the fleetingness of the pleasure. And that, too, makes sense in terms of natural selection. Focusing on the pleasure is a good motivator. Okay, let's get back to that monkey. Now, in the data we saw about that monkey's brain, we didn't see anything about anticipating pleasure. And that's because, in that case, the monkey couldn't anticipate the pleasure because the fruit juice came out of the blue. The monkey was not expecting it, they just dropped it on the monkey's tongue. However, later in the experiment, they did make anticipation possible. What they did was when they turned on a light, it meant that if the monkey would reach over and touch a lever, then there would be fruit juice. And they trained the monkey to behave in accordance with that principle. And here is what you see in that case.
我们关注快乐,不关注快乐的消逝。根据自然选择,这也说得通。关注快乐是一个很好的动力。好吧,让我们回到那只猴子,现在,在我们看到的关于猴子大脑的那些数据里,我们没有看到任何关于期待的快乐。那是因为,那种情况下,猴子不能预期快乐,因为果汁是突然出现的。猴子没有预期到它。他们只是把果汁滴到猴子的舌头上。然而,在后面的实验中,他们让期望成为可能。他们是这样做的,当他们点亮一盏灯,这就意味着如果猴子伸手摸一下杠杆,就会有果汁。他们训练猴子按照这个方式反应。这就是你在这种情况下看到的东西。
【注释:came out of the blue: 突然出现】
10:33
So here, the light goes on. We're in the zone of anticipation, and now you see a dopamine spike here.
这里,灯亮了,我们在期望的区域里,你可以看到多巴胺高峰在这里。
10:42
And that seems to be, I mean, you can't get inside the monkey's brain, but it's a reasonable conjecture that what's happening is the monkey is anticipating the pleasure, focusing on the pleasure that is to come in somewhat the way that we humans seem to, right? I mean, anticipation is not just pleasure, there's also an anticipation, a kind of eagerness, a kind of excitement, but there is also a kind of imagining of the actual pleasure that you're going to experience when you get the reward. You actually have some of that feeling, and that may be one thing that's being captured here in this dopamine spike. Now, interestingly, when the food actually shows up, what you see is this. They give the monkey the fruit juice, and there's no elevation of dopamine activity now. Now, I
那看起来像,我的意思是,你不能进到猴子的大脑里面去,但是可以合理的推测到猴子正在期待着快乐,专注于快乐,这有点像我们人类做的事情对吗?我的意思是,期望不仅仅是快乐,它还是一种期待,一种渴望,一种激动,但是这儿还有一种对实际快乐的想象,想象你将要体验的得到奖励的快乐。你实际上有那么一种感觉,那可能就是在多巴胺高峰上捕获到的东西。现在,有趣的是,当食物真的出现后,你看到的是这样的,他们给猴子果汁,然后就没有多巴胺活动的高峰了。
should emphasize this is kind of an extreme case. They don't find in all the experiments done of this sort, they don't always find that there's a complete suppression of the dopamine spike upon reward, and the other thing is that it took a lot of training to get the monkey to this point. So the behavior became really automatic. I might kind of liken it to, in my case, again to return to one of my vices, dark chocolate. Every afternoon, I have some dark chocolate. The times comes when I
我应该强调下,这是一个极端的事例。他们没有并不是在所有的实验里都能找到这种类型的东西。他们并不是总是能在奖励时找到多巴胺高峰的完全抑制。另一件事是,猴子接受了大量训练才做到这样,所以行为变得自动化。我的情况可能有点像这个实验,回到我的坏习惯来,黑巧克力。每个下午,我就吃一些黑巧克力,在我觉得我应该得到它的时候。
decide that I deserve it. And I'm thinking about it, I can taste it, it's feeling good. I go downstairs, I get some, I may, in a sense, not experience the pleasure at all. The whole routine has become so automatic that I may just be thinking about something else, my mind may be wandering. So again, this is the complete suppression of a dopamine spike, is an extreme case, but what is quite common, what we can say is a pretty common dynamic is that, again, originally what you have is you get the reward. You get the spike in dopamine activity, and then when the animal starts to be able to anticipate the reward, light goes on, get a pretty big dopamine spike, you get the reward, and then you get a much smaller spike than what you got before.
当我想到黑巧克力时,我能品尝到它,感觉好极了。于是我下楼,拿了一些,可能,在某种程度上,我就再也体会不到快乐了。整个的流程变得自动化,我可能只是在想别的什么事情,我的思想开始漫游。所以,再说一次,这是一个多巴胺高峰的完全抑制,是一个极端情况。但是最常见的是,我们能说的一种相当常见的运作方式是,再说一次,原本是,你得到奖励,你就会有多巴胺活动的高峰,然后当动物开始能够预期这个奖励时,灯亮了,得到一个相当大的多巴胺高峰,你得到奖励,从那之后你得到比之前更小的高峰。
13:23
And again, if I would conjecturally relate this to my own experience, I might guess that this is like I'm in a convenience store. I see that pack of powdered sugar donuts. I'm thinking about eating it. It's all good, you know.
而且,再次,如果我推测性的把这个关联到我的个人经验里,我可能猜想,这像我在便利店,我看到甜甜圈的包装,我想着要吃它,至此一切感觉都很好,你懂的。
13:43
I go, and I grab it, take it to the counter, I buy it.
我去了,抓住它,拿到柜台,买下它。
13:50
And then I eat it and, yeah, it's okay. It's okay. But each successive bite is less okay. It's fine, but the anticipation was maybe where most of the pleasure happened. Because at this point, I've done the work. The motivational system has gotten me to do the necessary work to obtain the food, to reach the goal. So, you don't need a lot of additional motivation at this point, and we don't see a whole lot of additional reinforcement here. Now, I want to emphasize again that this is pretty
然后我吃它,嗯,很好,很好,但是每吃一口之后,就变得没以前好了。这很好,但是期望也许是,更多快乐发生的地方。因为在那一点上,我完成了工作。动机系统已经让我做那些必要的工作,去获得食物,实现目标。所以,在这点上,你不需要更多的动机。在这里我们没看到更多额外的强化。现在我想再次强调,这只是一种推测。
speculative, not just because we cannot get inside a monkey's brain. We don't know what's going on there, but because this science is still being worked out. There're differing interpretations of this kind of data. And the story will continue to evolve, but it is consistent with the kinds of motivational dynamics that we would expect from a brain built by natural selection. Now, you may ask, why would natural selection have designed brains that are attracted to powdered sugar
不仅因为我们不能进到一个猴子的大脑里,我们也不知道那里究竟发生了什么。因为这个东西科学还在研究当中,对这类数据有不同的解释。故事会继续演化,但是它依然与我们从被自然选择内建的大脑所期待的激励运作方式一致。现在你可能会问,为什么自然选择会设计我们的大脑,让它被甜甜圈吸引呢?毕竟,甜甜圈对我们没什么好处,
donuts, because after all, they're not very good for us. And the answer is, natural selection didn't because after all, powdered sugar donuts were not part of the landscape when our lineage evolved. What was part of the landscape was just sweetness. Fruits had sweetness, fruits were good for you, and so that seems to be why we have a sweet tooth that can kind of now go overboard in a convenience store now that junk food exists. So to give you an example of the kind of dynamic that
答案是,自然选择没有这样设计,因为甜甜圈不是我们谱系进化过程中的一部分图谱。图谱的一部分仅仅是甜味。水果有甜味,水果对你有好处,所以看起来,这就是为什么我们会有甜食,现在便利店的甜点有点过头了,变成了垃圾食品。所以给你一个这种运作方式的例子,
may have been at play during evolution when there were no powdered sugar donuts, imagine one of our distant ancestors, maybe early human, even prehuman, spots some trees off in a distance, and they look like they might be fruit trees. And it's a hot day, it's a long walk, the animal's not crazy about doing that work, But it may be fruit trees, the animal remembers this taste of fruit. And you know get's a little bit of a dopamine spike and that motivates it to go investigate.
在没有甜甜圈时,也许甜味在进化过程中起到过作用。想像一下我们的一个远祖,也许是早期的人类,也许是史前人类,老远看到一些树,它们看起来像是果树。天气很热,需要走很远的路到果树那里,动物不会疯狂到想走那么远的路。但是它可能是果树,动物想起了水果的味道。你知道得到一点点的多巴胺高峰,它就会驱使动物去前去看个究竟。
16:11
It takes a trek, gets there, there is fruit, eats it, you know a little more pleasure. You don't need a lot of pleasure at that point, you may not need a huge spike. But enough for a little reinforcement, and you know the brain built by natural selection has done it's job, okay. Now you may ask, if in cases where we are very used to the pleasure we're getting. You know, it's become routinized, like my eating the chocolate in the afternoon, so that often there's little, if any, pleasure in the actual eating of the chocolate and more pleasure in the anticipation.
长途跋涉后,到了那里。那是果树,吃掉它,你知道有点更快乐了。在那个时候,你不需要更多的快乐,你可能不需要一个更大的峰值。但是一点点强化足够了,然后你知道,被自然选择建造的大脑完成了它的任务。好吧,现在你可能会问,如果假设我们非常习惯于我们将得到的这个快乐时,你知道,这就变为常规时,像我在下午吃巧克力那样,因此,在真正在吃巧克力的时候,如果有快乐的话,其实也是很少的快乐,更多的快乐产生于期望得到它的时候。
16:53
Why don't we just do the anticipation and then skip the eating? Because that's where the joy is anyway. And the answer, as to why this won't work. Is this, when they turn the light on for this monkey and then don't deliver the fruit juice, you don't just get an absence of dopamine spike, you get a deficit of dopamine activity. Okay? This presumably corresponds to what I would call the let down of unfulfilled anticipation. You've probably done this, gone to the refrigerator, you're looking forward to that piece of cake, you open it, somebody's eaten the cake. You don't just feel an absence of pleasure, you're actually let down. And this too makes sense as a motivational device. You know if you want to return to that scenario of our early ancestors.
为什么我们不只是期望它而跳过吃的部分呢?因为吃的时候快乐就没了。为什么它不这样工作的答案是,是这样的,当他们给猴子亮灯,但是不给它果汁,你不仅没有得到多巴胺高峰,你还有一个多巴胺活动的亏损。你很可能这样做过:到冰箱里,你期待看到那块蛋糕,你打开冰箱,有人已经把蛋糕吃掉了。你不仅仅是没感到快乐,你实际上还会失望。这是一个说得通的激励手段。你知道,如果你想要回到我们早起祖先所处那个场景。
17:52
Say they see the trees in the distance, could be fruit trees, they're motivated, they go over there. There's no fruit, these aren't fruit trees. Well, you're wanting to not go over to those particular trees again. If you are building their brain you want them to avoid those trees. You want this to be an unhappy experience. So it makes sense. That it would make them actively unhappy to expect something, and do some work to get it. And then not find it. So just to summarize, there is this correspondence between the way you would expect natural selection to design a brain, and some basic principles of Buddhism.
假设他们在远处看到树,可能是果树,他们就被激励了,他们去了那里,没有水果,那些不是水果树,好吧,你在想下次不要去那种树那里。如果你正在建造他们的大脑,你会希望他们避开那些树。你希望这个变成一个不开心的体验。所以这是说得通的。体验这些事情,会让他们非常地不高兴:为了得到水果,干了一些活,然后没有找到水果。所以总结一下,在你预期的自然选择设计大脑的方式,和佛教的一些基本原则之间,有一些对应之处。
18:37
Buddha said pleasure doesn't last, leaves us unsatisfied, evolution seems to explain why. Buddha says we focus on pleasure and not on the fleetingness of pleasure, evolution seems to explain why. And this is another example of how natural selection doesn't care, care in quotes, of course, care whether we see the world clearly. We've already seen that sometimes, it might be natural for us to see a snake that's not there. For us to see an angry menacing face, when in fact the face is actually
佛陀说,快乐不能持续,快乐让我们不满足。进化似乎解释了为什么。佛陀说我们关注快乐,而不是快乐的消逝,进化也似乎解释了为什么。这里是另一个例子,自然选择怎样不关注,当然,关注要打上引号,关注我们是否看清这个世界。有时侯我们已经看到这些,看到一个实际不在那里的蛇,可能对我们是很自然的。我们看到一个愤怒的、恐吓的表情,实际上客观上那个表情并不是愤怒和恐吓。
not objectively viewed angry and menacing. And these were cases when natural selection kind of built illusion into the system. And now we see another sense, in which natural selection seems not to care if we don't see the world clearly. We also see something else here. Which is that natural selection seems not to care if we're happy. From natural selection's point of view, happiness is just a tool. If making us happy at one moment will keep us motivated, fine. If making us unhappy, if making us unsatisfied, if making us suffer will get us to do the work that's on natural selection's agenda then fine, in those cases that will be the case.
这些就是自然选择把妄念建造到系统的例子。现在我们看到另一种含义,自然选择看起来并不关注我们不能看清这个世界。这里我们也看到别的东西,就是自然选择看起来也不关注我们是否幸福。从自然选择的角度看,幸福只是一个工具。如果让我们在某个时刻感到幸福能够激励我们,那很好;如果让我们不快乐,让我们不满足,让我们受苦也能让我们做自然选择日程表上的工作,那也很好。在上面那些情况下就是这样的。
19:56
I said earlier that Buddhism is in a sense a kind of rebellion against natural selection. And now you can see one sense in which that's true. Because, you know, Buddhism wants us to see the world clearly all the time, and aspires to end our suffering. Natural selection wants us to sometimes not see the world clearly, and wants us to suffer sometimes. So, clearly, you know, the Buddhist
早先我说过佛教在某种意义上是对自然选择的反叛。现在你在这层意义上看到这是真的。因为,你知道,佛教一直想我们把这个世界看得更清楚,立志结束我们的苦难。自然选择希望我们有时不要看这个世界太清楚,希望我们有时侯受些苦。所以很清楚,你知道的,
program is to some extent in opposition to the logic of and the implicit goals of natural selection. But in a way, I think we haven't even seen the half of it, really. To see the full scale of what I call the rebellion of Buddhism against natural selection. You need to see the Buddhist specific strategy for realizing these goals of ending suffering, and helping us see the world clearly. So, to see that you need to look at the third and fourth noble truths. A Buddhist prescription for the human predicament. And, that's what we're going to turn to in the next lecture.
佛教的计划,某种程度上,与自然选择的逻辑和潜在目标是相反的。但是某种程度上,我认为我们还没有看到它的一半。真的。要看到我称之为佛教对自然选择反叛的全景,你需要看佛教实现这些结束受苦、帮我们看待这个世界更清楚目标的具体策略,所以,你需要看第三真谛和第四真谛。佛教对人类困境开出的药方。这也是我们将要在下一讲的内容。
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