在痛苦时读薇依

我们既不应该寻求逃避痛苦，也不应该寻求减少痛苦，而应该不被痛苦所玷污。 We should seek neither to escape suffering nor to suffer less, but to remain untainted by suffering.

人类生活中的伟大谜团并不是痛苦，而是苦难。 The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction.

苦难是自我与神之间无限的距离。痛苦是一种认识，即世界不是为人类而创造的，也没有变得更加人性化。痛苦是我们在这个世界上感到陌生的感觉。Affliction is the infinite distance between self and God. Affliction is an awareness that the world was not made for the human being and has not become more human. Affliction is the feeling that we are strangers in this world.

苦难是一种特定的东西，无法用任何其他术语来描述，就像声音对于聋哑人来说一样。而那些自己被苦难残害的人，根本没有能力去帮助任何人，甚至连想要帮助别人的愿望都几乎没有能力。因此，对受苦者的同情是不可能的。当它真的被发现时，我们将拥有比在水上行走、治愈病人、甚至使死人复活更令人震惊的奇迹。Affliction is something specific and impossible to describe in any other terms, as sounds are to anyone who is deaf and dumb. And as for those who have themselves been mutilated by affliction, they are in no state to help anyone at all, and they are almost incapable of even wishing to do so. Thus compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility. When it is really found we have a more astounding miracle than walking on water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead.

只有当我们遭受一种巨大的力量时，我们才会经历痛苦，这种力量是盲目的、残酷的和冷酷的，这种力量将我们与一切人性和神性分开：强奸的受害者，肆虐的疾病的受害者，极端社会不公正的受害者。所有这些以及更多的东西构成了一种力量，它首先使苦难被理解为上帝与人之间、我们与他人之间的无限距离。Affliction can only be experienced when we are subject to an immense force, blind, brutal, and cold, that separates us from all that is human and divine: the rape victim, the subject of a ravaging disease, the victim of extreme social injustice. All this and more constitute the type of force that first makes affliction knowable as the infinite distance between God and man, between ourselves and others.

正是在苦难之中，上帝的慈悲之光从其深处显现，融入那无法安慰的苦涩之心。如果我们坚守爱的道路，持之以恒，直至我们跌至那个灵魂无法抑制的呼喊之境——“我的上帝，你为何抛弃我？”如果我们在这一点上仍不停地爱着，我们就会触摸到一种不是痛苦、不是喜悦的东西，一种核心本质的东西，一种必要的、纯粹的东西，一种不属于感官的东西，一种喜悦和悲伤共有的东西：上帝的爱。It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God’s mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of its inconsolable bitterness. If still persevering in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is the central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God.

薇依的一个核心信念可以用非常简单的方式表达：“思想从痛苦中逃离，就像动物从死亡中逃离一样迅速而不可抗拒”。因此，我们很少或几乎从不真诚或自愿地考虑最严重的痛苦，无论是在自己身上还是在他人身上。薇依以《约伯记》为例，强调了人类蔑视受苦者的倾向，“我们的理智将所有的蔑视、所有的反感、所有的仇恨都附着在罪行和苦难之上。”在思考他人的彻底屈辱时，也就冒着在自己身上考虑这种屈辱的风险，所以苦难的景象会让理智退缩，因为它让我们意识到自己“几乎无限的脆弱”。最简单的生理变化都会让身体陷入永久的痛苦，而灵魂和社会人格也同样受制于不可预测的力量，依赖于各种外部对象，而这些对象本身都是暂时的和不可预测的。考虑他人受苦受难的现实，面对着这样的思考：我们也完全处于环境的掌控之下；除了“盲目的必然性”之外，我们没有任何深刻的原则或存在的权利——事实上，没有任何东西能将我的福祉与他人的贫穷、疾病或悲伤区分开来。One of Weil’s central convictions is expressed very simply: ‘thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flies from death’. As a result, we seldom, if ever, contemplate the worst suffering – in ourselves, or in others - honestly or willingly. Drawing on the book of Job, Weil stresses the human tendency to despise the afflicted, to ‘attach all the scorn, all the revulsion, all the hatred which our reason attaches to crime, to affliction.’ To contemplate total humiliation in another is to risk contemplating it in oneself, and so the sight of affliction repels the intellect, because it makes us aware of our ‘almost infinite fragility.’ The body can be left in permanent pain by the simplest of physical changes, and the soul and social personality are equally subject to unpredictable forces and dependent upon all sorts of external objects, themselves temporary and unpredictable. To consider the reality of the afflicted in another is to face the thought that we too are entirely at the mercy of circumstance;that no deep principle or existential right – nothing, in fact, other than the workings of ‘blind necessity’ - distinguishes my well-being from another’s poverty, sickness or sorrow.

痛苦迫使我们承认我们认为不可能的事情是真实的。Affliction compels us to recognise as real what we do not think possible.

“这不可能！” 不可能的是想象未来痛苦将继续下去。对未来的自然思考之泉被抑制了。我们的时间观念被撕裂了。 “一个月后，一年后，我们将如何受苦？”既不能思考过去，也不能思考未来的存在，就会沦为物质状态。‘It is not possible!’ What is not possible is to envisage a future where the affliction will continue. The natural spring of thought towards the future is arrested. We are lacerated in our sense of time. ‘In a month, in a year, how shall we suffer?’The being who can bear to think neither of the past nor the future is reduced to the state of matter.

只有一些灵魂才能充分体验痛苦的深度，而正是这些灵魂最能体验精神上的快乐。Only some souls can fully experience the depth of suffering, and it is these same souls who are best able to experience spiritual joy.

惟有注视我们的局限和我们的苦难，才使我们处在更高的层次上。

注意人类的苦难。

关注的行为就是一种爱的行为。The act of paying attention is an act of love.

绝对无杂质的注意力即是祈祷。Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

薇依对基督教产生兴趣的最后一个关键经历是她读了乔治·赫伯特的诗《爱》，在头痛最严重的时刻，她会一遍又一遍地对自己重复这首诗。她起初以为自己只是在背诵这首诗：“但在我不知道的情况下，背诵具有祈祷的作用。正如我告诉过你的，正是在其中一次朗诵中，基督亲自降临并占据了我。”The final pivotal experience in Weil’s draw to Christianity came with her reading of George Herbert’s poem Love which she would repeat to herself over and over in the most disabling moments of her headaches. She believed at first that she was merely reciting the poem: “but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”

对自己的同情是真正的谦卑。Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

我也不是我想象中的自己。知道这个就是宽恕。I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

世界是紧闭的门。这是一个障碍。同时它也是一条出路。The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through.

对我们邻居的完全的爱仅仅意味着能够说：“你正在经历什么？The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?

看待苦难作为克服人类自我中心倾向的一种方式，也是一种在爱和整体上更接近世界的方式。

蛇为亚当和夏娃提供了知识。塞壬将知识传给了尤利西斯。这些故事告诉我们，在快乐中寻求知识是灵魂的丧失。为什么？除非我们寻求知识，否则快乐可能是无害的。只有在痛苦中寻求它才是被允许的。Suffering and enjoyment as sources of knowledge. The serpent offered knowledge to Adam and Eve. The sirens offered knowledge to Ulysses. These stories teach that the soul is lost through seeking knowledge in pleasure. Why? Pleasure is perhaps innocent on condition that we do not seek knowledge in it. It is permissible to seek that only in suffering.

不幸留下的伤口，即使在睡梦中也会一滴一滴地流血；就这样，他们逐渐用武力训练人，使他不由自主地获得智慧。人必须学会将自己视为有限且依赖的存在；只有苦难才教会他这一点。Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.

想要保持作为人的清醒、意识及尊严是有可能的，但就得要每天克服绝望。

所有的问题都会再次回到时间上。极度的痛苦：无方向的时间：通往地狱或天堂的道路。All problems come back again to time. Extreme suffering: undirected time: the way to hell or to paradise.

爱是一种方向，而不是一种精神状态。

上帝的缺席是完美之爱的最奇妙的证明。

人类的存在是如此脆弱，并且面临如此多的危险，以至于我无法不颤抖地去爱。Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

爱是我们贫贱的一种标志。

哪怕是爱情，都是一场苦役。

爱不是安慰，而是光。Love is not consolation, it is light.

基督教的极端伟大之处在于，它不寻求超自然的治疗痛苦的方法，而是寻求超自然的对痛苦的利用。The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

邪恶既不是痛苦，也不是罪恶；这是同时发生的，这是他们俩的共同点。因为它们是连在一起的；罪使我们受苦，而苦难使我们邪恶，而这种痛苦与罪的不可分割的复合体就是我们违背自己的意愿而被淹没在邪恶之中，这让我们感到恐惧。Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

痛苦和磨难是一种货币，从一只手到另一只手，直到到达接受它们但不传递它们的人为止。Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

我能做到，故我在。I can, therefore I am.

我只能赞许那些一面哭泣一面追求的人。—— 帕斯卡尔