TED演讲：生命并不因死亡而终止
主讲人：Kelli Swazey 人类学家
所有人都将经历死亡，但是不同的人经历的死亡方式是不同的。有的人认为死亡就是一种终结和消逝，但是在有的人看来生命并不因死亡而终止。
在印度尼西亚东部苏拉威西岛上一个一个云雾缭绕、森林茂密的山区，有一个叫做塔纳·托拉雅(Tana Toraja)的地方，至今保留着原生态的自然环境与社会文化。生活在那里的托拉雅族人居住在独特的船型屋里（Tongkonan），他们信奉万物有灵论，有着与众不同的死亡信仰和祭祀传统。
当亲人死去的时候，托拉雅人并不认为人死了就是永远的消逝，而只是“生了大病”，即将经历“轮回”，从生转世前往来世的过程，这个过程被叫做“Puya”。而此时，家人们应该做的事情是用一场盛大、热闹的葬礼，把生病的亲人风风光光、高高兴兴地送往那个新世界。
因此，葬礼对托拉雅族人来说，不是一件伤心的事情，反而更像是一场庆祝活动，它成为了族人最重要的社会活动，是社会文化的关注焦点，甚至比结婚和生孩子都要重要。
葬礼会持续很多天，全村人都将参加进来，有着复杂的仪式，并将宰杀一定数量的猪、鸡以及最重要的水牛祭奠在死者的名下。数量越多，越代表死者的地位。这些被宰杀的动物将分配给村里的每个人，这让死亡和死后灵魂生活的典礼成为一个伟大的盛宴。
仪式之后，死者的遗体将被装入船型棺材，埋葬于高高悬崖上挖出的洞穴中。他们称这种墓穴为“不会冒烟的房子”。托拉雅人还将制作一种叫做陶陶(tautau)的人形木雕，穿着死者生前的衣服，放在悬崖棺木的旁边，守护陵墓。
托拉雅人认为，当灵魂被释放出来以后，死亡就有了一个“重要的意义”。这种生死之间的转换关系正好体现了托拉雅人独特的“为死而生”的丧葬文化。
美国人类学家Kelli Swazey的丈夫就是一位出生在塔纳·托拉雅的托拉雅族人，他母系氏族的族长，叫做Nenet Katcha，已接近100岁的高龄。有越来越多的迹象表明，Nenet Katcha正在迈向死亡和轮回的路途中。而整个家族期待着这个时刻，因为那时他们就可以用仪式来展示他卓越的成就给他们生活带来的意义，他们可以用仪式来记录他的生活故事，让他的故事编入族群的历史。他的故事就是他们的故事。他的葬礼之歌也是他们的颂扬之歌。
在随同丈夫亲历了多次托拉雅人葬礼之后，Kelli Swazey走上TED的讲堂，以其西方人类学家的视角讲述了不同死亡观念的思想碰撞和反思。
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I think it’s safe to say that all humans will beintimate with death at least once in their lives.
我想我敢说，每个人的一生中都至少会有一次与死神的亲密接触。
But what if that intimacy began longbefore you faced your own transition from life into death?
但是如果这种与死亡的接触远远早于你原本将面临的自己由生到死的转换，该怎么办？
What would life be like if the deadliterally lived alongside you?
如果死亡就在你的身边，你的生活会变成什么样？
In my husband’s homeland in thehighlands of Sulawesi island in eastern Indonesia, there is a community ofpeople that experience death not as a singular event but as a gradual socialprocess.
我丈夫的家乡在印度尼西亚东部的苏拉威西岛高地上。在那里，死亡对于他们来说不是一个孤立事件，而是一个逐步发展的社会进程。
In, the most important social moments in
people’slives, the focal points of social and cultural interaction are not weddings orbirths or even family dinners, but funerals.
在
塔纳·托拉雅，人们生活中最重要的社会活动，社会、文化的关注焦点，不是在结婚、生孩子甚至家庭晚餐上，而是在葬礼上。
So these funerals are characterized by
elaborate rituals，that
tie people in a system of reciprocal debt based on the amount of animals…pigs, chickens and, most importantly, water buffalo…that are sacrificed and distributed in the name of the deceased.
所以这些葬礼具有复杂的仪式，在一个基于动物数量的礼尚往来的体系中，将人们紧密联系，例如：猪、鸡以及最重要的水牛……这些动物会被宰杀，然后祭奠在死者的名下。
So this culture complex surrounding
death, the ritual enactment of the end of life, has made death the most visible
and remarkable aspect of Toraja’s landscape.
所以这种围绕着“死”的文化情结，这一代表生命结束的仪式，让葬礼成为托拉雅最引人注目、最了不起的一道风景。
Lasting anywhere from a few days to a
few weeks, funeral ceremonies are a raucous affair, where commemorating someone
who’s
died is not so much a private sadness but more of a publicly shared transition.
And it’s a transition that’sjust as much about the identity of the living as it is about remembrance of thedead.
葬礼会持续几天到几周不等，葬礼是一个热闹的事儿，在人们祭奠的时候不会有太多的个人悲伤，而更多的是公众的情感过渡。这个过渡的重要性对于生者是和缅怀死者一样重要的。
So every year, thousands of visitorscome to Tana Toraja to see, as it were, this culture of death, and for manypeople these grandiose ceremonies and the length of the ceremonies are somehowincommensurable with the way that we face our own mortality in the West.
所以每年都会有成千上万的游客去塔纳·托拉雅去看这种关于“死”的文化。对于很多人来说，这种宏伟的仪式以及仪式持续的时间之长是无法与我们西方面对死亡的方法而比较的。
So even as we share death as a universal
experience, it’snot experienced the same way the world over.
虽然全世界的人们都会经历死亡，但是人们经历死亡的方式不尽相同。
And as an anthropologist, I see thesedifferences in experience being rooted in the cultural and social world throughwhich we define the phenomena around us.
作为一个人类学家，我认为这些不尽相同的经历根源于不同的文化和社会，并成为我们判断周遭现象的依据。
So where we see an unquestionablereality, death as an irrefutable biological condition, Torajans see the expiredcorporeal form as part of a larger social genesis. So again, the physicalcessation of life is not the same as death.
所以我们看到的是一个不容置疑的现实，即死亡是一个不可逆的生命状态，而托拉雅人将这种肉体的死亡，更多的看做社会起源的一部分。所以物理上生命的尽头并不等同于死亡。
In fact, a member of society is onlytruly dead when the extended family can agree upon and marshal the resourcesnecessary to hold a funeral ceremony that is considered appropriate in terms ofresources for the status of the deceased.
事实上，一个人真正意义上的死亡是当大家庭达成一致以及准备好一切举行葬礼所需的资源。这些资源的准备要与死者的地位相匹配。
And this ceremony has to take place in
front of the eyes of the whole community with everyone’s participation.
整个葬礼仪式会在全村当着所有人的面举行，每个人都是其中的一份子。
So after a person’s physical death,
their body is placed in a special room in the traditional residence, which is
called the tongkonan。
所以在一个人肉体死亡后，他的尸体会放在他们传统居住地的一个特别房间里，这个房间叫做Tongkonan。
And the Tongkonan is symbolic，not only of the family’s identity but also of the human life cycle from birth to death.
这个Tongkonan是一个象征意义，不只代表着家族的身份，也代表了一个人的生死轮回。
So essentially, the shape of the
building that you’reborn into is the shape of the structure which carries you to your ancestralresting place.
所以基本上，祖先安息之所——棺材的形状是与你出生时所居住的建筑形状一致的。
Until the funeral ceremony, which can be
held years after a person’s
physical death, the deceased is referred to as“to
makala”, a sick person, or“to
mama”, a person who is asleep, and they continue to bea member of the household.
葬礼仪式有可能是在一个人肉体死亡多年以后举行，死者被称为“to makala”—— 一个生病的人，或“to mama”—— 一个睡着了的人。他们还会被看做是整个家庭的一份子。
They are symbolically fed and cared for,and the family at this time will begin a number of ritual injunctions, whichcommunicates to the wider community aroud them that one of their members isundergoing the transition from this life into the afterlife known as Puya.
他们被象征性地喂养和照顾，然后家族会在这个时候，进行一些仪式，以告诉社区里更多的人，他们的一个成员正在经历“轮回”，从生到来世，这被叫做“Puya”。
So I know what some of you must be
thinking right now. Is she really saying that these people live with the bodies
of their dead ralatives? And that’s exactly what I’m saying.
所以我知道你们其中有人一定在想，她说的是真的吗？这些人与他们亲人的尸体住在一起？而我也是曾经这么想的。
But instead of giving in to the sort ofvisceral reaction we have to this idea of proximity to bodies, proximity todeath, or how this notion just does not fit into our very biological or medicalsort of definition of death.
但是我没有屈服于这种一想到接近尸体或接近死亡就产生的五脏六腑的不适感，也没有去想这个概念根本不适用于我们西方生物学或医学对于死亡的定义。
I like to think about what the Torajanway of viewing death encompasses of the human experience that the medicaldefinition leaves out.
我总是喜欢思考托拉雅人看待死亡的方式涵盖了哪些医学定义的死亡所忽略的人类体验。
I think that Torajans socially recognize
and culturally express what many of us feel to be true, despite the widespread
acceptance of the biomedical definition of death, and that is that our
ralationships with other humans, their impact on our social reality, doesn’t cease with the
termination of the physical processes of the body, that there’s a period of transition as the relationship between the living andthe dead is transformed but not ended.
我认为托拉雅人在社会上认同了并在文化上表达了大多数人感知的真理，尽管生物医学所定义的死亡被普遍接受。这种真理就是我们与其他人类之间的关联，这种关系对社会现实的影响，并不会随着身体物理性的死亡而终止，活着的人和死亡的人之间的关系有一段过渡期，是被改变而不是被结束。
So Torajans express this idea of thisenduring relationship by lavishing love and attention on the most visiblesymbol of that relationship, the human body. So my husband has fond memories oftalking to and playing with and generally being around his deceasedgrandfather, and for him there is nothing unnatural about this.
所以托拉雅人通过将爱和关注给予这个关系中最明显的标志，即亲人的尸体，来表达出这种长久的关系。我丈夫曾经跟已故祖父交谈过、玩耍过，有着美好的回忆，在他看来这是一件很自然的事情。
This is a natural part of the process as
the family comes to terms with the transition in their relationship to the
deceased, and this is the transition from relating to the deceased as a person
who’s
living to relating to the deceased as a person who’s anancestor.
这是家庭接受他们与死者之间关系过渡的自然而然的一步。这种过渡就是从与死者生前的联系变为把死者作为祖先的一员看待。
And here you can see these woodeneffigies of the ancestors, so these are people who have already been buried,already had a funeral ceremony. These are called tau tau.
这张图上你可以看到这些祖先的木质雕像，这些人已经被埋葬，已经有过葬礼仪式。这些雕像叫做tau tau。
So the funeral ceremony itself embodiesthis relational perspective on death. It ritualizes the impact of death onfamilies and communities.
所以葬礼仪式本身体现了从社会关系的角度看待死亡。它使死亡对于家庭和社区的影响仪式化。
And it’s also a moment of self-awareness.
它也是一个自我意识的时刻。
It’s a moment when people think about whothey are, their place in society, and their role in the life cycle inaccordance with Torajan cosmology.
根据托拉雅人的宇宙哲学，在这个时刻，人们思考他们的身份，他们在社会中的地位，以及他们在生命周期中的角色。
There’s a saying in Toraja that all peoplewill become grandparents, and what this means is that after death, we allbecome part of the ancestral line that anchors us between the past and thepresent and will define who our loved ones are into the future.
在托拉雅有一句谚语，那就是“所有人都将成为祖父母”，这意味着在死后，我们都成为祖先的一部分，这将在过去和现在之间为我们定位，也将我们的挚爱是谁定义到了未来。
So essentially, we all becomegrandparents to the generations of human children that come after us.
所以从根本上说，对于我们的后代，我们都会成为祖父母。
And this metaphor of membership in the
greater human family is the way that children also describe the money that they
invest in these sacrificial buffaloes that are thought to carry people’s soul from here tothe afterlife, and children will explain that they will invest the money inthis because they want to repay their parents the debt for all of the yearstheir parents spent investing and caring for them.
这种在更大家族中的成员关系比喻，通常也被儿女们投射到那些买来用于祭祀的水牛身上，这些水牛被认为携带着从这里到来世去的人的灵魂。子女会解释说，他们将买来这些水牛，因为他们想要报答他们的父母，这是孩子们对其父母生养他们所欠下的债。
But the sacrifice of buffalo and the
ritual display of wealth also exhibits the status of the deceased, and, by
extension, the deceased’sfamily.
用祭祀水牛数量展示财富的方式，同样代表着死者的社会地位，也同样引申说明着死者家庭的社会地位。
So at funerals, relationships arereconfirmed but also transformed in a ritual drama that highlights the mostsalient feature about death in this place: its impact on life and therelationships of the living.
所以在葬礼上，关系再次被确认，也同样被改变。在这种戏剧性的仪式中强调了这个地方关于死亡最突出的特征：死亡对生命、对生者之间关系的影响。
So all of this focus on death doesn’t mean that Torajans
don’t aspire to the ideal of a long life. They engagein many practices thought to confer good health and survival to an advancedage.
所有对死亡的关注并不意味着托拉雅人不渴望长寿。他们进行各种有利于健康和长寿的锻炼。
But they don’t put much stock inefforts to prolong life in the face of debilitating illness or in old age.
但他们并不相信在面对疾病和衰老的时候能有办法延年益寿。
It’s said in Toraja that everybody has
sort of a predetermined amount of life. It’s called the
sunga’. And like a thread, it should be allowed tounspool to its natural end.
听说在托拉雅，每个人都有预定的生命时间。这叫做sunga。就像一根线，它从一头拉到另一头，直到自然终止。
So by having death as a part of the
cultural and social fabric of life, people’s everyday decisions about their healthand healthcare are affected.
所以，死亡作为文化和社会生活结构的一部分，使得人们对于健康和医疗服务的日常抉择也被影响。
The patriarch of my husband’s maternal clan,
Nenet Katcha is now approaching the ageof 100, as far as we can tell. And there are increasing signs that he is aboutto depart on his own journey for Puya. And his death will be greatly mourned.
我丈夫母系氏族的族长，叫做Nenet
Katcha。据我们所知，已接近100岁的高龄。有越来越多的迹象表明，他正在迈向死亡和轮回的路途中。他的死会引发强烈的哀悼。
But I know that my husband’s family looks forward
to the moment when they can ritually display what his remarkable presence has
meant to their lives, when they can ritually recount his life’s narrative, weaving his story into the history of their community.
但我知道我丈夫的家族期待着这个时刻，因为那时他们就可以用仪式来展示他卓越的成就给他们生活带来的意义，他们可以用仪式来记录他的生活故事，让他的故事编入他们社区的历史。
His story is their story.
他的故事就是他们的故事。
His funeral songs will sing them a songabout themselves.
他的葬礼之歌也是他们的颂扬之歌。
And it’s a story that has no discerniblebeginning, no foreseeable end.
这个故事没有明显开端，也没有可预见的结束。
It’s a story that goes on long after hisbody no longer does.
这是一个在他的身体腐朽之后，将一直延续的故事。
People ask me if I’m frightened orrepulsed by participating in a culture where the physical manifestations ofdeath greet us at every turn.
人们问我，参与到这种文化中，是否害怕或者不情愿，因为这其中处处都感到逝者就在你周围。
But I see something profoundlytransformative in experiencing death as a social process and not just abiological one.
但我看到一些深刻的变革，将经历死亡作为一个社会进程而不是一种生物进程。
In reality, the relationship between the
living and the dead has its own drama in the U.S. healthcare system, where
decisions about how long to stretch the thread of life are made based on our
emotional and social ties with the people around us, not just on medicine’s ability to prolonglife.
实际上，活人和死人之间的关系，在美国医疗卫生系统中有它自己的戏剧性，在决定到底将生命这根线拉多长时，是根据我们的感情以及与我们周围人的社会纽带，不只是依靠医学延长生命的能力。
We, like the Torajans, base ourdecisions about life on the meanings and the definitions that we ascribe todeath.
我们如托拉雅人一样，基于我们赋予死亡的意义和定义来决定我们的生命。
So I’m not suggesting that anyone in thisaudience should run out and adopt the traditions of the Torajans. It might be alittle bit difficult to put into play in the United States.
所以我不是建议在座的所有人，放弃美国的医疗保健而采取托拉雅人的传统。要将托拉雅模式在美国应用可能会有点困难。
But I want to ask what we can gain fromseeing physical death not only as a biological process but as part of thegreater human story.
但是我想问，当我们将死亡不仅看做一个生物的过程，而看做更广阔的人类历史的一部分，能收获什么？
What would it be like to look on the
expired human form with love because it’s so intimately a part of who we allare?
当我们真情地看着死者的身体，而那曾是我们生命中不可或缺的一部分，会是一种什么感觉？
If we could expand our definition ofdeath to encompass life, we could experience death as part of life and perhapsface death with something other than fear.
如果我们可以扩展我们对死亡的定义，以涵盖生活，我们可能会体会到死亡是生活的一部分，面对死亡时绝非仅仅是恐惧，还有其他感觉。
Perhaps one of the answers to thechallenges that are facing the U.S. healthcare system, particularly in theend-of-life care, is as simple as a shift in perspective, and the shift inperspective in this case would be to look at the social life of every death.
美国医疗卫生系统正面临挑战，特别是对于老年医保，一个可能的解决办法就是转变看待死亡的视角。而在这个例子中的转变就是去看看逝者的社会生活关系。
It might help us recognize that the way
we limit our conversation about death to something that’s medical orbiological is reflective of a larger culture that we all share of avoidingdeath, being afraid of talking about it.
它可以帮助我们认识到，我们谈论死亡时，总是局限于医学性、生物性，这反映了我们的文化都是如何避免死亡，害怕谈论它。
If we could entertain and value otherkinds of knowledge about life, including other definitions of death, it has thepotential to change the discussions that we have about the end of life.
如果我们能够接纳和重视关于生命的其他知识，包括对死亡的其他定义，它才有可能改变我们关于生命终结的讨论。
It could change the way that we die, butmore importantly, it could transform the way that we live.
它可以改变我们死亡的方式，但更重要的是，它可以改变我们生活的方式。
