日常生活表明，关系必然是痛苦不堪的。如果关系中没有焦虑，那就不再是关系，而只是舒适的沉睡或催眠状态——多数人对此心驰神往。在渴望舒适与面对现实之间，在幻相与真实之间，冲突就产生了。如果能看清幻相，那么你就能抛弃幻相，用心领悟关系的真相。但是，如果你想在关系中寻觅安全感，就会沉溺于舒适与幻相，而关系的重大意义恰恰在于它的不安全。如果在关系中寻觅安全，那么你在阻碍关系的功能，从而产生乖张的行为，并招致灾难。

无疑，关系的功能是揭示人的整体生存状态。关系，是自我呈现、自我认知的过程，这种自我展现是充满痛苦的，需要你的思维与情感具有柔性，进行持续调整。这是一场痛苦的奋争，点缀着觉悟的宁静。

但，多数人都逃避或抛弃关系中的焦虑，喜欢在心理依赖中享受满足，在毫无挑战的安全感、归宿感中寻觅轻松与惬意。这样，家庭和其他关系就变成了庇护的港湾，无思无虑的避难所。

对关系的依赖，不可避免地被不安全感吞噬，此时你就会放弃这份关系，转而抓紧另一个新关系，梦想从中发现更持久的安全感。但，关系中根本没有安全感，依赖心只能滋生恐惧。如果你不能理解安全感与恐惧感的心理机制，那么关系就会变成一种束缚、障碍和无明。那样的话，生活的全部就成了挣扎与痛苦，除了回归正思维，没有解脱之路，而正思维萌发于自知之明。

——克里希那穆提《生命书：365观心日课》（The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti）

The Function of Relationship

Relationship is inevitably painful, which is shown in our everyday existence. If in relationship there is no tension, it ceases to be relationship and merely becomes a comfortable sleep-state, an opiate—which most people want and prefer. Conflict is between this craving for comfort and the factual, between illusion and actuality. If you recognize the illusion then you can, by putting it aside, give your attention to the understanding of relationship. But if you seek security in relationship, it becomes an investment in comfort, in illusion—and the greatness of relationship is its very insecurity. By seeking security in relationship you are hindering its function, which brings its own peculiar actions and misfortunes.

Surely, the function of relationship is to reveal the state of one’s whole being. Relationship is a process of self-revelation, of self-knowledge. This self-revelation is painful, demanding constant adjustment, pliability of thought-emotion. It is a painful struggle, with periods of enlightened peace …

But most of us avoid or put aside the tension in relationship, preferring the ease and comfort of satisfying dependency, an unchallenged security, a safe anchorage. Then family and other relationships become a refuge, the refuge of the thoughtless.

When insecurity creeps into dependency, as it inevitably does, then that particular relationship is cast aside and a new one taken on in the hope of finding lasting security; but there is no security in relationship, and dependency only breeds fear. Without understanding the process of security and fear, relationship becomes a binding hindrance, a way of ignorance. Then all existence is struggle and pain, and there is no way out of it save in right thinking, which comes through self-knowledge.

MARCH 16