心，为什么会变老？所谓变老，是指心变得脆弱、退化、重复，陷入习惯的窠臼——性习惯、宗教习惯、工作习惯、充满企图心的各种习惯。我们的心承载着无数的经验与记忆，伤痕累累，污迹斑斑，难以耳目全新地看待事物，而总是按照记忆、定论与范式来解读事物，总是引经据典，这样的心灵被权威所禁锢，所以老迈不堪。

何以如此？其实你看得明白，我们所有的教育只是在培育记忆，报刊、电台、电视等大众传媒就是如此。教授们只是读讲义，照本宣科，一遍又一遍，灌满你的大脑，考试时你再吐出来，获得学位，继续人生旅程——进入职场、按部就班、无休止地重复。不仅如此，我们的内心世界也充满企图，虽历经挫折依然争斗不止，我们不仅为工作而竞争，而且还为上帝而争前恐后，渴望着离他近点儿，打听如何抄捷径……

所以，在紧张与压力之下，在有意无意之间，我们的心被各种影响和痛苦所充塞、淹没，这就是天天发生着的事。我们每天都在磨损心灵，而不是运用心灵。

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

Drowned by Influence

Why does the mind grow old? It is old, is it not, in the sense of getting decrepit, deteriorating, repeating itself, caught in habits—sexual habits, religious habits, job habits, or various habits of ambition. The mind is so burdened with innumerable experiences and memories, so marred and scarred with sorrow that it cannot see anything freshly, but is always translating what it sees in terms of its own memories, conclusions, formulas, always quoting; it is authority-bound; it is an old mind.

You can see why it happens. All our education is merely the cultivation of memory; and there is this mass communication through journals, the radio, the television; there are the professors who read lectures and repeat the same thing over and over again until your brain soaks in what they have repeated, and you vomit it up in an examination and get your degree and go on with the process—the job, the routine, the incessant repetition. Not only that, but there is also our own inward struggle of ambition with its frustrations, the competition not only for jobs but for God, wanting to be near him, asking the quick road to him….

So, what is happening is that through pressure, through stress, through strain, our minds are being crowded, drowned by influence, by sorrow, consciously or unconsciously…. We are wearing down the mind, not using it.

OCTOBER 15