Let us now go into the question of what is thinking, the significance of that thought which must be exercised with care, logic and sanity (for our daily work) and that which has no significance at all. Unless we know the two kinds, we cannot possibly understand something much deeper which thought cannot touch. So let us try to understand this whole complex structure of what is thinking, what is memory, how thought originates, how thought conditions all our actions; and in understanding all this we shall perhaps come across something which thought has never discovered, which thought cannot open the door to.
现在我们看一下“什么是思考”这一问题，（思考有两个意义，分别是我们日常工作中）必须谨慎、合乎逻辑、头脑清晰地进行的“思考”，和那个完全没有意义的“思考”。除非我们知道这两种“思考”，我们不可能懂得那思想不可触及的极为深入的层面。故让我们试着理解这整个复杂的结构：什么是思考，什么是记忆，思想如何起源，思想如何限制我们的行动；而在理解了所有这些之后，我们就可能发现思想从未发现的东西，穿过思想无法开启的大门。
Why has thought become so important in all our lives - thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, `It's of very little importance - what is important is emotion.' But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought doesn't give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? Ask yourself as I am asking myself - why is one a slave to thought - cunning, clever, thought which can organize, which can start things, which has invented so much, bred so many wars, created so much fear, so much anxiety, which is forever making images and chasing its own tail - thought which has enjoyed the pleasure of yesterday and given that pleasure continuity in the present and also in the future - thought which is always active, chattering, moving, constructing, taking away, adding, supposing?
思想在我们所有人的生活中为什么如此重要 －－ 作为想法(idea)的思想，作为在我们的脑细胞中累积的记忆的反应的思想？也许你们许多人以前从未问过这样的问题，或者如果你们问过，你们可能说过，“这一点也不重要 －－ 重要的是情绪。”但是我没有看到你如何能将这两者（思想和情绪）区分开来。如果思想不赋予感觉以延续性，感觉就会很快死掉。故我们的日常生活，沉重的、无聊的、充满恐惧的日常生活中，为什么思想占据了如此过分重要的地位？问问你自己，就像我问我自己一样 －－ 人为什么成为了思想 －－ 这能够组织、能够创造事物的，巧妙的、聪明的思想；这滋生了这么多战争，创造了这么多恐惧、这么多的焦虑，还永不停息地制造意象、追逐自己的尾巴的思想 －－ 这享受着昨日的快乐并将快乐延续到当下、也延续到未来的思想 －－ 这总是活跃着、喋喋不休着、运动着、构建着、取走着什么、添加着什么、猜测着什么的思想 －－ 人为什么成为了这样的思想的奴隶？
Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us.
对我们来说，想法(ideas) －－ 那些被每个领域的智者在书中以如此聪明的方式表达过的想法 －－ 已经变得比行动重要得多。越是巧妙、越是微妙的想法，我们越崇拜它们、越崇拜那些记载着它们的书籍。我们就是那些书，我们就是那些想法，我们已经被他们如此严重地限制了。我们永远不停地讨论想法和理想，辩证地给出观点。每个宗教都有它的教条、它的准则，它自己的去够到上帝的脚手架，而当探询到思想的开端的时候，我们就问，这整个的想法的大厦的重要性在哪里？我们已经将想法与行动分离开来，因为想法总是过去而行动总是当下 －－ 就是说，生活总是当下。我们害怕生活，因而过去 －－ 作为想法 －－ 对我们来说就变得如此重要。
It is really extraordinarily interesting to watch the operation of one's own thinking, just to observe how one thinks, where that reaction we call thinking, springs from. Obviously from memory. Is there a beginning to thought at all? If there is, can we find out its beginning - that is, the beginning of memory, because if we had no memory we would have no thought?
观察自己的思想如何运作真是一件非常有趣的事情，就只是观察自己如何思考，观察我们叫做思考的那种反应从哪里涌出。显然是从记忆中。思考到底有没有开端？如果有，我们能否发现它的开端？ －－ 也即记忆的开端，因为若我们没有记忆，我们就有可能没有思想。
We have seen how thought sustains and gives continuity to a pleasure that we had yesterday and how thought also sustains the reverse of pleasure which is fear and pain, so the experiencer, who is the thinker, is the pleasure and the pain and also the entity who gives nourishment to the pleasure and pain. The thinker separates pleasure from pain. He doesn't see that in the very demand for pleasure he is inviting pain and fear. Thought in human relationships is always demanding pleasure which it covers by different words like loyalty, helping, giving, sustaining, serving. I wonder why we want to serve? The petrol station offers good service. What do those words mean, to help, to give, to serve? What is it all about? Does a flower full of beauty, light and loveliness say,`I am giving, helping, serving'? It is! And because it is not trying to do anything it covers the earth.
我们已经看到思想如何延续，思想如何赋予我们昨天的快乐以延续性，以及思想如果也维持着快乐的储备，这储备就是恐惧和痛苦，故经验者，即思考者，就是快乐、就是痛苦、也是这给予快乐和痛苦以滋养的实体。思考者将快乐和痛苦分隔开来。他看不到，正是从对快乐的需求中他引入了痛苦和恐惧。思想在人类关系中总是要求快乐，用不同的词语如“忠诚、帮助、给予、支持、服务”等（将要求快乐的实质）掩盖起来。这些词，帮助、给予、服务，意味着什么呢？它们都是关于什么的呢？一朵洋溢着美丽、光芒和可爱的花会不会说“我在给予、在帮助、在服务”呢？它就是在这么做！而因为它没有努力去做任何事情，所以它覆盖了大地。
Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience. Thought in its demand for pleasure brings its own bondage. Thought is the breeder of duality in all our relationships: there is violence in us which gives us pleasure but there is also the desire for peace, the desire to be kind and gentle. This is what is going on all the time in all our lives. Thought not only breeds this duality in us, this contradiction, but it also accumulates the innumerable memories we have had of pleasure and pain, and from these memories it is reborn. So thought is the past, thought is always old, as I have already said.
思想是如此的巧妙、如此的聪明，以至于它为己之便而扭曲了每样东西。思想对快乐的需求的本身产生了对自身的束缚。思想是我们的所有关系中的二元性的起因：我们自身是暴力的，暴力给我们快感，但是我们又有对和平的欲望，做和善、温柔的人的欲望。这就是我们所有人的生活中每时每刻都在发生的。思想不仅滋生了我们内心的二元性、这种矛盾，也累积了我们曾有过的对于快乐和痛苦的不计其数的记忆，从这些记忆中，思想得到了重生。故思想是过去，思想总是旧的，我之前也已经这样说过。
As every challenge is met in terms of the past - a challenge being always new - our meeting of the challenge will always be totally inadequate, hence contradiction, conflict and all the misery and sorrow we are heir to. Our little brain is in conflict whatever it does. Whether it aspires, imitates, conforms, suppresses, sublimates, takes drugs to expand itself - whatever it does - it is in a state of conflict and will produce conflict.
随着每个挑战都以“过去” －－ 一个（永远变化）永远崭新的挑战 －－ 的方式被满足，我们就总是完全不能充分满足挑战，因而（产生了）矛盾、冲突，以及继承下来的所有不幸和悲伤。我们可怜的大脑不管在做什么的时候都处于冲突之中。不论它（大脑）是渴望，是效法，是服从，是压制，是升华，还是服用药品来增强它自己 －－ 不管它做什么 －－ 它总是处于一种冲突的状态，并且会产生冲突。
Those who think a great deal are very materialistic because thought is matter. Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone, are matter. Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. There is energy and there is matter. That is all life is. We may think thought is not matter but it is. Thought is matter as an ideology. Where there is energy it becomes matter. Matter and energy are interrelated. The one cannot exist without the other, and the more harmony there is between the two, the more balance, the more active the brain cells are. Thought has set up this pattern of pleasure, pain, fear, and has been functioning inside it for thousands of years and cannot break the pattern because it has created it.
那些思考很多的人，都是非常唯物主义的，因为思考是物质。思考像地板、墙和电话一样，它们都是物质。能量以一种模式运作，变成了物质。（其中）有能量也有物质。这就是生活的一切。我们可能认为思想不是物质，但它是的。思想跟意识形态一样都是物质。当有能量的时候它就变成了物质。物质和能量是相互关联的。一者离不开另一者而存在，而这二者之间存在越多的和谐、越多的平衡，脑细胞就越活跃。思想建立了这个快乐、痛苦、恐惧的模式，在这个模式中运作了千万年，（也）打不破这个模式，因为这模式是思想（自己）创建的。
A new fact cannot be seen by thought. It can be understood later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new fact is not reality to thought. Thought can never solve any psychological problem. However clever, however cunning, however erudite, whatever the structure thought creates through science, through an electronic brain, through compulsion or necessity, thought is never new and therefore it can never answer any tremendous question. The old brain cannot solve the enormous problem of living.
一个新的事实不能被思想所看到。（事实发生）之后能够从语言上被思想所理解，但是这种对于新的事实的理解，对于思想而言不是现实。思想永远无法解决任何心理上的问题。不论如何聪明、如何巧妙、如何博学，不论思想通过科学、通过电子大脑（计算机）、通过冲动或需求创造出什么样的结构来，思想永远都不会是新的，也因而永远无法回答任何庞大的问题。旧的大脑不能解决生活的庞大问题。
Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and therefore it cannot be depended upon. But if you understand the whole structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat - if you are aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothing to be deceived. The mind then is not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.
思想是歪曲的，因为它能发明任何东西，能看到不存在的东西。它能够玩弄最非凡的把戏，因而是靠不住的。但是如果你理解你如何思考、为什么思考、你使用的词语、你日常生活的行为方式、你与人交谈的方式、你对待人的方式、你行走的方式、你吃东西的方式的这整个结构，如果你知道所有这些东西，那么你的心智就不能欺骗你，那么就没有任何可以欺骗的东西了。此时心智就不会（主动）需求、（主动）克制；它就变得异常安静、柔软、敏感、孤独，而在那种状态中，无论如何也不会有欺骗了。
Have you ever noticed that when you are in a state of complete attention the observer, the thinker, the centre, the 'me', comes to an end? In that state of attention thought begins to wither away. If one wants to see a thing very clearly, one's mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures - all that must be put aside to look. And it is only in silence that you can observe the beginning of thought - not when you are searching, asking questions, waiting for a reply. So it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being, having put that question, `What is the beginning of thought?', that you will begin to see, out of that silence, how thought takes shape.
你曾注意过，当你处于完全注意(complete attention)的状态时，这个观察者、思考者、中心、“我”会终结吗？在这样一个注意的状态中，思想开始凋谢了。如果一个人想要非常清晰地看到一个东西，他的心智必须非常安静，没有任何的偏见、唠叨、对话、意象、图画 －－ 看的时候所有这些都必须放在一边。而唯有在安静中，你才能观察到思想的开始 －－ 不是当你搜寻、提问、等待回答的时候。故在你提问了“思想的开端是什么”这个问题之后，唯有透过你的全部存在、你处于了彻底的安静的时候，在这寂静之中你才开始看到，思想是如何形成的。
If there is an awareness of how thought begins then there is no need to control thought. We spend a great deal of time and waste a great deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control our thoughts - `This is a good thought, I must think about it a lot. This is an ugly thought, I must suppress it.' There is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another, one desire and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. But if there is an awareness of the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought.
如果能够觉察对思想如何开始，就没有必要控制思想了。不仅仅在学校中，还有在生活中，我们都花费了大量时间、浪费了大量的精力，试图去控制我们的思想 －－ “这个思想是好的，我必须多这么去想。这个思想是丑陋的，我必须压抑它。”这是我们生活中每时每刻都在进行的战争：用思想去战胜其他思想，用欲望去代替其他欲望，用快乐去主宰其他快乐。但是如果觉察到思想的开端，那么思想中就没有矛盾了。
Now when you hear a statement like 'Thought is always old' or Time is sorrow', thought begins to translate it and interpret it. But the translation and interpretation are based on yesterday's knowledge and experience, so you will invariably translate according to your conditioning. But if you look at the statements and do not interpret them all but just give them your complete attention (not concentration) you will find there is neither the observer nor the observed, neither the thinker nor the thought. Don't say, Which began first?' That is a clever argument which leads nowhere. You can observe in yourself that as long as there is no thought - which doesn't mean a state of amnesia, of blankness - as long as there is no thought derived from memory, experience or knowledge, which are all of the past, there is no thinker at all. This is not a philosophical or mystical affair. We are dealing with actual facts, and you will see, if you have gone this far in the journey, that you will respond to a challenge, not with the old brain, but totally anew.
当你听到如“思想总是旧的”或者“时间即悲伤”这样的句子时，思想就开始翻译它并诠释它。但是翻译和诠释是基于昨天的知识和经验，故仍然是在你的受限范围内翻译它。但是如果你看这些句子的时候完全不诠释它们，而只是将你的全部注意力(complete attention)放在上面（不是集中精力(concentration)），你会发现既没有观者也没有所观之物，既没有思考者也没有思想。不要说，“（鸡和蛋）先有的哪一个的？”这样争论很聪明但是不会让你前行。只要没有思想，你就可以在你的内心观察 －－ （没有思想）不意味着失忆、空白的状态 －－ 只要记忆、经验或知识（这些都是过去）中没有思想生出，就完全没有思考者。这不是哲学或神秘学。我们在处理实际的事实，而你将会发现，如果你已经（跟随我）在这个（探询的）旅途中深入到这里了的话，你会发现，你会全新地、不使用旧的大脑，对挑战做出反应。