通过冥想集中注意力、觉察意识并拓展思维 | 山姆·哈里斯博士

如果你在看一群人，其中有一个人没有头，而你却没注意到。

If you're looking at a crowd of people, somebody is missing a head, and you're not noticing it.

而且很难察觉，因为大脑通常不会生动地呈现信息的缺失。

And it's not easy to notice because the brain doesn't tend to vividly represent the absence of information.

我的意思是，这就像游戏里没有渲染的部分一样。

I mean, it's just like, this is part of the game that's not being rendered.

它并没有在视觉场中表现为一个断裂。

It's not showing up as a break in the visual field.

它就是不存在。

It's just not there.

而且有人认为，这里发生了一种填补现象，但我认为这可能被误解或夸大了。

And you're, I mean, people have argued that there's a kind of filling in phenomenon that happens, but I think that can be, you know, misunderstood or exaggerated.

但你之前描述的眼球运动，我想说的是，眨眼类比——即暂时且反复地抹去自我——在这里完全适用，因为确实，持续发生的微小眼跳也阻止了我们的眼睛在任何一个位置停留足够长的时间来观察盲点，即使只闭上一只眼睛。

But the eye movements themselves that you described before, I guess I should say that the saccade analogy about transiently and repetitively erasing the self works perfectly here because indeed micro saccades, little smaller saccades that occur all the time, also prevent our eyes from fixating at one location long enough to observe our blind spot, even if one eye is closed.

对，没错。

Right, right.

因此，这个实验使用了麻痹剂来固定眼睛在一个位置，结果东西就开始消失了。

So the experiment's done with paralytics to essentially lock eyes at one location, basically things just start disappearing.

是的，基本上就是——

Yeah, it just basically-

我们都希望以为自己开始产生幻觉，但实际上我们开始失明。

We'd all love to think that we start hallucinating, but actually we start going blind.

对。

Right.

这些实验确实已经做过。

And those experiments have been done.

在人类身上做的，我听说非常可怕。

On humans, I hear they're quite terrifying.

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，你也可以自己试试。

I mean, you can do that for yourself too.

开始悄然融化，化作一片温暖的光晕。

Begins to just off, melt away in a warm glow.

无需任何致幻剂。

No psychedelics required.

但这里有趣的一点是，当你问自己：由于眼睛的解剖结构，存在某种你本应看到却从未在体验中察觉到的东西。

But the interesting point there is that when you ask yourself, Okay, as a consequence of the eye's anatomy, there's this thing you can see that is absent from your experience.

但问题是，它与你自身、与你的意识之间是什么关系？

But the question is, where is that in relationship to the rest of you, to your mind?

它是深藏于内，还是在某种意义上就位于体验的表面？

Is that deep within, or is that in some sense right on the surface of experience?

人们通常抱有某种期待，我认为这是把冥想误认为是在寻找意识内容的变化，他们期待发现更微妙、更宏大的心灵现象。

And there's expectation that people have, again, I think conflating meditation with a search for changes in the contents of consciousness, they're looking for know, much more subtle things to notice about the mind or much, you know, vaster things to notice.

致幻剂制造了一种期待，即你服用大量迷幻蘑菇或LSD后，一切都会改变。

Psychedelics sets up this expectation that, you know, you do, you know, a massive dose of mushrooms or LSD, and everything changes.

我的意思是，你会获得一种全然祥和的视觉体验，不仅视觉发生变化，情绪也会改变，还会出现联觉，仿佛你的意识在诸多方面都得到了扩展。

I mean, you just get this full beatific vision, and you get not only visual changes, but emotional changes, you get synesthesia, where you're just, you have much more mind in so many ways.

因此，通过这些体验或阅读神秘主义文献，你会开始认为，自由其实存在于别处，或者深藏于内。

So having these experiences or reading the mystical literature, you begin to think, okay, well then freedom is really elsewhere, or it's deep within.

它并不等同于那种能清晰看见咖啡杯的普通觉知，也无法仅仅通过保持清醒的意识，将注意力转向阅读邮件。

It's like it's not coincident with the ordinary awareness that can see this coffee cup clearly, and that can just transition attention to reading an email with the full sobriety of just ordinary waking consciousness.

但事实是，对无我的洞察，对主客体非二元性的洞察，与对视觉盲点的洞察一样，都贴近于普通意识。

But the truth is, this insight into selflessness, this insight into the non duality of subject and object, is as close to ordinary consciousness as this insight into the optic blind spot.

那么，你要去哪里才能获得对盲点的洞察呢？

Like, where do you have to go to have this insight into the blind spot?

不，你根本不需要去任何地方。

No, you just have to you don't to go anywhere.

你只需要正确地设置实验，以便能够看到数据，而这些数据就在表面。

You just have to set up the experiment correctly such that you can see the data, but the data is right on the surface.

它离你太近了，以至于难以察觉。

It's almost too close to you to notice.

它之所以难以察觉，是因为它太近了，而不是因为它深藏于内或遥不可及。

I mean, it's at all hard to notice, it's because it's so close rather than it's deep within or far away.

还有其他的类比，我不知道你是否记得那些‘心灵之眼’的艺术作品，就是随机点立体图，图像会从中浮现出来。

And there are other analogies like I don't know if remember those mind's eye pieces of artwork that were the random dot stereograms where you have an image that pops out.

我总是很难看到那些图像，因为我的一只眼睛占主导地位，你知道吗？

I always find it very difficult to see those because I have a very dominant eye, you know?

但有些人

But some

这些图像以前常出现在旅游商店里，人们会说：‘哦，看到了，是鲸鱼。’

people can't These are these images that used to be at the kind of like touristy shops, people would say, Oh, there it is, the whale.

我当时想：我怎么就是看不见。

I was thinking, I don't see it.

那些从小经常游泳的孩子，他们往往只向一侧呼吸。

Know, kids that swim a lot when they're younger and they tend to breathe just to one side.

我不知道你是不是这样，但我绝对是这样。

I don't know if this was you, this was definitely me.

他们往往会闭上一只眼睛。

They tend to, we'll keep one eye closed.

你建立了相当强的眼优势。

You set up a pretty strong ocular dominance.

在生命早期，无论是学习当弓箭手、投飞镖、打台球，还是任何需要单眼选择性观察世界的活动，哪怕只是几个小时，就可能在视觉信息从眼睛传到大脑的过程中，造成永久性的权重不对称。

Biasing your vision to one or the other eye early in life, whether or not you're learning how to be a bow hunter, or you're learning how to throw darts or shoot billiards, or anything involves selectively viewing the world through one eye for even a couple of hours can set up a permanent asymmetry in the weighting of visual flow, flow of visual information from the eye to the brain.

这种情况是可逆的，但只能通过故意遮盖另一只眼睛的逆向训练来实现。

It's reversible, but only through the reverse gymnastics of covering up the other eye intentionally.

是的，没错，对。

Yeah, right, yeah.

所以我实际上不得不进行逆向遮盖一段时间，因为我出现了复视，失去了双眼视觉。

So I actually be, I had to be reverse patched for a while because I was seeing double because I lost binocular vision.

我根本不可能看出来随机猫立体图中的图像，这有点讽刺，因为我的博士研究就是关于双眼通路的。

I don't stand a chance in hell of seeing an image pop out of a random cat stereogram, which is kind of ironic because I did my PhD on binocular circuitry.

但不管怎样，如果有人能看见这些图像，或者看不到，我认为它们都很好地说明了你所谈论的更大主题：从感知上讲，你看到的只是一堆点，然后突然间，你原本以为不存在的东西就出现了，但又可能再次消失。

But nonetheless, if people can see these, or if they can't, I think they provide a really terrific example of what you're talking about as a larger theme, which is that perceptually you see a bunch of dots and then all of a sudden, what you thought wasn't there is suddenly there, but can disappear again.

或者还有一些视觉错觉，如果我们再举其他例子的话，一旦你看到了，就再也无法视而不见。

Or there are certain visual illusions, if we were to include others, that once you see them, you cannot unsee them.

所以有脸和花瓶这种，你知道的，图底关系之类的东西。

So there's the faces, vases, you know, figure ground type stuff.

是的，是的，对。

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

这是一种稍微有点双稳态知觉的现象，对。

It's a bit bistable percepts, yeah.

是的，双稳态知觉。

Yeah, bistable percepts.

然后还有眼睛之间的竞争。

And then there's sort of ocular competition.

你给两只眼睛分别呈现不同的图像，人们几乎不可能同时感知到两者。

You show two different images to the eyes, each of the two eyes, and it is near impossible for people to perceive them both simultaneously.

这跟你描述的有点类似。

So it's a little bit of what you're describing.

我的意思是，这些似乎都反映了神经回路组织的基本特征——它们不希望长时间固定在某一个事物上。

I mean, these seem to be fundamental features about the way the neural circuits are organized, that they don't want to stay fixated on any one thing for very long.

要做到这一点，要么需要训练，要么需要强烈的兴趣、极度的恐惧或极度的兴奋。

To do so either takes training, intense interest, intense fear, intense excitement.

当我说到‘强烈’时，我想回到这个观点：自主神经系统 somehow 主导着我们长时间聚焦于某一位置的能力。

When I say intense, I guess I come back to this idea that the autonomic nervous system is somehow governing our ability to spotlight at any one location for very long.

这是一个有用的框架吗？还是会把我们引向另一条路？

Is that a useful framework, or is that going to take us down a different path?

嗯，对这种情况来说，这算是另一条路。

Well, it's sort of a different path for this.

我的意思只是，我想表达的是，表面上看似显而易见的东西，却可能难以被察觉，这似乎是个悖论。

I mean, the only point I was making is that the seemingly paradoxical claim that something can be right on the surface and yet hard to see.

对吧？

Right?

所以有些东西确实如此，这似乎印证了大多数对灵性话题感兴趣的人所持有的预期——真理必定深藏于内。

So there are things that are and again, this seems to justify the expectation held by, I would think, the vast majority of people who get interested in these spiritual things, for lack of a better word, that the truth must somehow be deep within.

对吧？

Right?

比如，观察者和需要被发现的事物之间确实存在某种距离。

Like, there's really like a there's some distance between where you're between the one who is looking and the thing that has to be found.

对吧？

Right?

你必须经历一个漫长的变化过程。

And you have to go through this long evolution of changes.

我的意思是，有很多隐喻都在描述这种情况。

I mean, are many metaphors that set this up.

就像你站在山脚下，必须爬到山顶。

It's like you're at the base of a mountain, and you have to climb to the top.

所以你得找到一条路，不管它有多稳妥，带你到达那里。

So you have to find the path, however secure it is, to get you there.

但你的起点和目标之间确实存在距离。

But there really is a distance between your starting point and the goal.

而我所主张的，用行话来说，是一种非二元的冥想方式，而非二元对立的方式。

And what I'm arguing, and this is a kind of a non dual, to use a term of jargon, this is a non dual approach to meditation as opposed to a dualistic one.

其实路径和目标是一体的。

That there really is a the path and the goal are coincident.

对吧？

Right?

你需要解开那种逻辑——即你试图寻找某种超越当下体验的东西，我。

That there's a that you have to unravel the logic by which you would seek something that's outside of the present moment's experience, I.

呃。

E.

现在其实并不向你开放。

Not available, really not available to you now.

因为许多值得拥有的东西，许多值得掌握的技能，现在都还无法为你所用。

Because so many things worth having, many skills worth acquiring really are not available to you now.

就像你想成为钢琴家，或者想说中文，你想学某样你目前还不懂的东西，那就需要一个完整的过程。

It's like if you want to be a pianist, or if you want to speak Chinese, if you want, there's something you don't know, and then you want to learn that thing, and there's a whole process.

而你可能现在还没有能力做到。

And you might not be capable of doing it.

真正的精通还遥不可及。

And real mastery is far away.

如果你从未打过高尔夫球，却想一击将球直打300码，我可以很肯定地告诉你，你一开始做不到，第二天也做不到，甚至很长一段时间内都无法稳定做到。

If you've never hit a golf ball, and you want to hit a golf ball 300 yards straight, I can pretty much guarantee you're not going to do that initially, and you're not going to do it on day two, and you're not going do it reliably for the longest time.

要能稳定地做到这一点，你面前还有真正的训练要完成。

And there's real training in front of you to be able to do that reliably.

一种对核心洞见的理解——我指的是佛陀教义的核心洞见，以这个历史例子来说——现在其实是可以获得的。

An insight into and really the core insight I mean, the insight that is the core of the Buddha's teaching, to take one historical example of this really is available now.

当然，这并非易事，对很多人来说，它可能极难获得。

It is not, granted And it can be very hard won for people.

在我真正领悟我现在所讲的这一点之前，我大概花了整整一年时间，以每周到三个月不等的周期进行静修。

I had probably spent a year on silent retreat in one week to three month increments before I sort of got the point I'm making now.

我的意思是，这些静修期间，你每天要花十二到十八小时只是打坐，试图拆解我现在所提出的那些观点。

Like, mean, literally, and these are retreats where you spend twelve to eighteen hours a day just meditating, trying to unpack the kinds of claims I'm making now.

因此，完全忽视这一点是可能的。

So it's possible to rigorously overlook this.

你完全可以站在心灵图像前，以一种注定不会让你产生‘突然显现’效果的方式凝视，对吧？

It's possible to stand in front of the mind's eye image and stare in a way that is guaranteed not to give you pop out, right?

而且能够熟练地以这种方式凝视。

And to be adept at staring in that way.

所以，你完全可能被误导。

So it's possible to be misled.

因此，我在这里想说的是，通过获取更好的信息，你可以获得相当大的助力，这能在你寻找这种体验时缩短时间，并帮你消除关于它与日常清醒意识之间关系的错误预期。

And so what I'm trying to argue here is that there's a fair amount of leverage you can get with better information, which can kind of cut the time course if you are searching for this thing and kind of cancel your false expectations about just where this is in relation to your ordinary waking consciousness.

你也很可能获得错误的信息，并经历一系列体验。

And it's possible to get bad information and to have a bunch of experiences.

比如，你去服用死藤水，这过程极其宝贵。

You know, you and do an Ayahuasca trip, you have it's incredibly valuable.

它之所以宝贵，是因为它以惊人的方式改变了你的意识内容。

And it's valuable for all the ways in which it changed the contents of your consciousness in startling ways.

你从中获得了对过去、人际关系以及为何自己不够有爱心的洞见。

And you had insights into your past and into your relationships and into why you're not as loving as you might be.

还有很多值得思考的地方。

And there's lots to think about.

你会想，好吧，这一切都很好。

And you're like, okay, that's all great.

这些都是我们可以讨论的内容。

That's all something that we can talk about.

但它们确实是正交的。

But there is it truly is orthogonal.

如果它与我所谈的内容有交集，那也仅仅是在一个点上。

And if it makes a point of contact to what I'm talking about, it's really just at one point.

这个交集就在于意识中的主客体区分是虚幻的，并且容易被探究。

And it's at the point where this sense of subject object division in consciousness is illusory and vulnerable to investigation.

如果你在恰当的聚焦层面上进行探究，就可以选择你想要的类比，比如以精确的方式设置视觉盲点实验，让你看到数据并不存在。

And if you investigate it at sort of the right plane of focus, you pick the analogy you want from whether it's setting up the optic blind spot experiment in just the right way so that you can see that the data is not there.

双稳态知觉非常棒，因为当你看到这类图像，比如花瓶图或达尔马提亚犬图，它们看起来只是一堆杂乱的点，然后你突然看到达尔马提亚犬的形象浮现出来。

The bistable percept is great because when you see one of these images, like the Vase diagram or the Dalmatian, that looks like just a mess of dots, then you see the image of a Dalmatian dog pop out.

一旦你看到了，就再也无法视而不见了。

Once you see it, you really can't unsee it.

我的意思是，一旦你掌握了相关的概念基础，每次你看的时候都会再次发现它，最终这会变得毫不费力。

I mean, like once you have the requisite conceptual anchor to it, then every time you look, you're going to find it again, and eventually becomes effortless.

而这正是冥想的终极本质。

And that's what ultimately meditation is.

我的意思是，这种类型的冥想。

I mean, this kind of meditation.

你最终学会认识到，你和你的体验之间并没有分离。

You ultimately learn to recognize that there's no separation between you and your experience.

对吧？

Right?

不存在一边是体验，另一边是自我的情况。

There's not the experience on the one hand and the self on the other.

只有体验本身，对吧？

There's just experience, right?

只是看见、听见、闻到、尝到、触到、思考、感受，你知道的，还有本体感觉，你可以把任何信息通道都加进去。

There's just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, feeling, you know, proprioception, add whatever channels of information you want to that.

但这一切只是意识能量及其内容的总和。

But there's just the totality of the energy of consciousness and its contents.

你并不是站在河岸上，即使你相当认真地练习冥想，一开始也可能感觉是这样。

And there's no, it's not that you're on the riverbank, and this is how it can seem in the beginning, even when you're practicing meditation fairly diligently.

它可能让你觉得你是坐在河岸上，看着意识的内容流过。

It can seem like you're on the riverbank watching the contents of consciousness flow by.

而冥想就是越来越超然地去做这件事。

And meditation is the act of doing that more and more dispassionately.

所以你不再抓住愉快的，也不再推开不愉快的。

So you're no longer grabbing pleasant or pushing the unpleasant away.

你只是以最不加评判的心态放松下来，只是见证这流动，对吧？

You're just kind of relaxing in the most nonjudgmental frame of mind, just witnessing the flow, right?

但如果你以二元对立的方式做这件事，就会感觉自己是那个冥想者。

But if you're doing that dualistically, you feel like the meditator.

你感觉自己是那个专注的主体。

You feel like the subject aiming attention.

所以你现在就像站在河岸上，看着一切流过。

And so now you're on the riverbank watching everything go past.

但事实是，你就是那条河，对吧？

But the truth is you are the river, right?

体验本身即是如此，只有体验本身。

Experience itself is, there is just experience itself.

你并不在体验的边缘。

You're not on the edge of experience.

你所能注意到的一切都是流动的一部分，对吧？

And everything you can notice is part of the flow, right?

没有任何一个点可以让你抽离于流动之外，站在外面说：好吧，这是我的生活，这是我的体验，这是我的身体。

And there's no point from which to abstract yourself away from the flow, to stand outside it, and to say, Okay, this is my life, this is my experience, this is my body.

是的，你可以这么做。

Yes, you can do that.

我的意思是，所有这些都不过是念头，但那也是流动的一部分，对吧？

I mean, are all just thoughts, but that's more of the flow, right?

因此，会有一个过程，让你最终意识到你和你的体验之间没有任何距离。

And so there's a process by which you would eventually recognize that there's no distance between you and your experience.

而且，你可以等待生活中那些体验变得极其美好或极其恐怖、或者格外鲜明的时刻，对吧？

And again, you can wait for those moments in life where experience gets so good or so terrifying, or it's just so salient, right?

你的杏仁核正在疯狂运转。

Your amygdala is driving so hard.

我的意思是，你身处战争中，根本无暇思考其他事情，因为敌人正在向你开火，这就像你一生中玩过的最刺激的电子游戏，而你的生命正悬于一线。

I mean, so you're in a war and you can't think about anything because the enemy is shooting at you, and this is the most thrilling video game you've ever played in your life, and your life is on the line.

或者你在某项体育赛事的巅峰时刻，根本不知道自己是怎么做到那些动作的，但一切都在自动发生，对吧？

Or you're at the peak of some athletic event where there's just, you don't know how you're doing the things you're doing, but it's all happening automatically, right?

但这些时刻只占人一生的百万分之一。

But those are oneone hundredth of 1% of one's life.

我所说的冥想，是一种简单理解注意力机制的方式——你常常在否认这种体验的统一性，而认识到这种否认基于对意识本来面目的一种误解。

What I'm calling meditation is a way of simply understanding the mechanics of attention whereby you are denying yourself that unity of experience so much of the time and recognizing that that's, it's based on a misperception of the way consciousness always already is.

如果没有学习正确冥想的动机，那就是一个原因。

Well, if there wasn't an incentive to learn how to meditate properly, that was one.

我从十几岁开始就经常冥想，但更多是专注于呼吸，以观察者的身份觉察想法，属于开放观察型或专注注意力型冥想，我想我更多属于专注注意力类型。

And I've been meditating a fair amount since I was in my teens, but more along the lines of just paying attention to breath and recognize thoughts sort of observer, open observer type meditation or focused attention, I would suppose more of the focused attention type.

我们稍后会深入探讨这些，但我对您刚才说的内容有一些问题。

We'll get into these a little bit later, but I have a number of questions related to what you just said.

当然。

Sure.

我非常认同这个观点：我们所有人都应该去理解、去观察意识本身，而不是试图改变意识的内容，而这种能力可能比我们想象的更贴近我们。

I love the idea that this thing that we would all do well to understand, to observe consciousness itself, as opposed to trying to alter the contents of consciousness, may sit much closer to us than one might think.

正因为意识如此贴近我们，这或许正是我们忽视它的原因之一。

And that because it sits so close to us, that might be one of the reasons why we miss it.

我立刻想到一个视觉系统的例子。

I go right to a visual system example.

你戴着矫正眼镜，镜片上有个小污点，通常你透过镜片看外面，所以根本注意不到那个污点。

I mean, you're wearing corrective lenses and there's a speck on your lens, typically you're looking out through the lens, and so you wouldn't observe that speck.

这里可以使用许多不同的类比。

Any number of different analogies could work here.

尽管状态很少，但无论是积极的还是消极的，极端的狂喜和极端的恐惧是我认为最明显的两个，我们似乎都认同这些状态能让我们感受到自我的完整性和观察者与行动者之间的统一。

The fact that there are states, however few, positive and negative, extreme ecstasy and extreme fear being the two, I think most obvious ones that seems like we agree on, that allow us to capture the sense of completeness of self or the unity of the observer and the actor.

对于非训练者、非冥想者来说，这些状态很少出现，这向我暗示了两点。

The fact that those are seldom for the non trained, for the non meditator suggests to me two things.

我认为其中一点值得比另一点更深入探讨，那就是：当我们能感受到观察者与行动者统一的状态时，真正揭示的是一种关于算法的根本性理解，不是在线算法，而是我们神经系统本身的算法。

I think one perhaps worth exploring more than the other, but one is that what's really being revealed in the states where we can feel the unity of the observer and the actor is understanding something fundamental about the algorithm, not the online algorithm, but the algorithm that is our nervous system.

就像你提到的头足类动物，螳螂虾能看到我们无法感知的大量颜色色调，对吧？

Just as you mentioned cephalopods, mean, mantis shrimp see an enormous array of color hues that we don't, right?

它们对世界的映射和表征从根本上是不同的。

Their maps and representations of the world are fundamentally different.

蝮蛇能够看到红外线。

Pit vipers see in the infrared.

我们被限制在色彩光谱中相对有限的范围内，但仍然比狗或猫的范围宽广得多。

We're restricted to somewhat of a limited range within the color spectrum, but still more vast than that of dogs or cats.

好吧，理解一下眼镜蛇能看见什么，哪怕只是片刻，或许会很有启发。

Okay, so understanding that for seeing what a pit viper can see for moments would be informative, perhaps.

作为人类去感知热辐射可能是种侵入性的体验，也许这就是我们不这么做的原因。

Sensing heat emissions as a human might be invasive, then maybe that's why we don't do it.

所以，简单来说，问题是：为什么这个系统会被设计成这样？

So the question is, to just make it straightforward, is why would the system be designed this way?

再次强调，我们俩都没参与设计阶段，但这引出了一个更可探讨的问题，那就是关于发展过程。

Again, neither of us were consulted the design phase, but that brings me to perhaps the more tractable question was, which is about development.

我坚信，促进健康或不健康亲子关系的神经回路，源于婴幼儿时期内在与外在状态之间的初始需求，这正是我们正在讨论的内容：年幼的孩子感到焦虑，是因为他需要换尿布。

I mean, I'm a great believer that the neural circuits that encouraged healthy parent child relations, or unhealthy parent child relations, as the case may be in childhood, stem from the initial demands of internal versus external states, which is exactly what we're talking about, which is that a young child feels anxious because it needs his diaper change.

他其实并不真正知道，自己是需要换尿布、感到冷、不舒服、饿了，还是吃得太饱。

It doesn't really know it needs its diaper change or it's cold or it's uncomfortable or it's hungry or it's overly full.

所以他通过哭喊来表达，然后外部的某个角色会来帮助他缓解这种状态，希望如此，对吧？

And so it vocalizes and then some external source comes to us and relieves that hopefully, right?

因此，我们最早学会的基本规则，并不是‘我有一个自我’，也不是‘东西是往下掉而不是往上飘’，而是：当感到不适时，把这种不适表达出来，就会有外部的人来帮你缓解。

And so the fundamental rule that we first learn is not that we have a self or that things fall down, not up, but is that when uncomfortable, externalize that discomfort and it will be relieved by an outside player.

当然，这些神经回路还会被重新利用于成年后的浪漫依恋。

And then of course, there's a repurposing of circuitry for adult romantic attachments.

我认为没人会对此有异议，这确实能解释很多关于依恋等问题。

I don't think anyone doubts that, and that can explain a lot indeed about attachment and so forth.

因此，我们的发育性神经连接及其运行的算法，倾向于使大多数人——非冥想练习者——过上某种功能性的生活，至少在缺乏对‘行动者’与‘观察者’的觉知的情况下。

So something about our developmental wiring and the algorithms that these neural circuits run tend to bias most people, the non practice meditators, to live a somewhat functional life, at least, without this awareness of actor and observer.

对。

Right.

所以你真正谈论的是，通过有意识的干预来理解并弥合这一算法中的差距。

And so what you're really talking about is a deliberate intervention to understand and resolve that gap in the algorithm.

是的，没错，就是这样。

Do I have Yeah, that yeah.

我基本上是在复述你刚才的话，希望这能成为一个切入点，说明为什么在生物学或任何领域中，‘为什么’的问题总是非常危险。

More or less restating what you said in a way that I'm hoping will serve as a jumping off point as to why questions are always very dangerous in biology or any.

或者

Or

在关系中。

in relationship.

那是什么？

What's that?

或者在关系中。

Or in relationship.

或者在关系中，对，正是如此。

Or in relationship, right, exactly.

尽管我认为这一切确实可以追溯到早期的发展性神经连接，而这种连接当然是可以改变的。

Although I think it all does really harken back to this early developmental wiring, which of course is modifiable.

神经系统美妙之处就在于，它是唯一一个似乎能够自我改变的器官，至少在某种程度上如此。

That's the beauty of the nervous system is it's the one organ that seems to be able to change itself, at least to some degree.

那么，对于这些神经回路的组织方式，你有什么看法？在正常情况下，它们似乎有意隐藏了自身最重要、最深刻、甚至可以说是具有启蒙意义的特性，对吧？

So what are your thoughts about the organization of the circuitry to essentially, under normal conditions, to not reveal what seems to be one of its more important and profound, and for, you know, dare I say, enlightening features, right?

这几乎就像我们可能是螳螂虾一样。

It's almost as if we are potentially like mantis shrimp.

我们能看到比实际看到的多得多的颜色，但我们却看不到。

We can see so many more colors than we actually see, and yet we don't.

我们大多数人选择不去看。

We sort of opt, most people opt not to.

我认为Waking Up应用的一个巨大优势在于，它本质上能引导你逐步达到这些认知，而无需进行为期一年或三年的静默冥想，是的，

And I would argue that one of the great strengths of the Waking Up app, for instance, that it essentially walks you through the process of being able to arrive at these things without having to go do one year or three year long silent meditation Yeah,

是的。

yeah.

所以在我们继续之前，你能稍微展开一下吗？关于你对神经回路默认如何组织的看法，以及这意味着我们需要对自我进行干预才能揭示自我，这背后的意义是什么。

So if you could just elaborate for a moment before we move on about, you know, what are your thoughts about how the circuitry is arranged by default versus, and what that means for there to be an intervention, that we have to intervene in the self in order to reveal the self.

那里有两个大问题，一个是关于进化，另一个是关于发展。

Well, there are two big questions there, one about evolution and one about development.

就进化而言，重要的是要认识到，进化并不关心我们对人类繁荣与幸福的最深层关切。

So with respect to evolution, I mean, it's important to recognize that evolution doesn't see our deepest concerns about human flourishing and human well-being.

它只关乎后代。

It's all about the offspring.

我们只是被设定为繁衍后代，并活到足以帮助我们的后代繁衍，如果我们能做到的话。

It's just, you know, we are set up to spawn and to survive long enough to help our progeny spawn if we can do that.

然后就结束了，对吧？

And then that's it, right?

因此，任何有利于这一点的东西——包括部落主义、仇外心理，以及各种在当今我们试图构建可持续的全球文明时暴露出的硬件和软件缺陷——

And so anything that was good for that, including tribalism and xenophobia and all kinds of hardware and software flaws that reveal themselves to be flaws in the present time when we're trying to build a viable global civilization.

但它们在某种程度上曾给我们的祖先带来过优势。

But, you know, they redounded to the advantage of our ancestors somehow.

或者，我们身上有些特质根本就没有被自然选择选中。

Or they just there are things about us that we're simply not selected for.

它们只是顺带出现的。

They just kind of came along for the ride.

你知道，史蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德称之为副产品。

You know, what Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel.

你知道吧？

You know?

因此，我们的进化并没有让我们具备尽可能快乐的能力。

So we are not set up by evolution to be as happy as we possibly can be.

去很好地做任何我们感兴趣的事情。

To do almost anything that interests us well.

我的意思是，进化并没有让我们天生适合成为数学家、音乐家，或者建立健康的民主制度。

I mean, we're not set up by evolution to be mathematicians or musicians or to create democracies that are healthy.

我的意思是，进化根本看不到这些。

I mean, evolution can see none of this.

而我们正在利用自身的认知和情感机制，以全新的方式去实现这些事情，对吧？

And we're doing these things based on cognitive and emotional hardware that we're leveraging in new directions, right?

我的意思是，我们是灵长类动物，用微小的口腔声音进行交流。

I mean, we are primates and we're communicating with small mouth noises.

我的意思是，我们是会使用语言的灵长类动物。

I mean, we're language using primates.

所有这些显然都已经进化了。

And all of that has clearly evolved.

我们正在做这些了不起的事情，包括科学。

And we're doing these amazing things, including science.

然而，不可思议的是，我们几乎完全依靠语言，理解了在两个方向上都超越我们的现实。

However, improbably, we're actually able to, almost entirely with language, understand reality at a scale that exceeds us in both directions.

我是说，极其浩瀚的和极其微小的，还有时间上的极其久远。

I mean, the very vast and the very small, and also temporally, the very old.

我们能够预见遥远的未来。

We have visions of the far future.

只要我们做一下计算，就能算出一颗小行星将在一千年之后何时穿越地球轨道。

We can figure out where an asteroid is to cross Earth's orbit one thousand years from now, if we just do the math.

我们能做这些事情真是太神奇了，但进化对这一切都视而不见。

And it's amazing that we can do all those things, but evolution is blind to all of that.

因此，就我们关心的事物而言，尤其是对我们物种的生存而言，我们已经飞离了进化为我们设定的栖枝。

And so we have, in terms of what we care about, and certainly in terms of what's going to ensure our survival as a species, we have flown the perch that was created for us by evolution.

我的意思是，这不仅仅是灵长类的行为。

I mean, it's not just the primate things.

因此，学习如何调节情绪，突破或超越那种更符合心理学常态的自我概念，使我们不至于被猿类基因完全支配，即使在日益具有破坏性的技术面前，也是如此。

And so it is with learning how to regulate our emotions and punch through to a self-concept or beyond a self-concept that is more normative psychologically, that allows us to not be terrorized by our apish genes as fully as we seem to be, even in the presence of more and more destructive technology.

我们本质上仍然是装备着核武器的黑猩猩，对吧？

We're still practically chimpanzees armed with nuclear weapons, right?

这正变得越来越不正常。

And that is increasingly dysfunctional.

很快，我们就将面对我们自己创造的、具有与我们同等智慧的思维或看似思维的存在。

And very soon we're going to be in the presence of minds or apparent minds that we have built that are as intelligent as we are.

而很快，可能就在那之后的十五分钟内，它们的智慧将远远超越我们。

And very quickly, probably fifteen minutes after that, far more intelligent than we are.

因此，我们如何应对这一切，再次取决于我们现有的思维、能够构建的思维以及能够改变的思维。

And so what we do with all of that is again something that we have to figure out based on the minds we have, the minds we can build, the minds we can change.

我们现在已经开始干预自己的基因组。

We can meddle with our own genomes now.

如果我们干预生殖细胞，这将对我们自身和后代产生相应的后果。

And that will produce its own consequences in ourselves and in future generations if we meddle with the germline.

而且，所有这些都只是进化——进化只是我们从中诞生的温床，但它并未预见到这些。

And again, all of that is just, evolution is just sort of the womb we came out of, but it didn't anticipate any of that.

因此，大自然根本未曾考虑过我们的最佳利益。

So mother nature has simply not had our best interests at heart.

我们可能会灭绝，但从大自然的角度来看，这没什么，因为99%的物种最终都会灭绝。

We might die off and from the point of view of mother nature, that's fine, because 99% of every species dies off.

这一点就是这样。

There's that.

但从个体发展的角度来看，我们每个人来到这个世界时，都是一种几乎无毛的灵长类动物，极度依赖他人的照料。

But when talking about the individual developmentally, so we all come into this world, again, as a fairly hairless primate that needs a tremendous amount of care by others.

这种设计的逻辑在于，我们之所以不是出生后四十分钟就能奔跑、随后完美胜任所有羚羊行为的羚羊，正是因为我们的不成熟期延长了，而这对我们而言已变得功能性的：我们拥有更大的灵活性。

And the logic of that is that the reason why we're not a gazelle that can run forty five minutes later and then basically do all the gazelle things perfectly soon thereafter, The reason why we have this time of immaturity and that has become functional for us is that it's just we're far more flexible.

我们可以根据环境的需求，学会远超羚羊所能掌握的许多事情。

And we can learn based on the needs of an environment to do so much more than a gazelle can.

而语言正是其中的一部分。

And language is a part of that.

在过去的十万年左右，文化越来越成为这一过程的一部分。

And in the last ten thousand years or so, culture increasingly has been more and more a part of that.

很可能存在一个层面，我们可以合理地讨论文化演化，以及文化演化与生物演化如何相互作用来改变我们。

And there's probably a layer at which we can plausibly talk about cultural evolution, and cultural evolution interacting with biological evolution to change us.

但当你谈论个体的发展时，我认为我们每个人来到这个世界时，并不以任何可以被实体化的方式认识自己。

But when you're talking about the development of an individual, each of us comes into this world, I think, not recognizing ourselves in any sense that would make sense to reify.

我的意思是，这并不是说那里什么都没有。

I mean, it's not that there's nothing there.

我的意思是，可能存在某种原始的自我分化。

I mean, there could be some kind of proto self differentiation.

但我认为这需要很长时间。

But I think it takes a long while.

而且很可能在真正认识他人与我们认识他人之间存在某种同步性——我们首先认识他人，而且我们从一开始就处于关系之中，我们会关注人类的脸庞，甚至在非常早期就能辨别出他人是善还是恶。

And there is very likely a coincidence between really recognizing others We recognize others first, and we're certainly in relationship immediately, and we orient to human faces, and we even detect other humans as good and bad moral actors very early.

我的意思是，这肯定远早于我们在镜子里认出自己。

Mean, certainly long before we recognize ourselves in a mirror.

这些实验，再次说明了保罗·布卢姆及其同事对发育中的幼儿的道德‘硬件’和‘软件’进行的研究。

The experiments run, again, is Paul Bloom and colleagues' experiments run on kind of the moral hardware and software of developing toddlers.

但我觉得，到目前为止，他们已经将研究推到了大约六个月大的婴儿阶段，那时婴儿会盯着木偶剧表演。

But I think at this point, they push it down all the way to like six months of age where you'll get these infants staring at kind of a puppet show.

他们会更关注传统意义上的‘好’角色，而不是‘坏’角色，在各种木偶剧游戏中，更倾向于合作方而非背叛方。

And they'll show a greater interest in classically good actors versus bad actors, cooperators versus defectors in various puppet show games.

所以，我们并非完全没有心智，也没有对他人和自我的原始意识，但随着我们逐渐熟练地使用语言，我们会意识到：我们不仅与他人有关系，而且在他们眼中，我们自己也是世界中的一个对象。

So it's not that we have no mind and no proto awareness of others and of self, but what eventually happens, certainly as we become at all facile with language use, is that we become aware that not only are we in relationship to others, but we are an object in the world for them.

因此，我们身边有足够多的人在婴儿床边指着我们，影响着我们的体验。

So we have enough people pointing at us in our cribs and impinging upon our experience.

你被身体移动、推搡、触摸、安慰，或者不被安慰。

You're being physically moved and prodded and touched and consoled or not consoled.

想象一下，你一直在接收上万次的干预，对吧？

And just imagine what all of these You're on the receiving end of 10,000 interventions, right?

而且你在很长一段时间里都完全无能为力。

And you're completely helpless for the longest time.

所有这些关注，都有很多人走到婴儿床前对着你做鬼脸。

And all of that attention, you have all of these people coming up to the crib and making faces at you.

欢呼着说‘是的’，而且这一切都是针对你的。

Cheering to Yeah, and it's all pointed at you.

所以，如果你认真看待心理学文献中至少某一派的观点，就会发现那里构建了一种经典的魔幻式自恋。

So there's a classic magical narcissism that gets constructed there if you take the psychological literature, at least a certain strand of it, seriously.

我认为，将那个年龄段的孩子视为某种具有自恋结构的存在是相当恰当的，因为一切似乎都在向内聚焦。

And I think it's largely apt to think of a child at that age as a kind of, there is a kind of narcissistic structure there where it's all kind of going inward.

在某个时刻，你会意识到：好吧，我就是这一切的中心，对吧？

And at a certain point you realize, okay, I'm the center of all of this, right?

这不仅仅像一部让你完全沉浸其中、丧失自我感的电影。

Like it's not just a movie that you're completely absorbed in and you've lost your sense of self.

入迷，是另一个例子，说明了成年人如何失去自我感。

Mean, is yet another example of what it's like as a grown up to lose our sense of self.

我认为，我们之所以对电视和电影如此着迷，是因为当我们完全沉浸其中时，就处于一种非常特殊的情境中——我们的大脑基本上将它解读为一种典型的社交情境。

And one of things I think we find so fascinating about television and film is that when we get totally absorbed in it, we're in this very unusual circumstance where our brain is basically reading it as we're in the classic social circumstance.

我们看到的是他人的面部表情。

We're presented with the facial displays of other people.

事实上，有时候这些人有十英尺高，对吧？

In fact, sometimes these people are ten feet tall, right?

或者他们的脸有十英尺大。

Or their faces are ten feet tall.

在电影院里看到特写镜头。

Have a close-up in a movie theater.

因此，从进化角度看，这是一种超级刺激。

So it's like this super stimulus in terms of evolution.

而且他们可能正直接盯着摄像头，对吧？

And they could be making direct eye contact with a camera, right?

于是你面对着一张巨大的脸凝视着你，但你在社交上却完全不受牵连。

So you have this gigantic face staring at you, and yet you're totally unimplicated socially.

你不会被别人看到。

You can't be seen.

而且你有一种感觉，你知道自己不会被看到，因此完全失去了自我意识，却又能以完全自由的注意力去观察，因为你完全置身事外，能够近距离地观察他人面部的细微表情和模仿性的面部动态。

And something about you, you know you can't be seen, and so you completely lose self consciousness, and yet you're able to examine with completely free attention, again, because you're totally unimplicated, the facial minutiae and the mimetic facial play of people at a very close range.

我的意思是，你离人们非常近。

I mean, you're seeing people close.

我的意思是，你得几乎要亲吻你的配偶了。

I mean, you'd have to be physically just about to kiss your spouse.

这就是电影中的特写镜头。

Like that's what a close-up is in a film.

你永远不会离别人这么近。

You never get that close to people.

但在这里，你处于一种无人观察且你清楚这一点的境地。

Yet here you're in a situation where you're unobserved and you know that.

这有点跑题了，但它反映了孩子在发展过程中的另一面。

And so this is a bit of a tangent, but it's the other side of what's happening developmentally for a kid.

当你在电影院看电影时，你实际上是隐形的，但你就在现场，无论人类剧情多么令人心碎，你都能近距离地目睹它上演。

When you're in a movie theater watching a movie, you are truly invisible, and yet you're right there seeing, however harrowing the human drama is, you're seeing it play out and you're seeing it up close.

这本质上是一场你的基因早已准备好的社交互动，但你的基因并没有准备好让你隐形，对吧？

And it is in principle a social encounter that your genes are ready for, but they're not ready for you to be invisible, right?

所以这正是它如此神奇的地方。

And so that's what's so magical about it.

但对孩子来说，发展过程中你并不是隐形的，你是一个不断被他人侵扰的对象。

But what happens developmentally for a kid is that you're not invisible, you are an object that is constantly being overrun.

你与世界之间的感官边界，不断被他人所侵犯。

The boundaries of your sensory engagement with the world are constantly being impinged upon by others.

在某个时刻，你会意识到：好吧，我处于这一切的中心。

And at a certain point you recognize, okay, I'm at the center of this.

我认为，这种自我意识的确立，与我们学会与他人互动的语言游戏是同步发生的。

And the way this gets enshrined as a self, I think is probably coincident with our learning the language game we learn to play with others.

我们在与他人交谈，别人也在和我们交谈，到了某个阶段，即使别人离开房间，我们也会对自己说话，对吧？

We're talking to others, people are talking to us, and at a certain point, we're talking to ourselves even when the other people leave the room, right?

如果你曾陪伴过一个正在外化自我对话的幼儿，你就能听到他们自言自语。

And you can hear it, if you ever have been with a toddler when they're externalizing their self talk, you you hear them talking to themselves.

他们在玩耍，同时也在对话。

They're playing and they're having a conversation.

他们之前在跟你——父母——说话，但你离开房间后，他们还在说。

They were talking to you, the parent, but then you left the room and they're still talking.

你回来时，他们依然在说，对吧？

You come back in and they're still talking, right?

而奇怪的是，我们也是如此，这又回到了进化的逻辑：我们从未停止。

And what happens to us, strangely, and this comes back to the logic of evolution, we never stop.

因为进化从未考虑为我们设计一个关闭这个功能的开关。

Because evolution never thought to build us an off switch for this.

语言对我们来说太有用，而且被极大地强化了。

Language is so useful, and it gets tuned up so strongly for us.

而且从来没有理由去关闭它。

And there was never a reason to shut it off.

也从来没有理由让你拥有这种能力，比如：现在能不能安静四个小时？

There was never a reason to give you this ability to say, wouldn't it be nice to have four hours of quiet now?

就像没有内心独白？

Like no self talk?

对大多数人来说，我认为有些人由于某种神经学原因或个性差异——毫无疑问这背后有神经学原因——根本没有任何内心独白。

And so for most of us, I think there are people who, for whatever neurological reason or idiosyncratic reason, undoubtedly there'd be a neurological reason for it, don't have any self talk.

但对我们大多数人而言，我们几乎一直在默默地自言自语。

But for most of us, we are covertly talking basically all the time.

对许多人来说，这其中还包含一种形象化的成分。

And there's an imagistic component of this for many people.

你也在脑海中想象着各种画面。

You're visualizing things as well.

但脑海中充斥着大量白噪音，这种感觉很特别。

But there's just a ton of white noise in the mind that feels a certain way.

你最终在冥想中发现，自我就是那种在不知自己正在思考时的思考感受。

And what you discover in meditation ultimately is that the self is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you're thinking.

对吧？

Right?

一个念头未经审视便出现，仿佛突然就成了你。

A thought arises uninspected and seems to just become you.

所以现在我和你在交谈，而人们正在听我们说话。

So you and I are talking now, and people are listening to us.

他们努力跟上我们对话的思路，却要与脑海中正在进行的对话竞争注意力。

They're struggling to follow the train of this conversation because competing with the conversation that's happening in their heads.

我会说些什么，而听的人心里却想：这到底是什么意思？

So I'll be saying something and a person listening will say, well, what does that mean?

或者：哦，他刚才自相矛盾了。

Or like, oh, just contradicted himself.

你的脑海中总有一个声音，时常在争夺你的注意力。

And there's a voice in your head that is also vying for your attention much of the time.

因此，人们在冥想中首先发现的是，要专注于任何事物——无论是呼吸、咒语还是声音——都异常困难，因为你一直在思考。

So the first discovery people make in meditation is that it's just so hard to pay attention to anything, the breath or a mantra or a sound, whatever it is, because you're thinking.

你在想着一小时后需要做的事情。

You're thinking about the thing you need to do in an hour.

哦，我下载这个应用真是太好了。

And oh, it's so good that I downloaded this app.

我觉得这真的很好。

I'm like, this is really good.

这对我会很有帮助。

This is going be good for me.

但那些杂念并没有出现。

But that chatter isn't showing up.

你还没有退回到意识剧场的足够远处，无法看到它浮现。

You're not far back enough in the theater of consciousness so as to see it emerge.

它只是悄悄从你身后冒出来，让你感觉又回到了自己。

It is just sneaking up behind you and it feels like me again.

当有人在想这个念头时，会感觉：这到底是什么意思？

It feels like, when someone is thinking the thought, what the hell does that mean?

对吧？

Right?

他们并没有将它视为意识中一个正在浮现的对象。

They're not seeing it as an emerging object in consciousness.

它只是感觉像我自己。

It just feels like me.

从主观上讲，心灵似乎围绕着意识中的这种显现而收缩。

Subjectively, it's like the mind contracts around this appearance in consciousness.

而它确实只是心灵声音的一种声音。

And it really is just a sound with the voice of the mind.

如果你真的能审视它，就会发现我们竟然会认同自己的想法，这实在是深不可测。

If you actually can inspect it, it is deeply inscrutable that we ever feel identified with our thoughts.

我的意思是，我们怎么可能是一个想法呢？

I mean, how is it that we could be a thought?

一个想法只是生起然后消逝。

A thought just arises and passes away.

当你去审视它时，当你试图去观察它，你会发现它逐渐解体了。

And when you inspect it, when you go to inspect it's, it, you know, it unravels.

它只是，它是最不实质的东西。

It's just, it's, it's the least substantial possible thing.

但它可能是一种自我憎恨的想法。

And it could, but yet it could be a thought of self hatred.

它可能是一种完全未被察觉却定义了你情绪的想法。

It could be a thought that unrecognized totally defines your mood.

我的意思是，这一切可能看起来有点抽象，但是

Like mean, again, this all can seem kind of abstract, but

不，但从我们稍后可能会回到的神经回路角度来看，这非常具体。

Well, no, but I think it's extremely concrete from the perspective of the neural circuits that we'll return to maybe in a few minutes.

你能稍微阐述一下内在 chatter 和外部刺激之间的联系吗？因为对一些人来说，这可能是直观的。

If you could elaborate a bit on this notion of internal chatter and external stimuli and the bridge between them, because that's, I think that for some people that might be intuitive.

对其他人来说，语言持续存在于背景中这一点可能并不那么明显。

I think for others, it's not so obvious that language is ongoing in the backdrop.

对的

Right,

是的。

yeah.

因为有时候，我认为有些人更能察觉到这种内在语言。

Because sometimes, I think some people are more tuned into that language.

对某些人来说，这种声音更大。

For some people, it's louder volume.

对某些人来说，这种语言更有条理。

For some people, it's more structured.

我有一位在斯坦福的同事，曾上过这个播客，叫卡尔·戴瑟罗特，他是顶尖的生物工程师之一。

I have a colleague at Stanford who's been on this podcast, Carl Dyseroth, who's like one of the preeminent bioengineers.

他同时也是一名精神科医生，但他不把这称为冥想练习。

He's also a psychiatrist, he doesn't call it a meditative practice.

他有一个习惯，每天晚上在五个孩子都睡着后——现在他们更大了，

He has a practice where each evening after his five kids are put down They're to sleep, you older now.

在深夜或清晨的宁静中，他会坐下来，强迫自己用完整的句子、带标点符号思考整整一个小时。

And in the quiet of the late hours of the night, early morning, he sits and forces himself to think in complete sentences with punctuation for an hour.

他就是这样训练自己有条理地思考的，原因正是你所描述的：通常，内在思维本身是有潜在结构的，但会被外部事件打乱，通常不够连贯，难以真正形成意义。

This is the way that he has taught himself to structure his thinking because of the very fact that you're describing, which is that ordinarily, there is an underlying structure to what's internal, but it's disrupted by external events and typically it's not coherent enough to really make meaning from.

这就像是有人坐下来用完整的句子写作，但强迫自己这样做——对很多人，包括我自己来说，这是一种陌生的体验。

So it's almost like somebody sitting down to write in complete sentences, but forcing But himself to do it in his for many people, including myself, that's a foreign experience.

我们只有通过与世界和他人的互动，才能体验到这种结构。

And we only experience structure through our interactions with the world and other people.

如果我花时间尝试闭着眼睛探索想法，我确实能做到。

That if I were, I've taken the time to try and explore ideas with eyes closed, and I've been able to do that.

有一些药理状态，我们可以讨论一下，它们能促进这种状态。

There are certain pharmacologic states that we could talk about that facilitate that.

不，那些不是安非他命。

And no, those are not amphetamines.

顺便说一句，它们的作用恰恰相反。

Do exactly the opposite, by the way.

但我觉得，人们在内在对话的结构化与非结构化程度上各不相同，在对这种内在对话的觉察深度上也各有差异。

But I think people exist in varying degrees of structured and unstructured internal dialogue and in varying depths of recognition of that internal dialogue.

所以我想问的是，仅仅意识到内心正在进行一场对话，这种觉察本身是否有价值？

And so the question I suppose is, is just the recognition that there's a dialogue ongoing internally, is that itself valuable?

是的，而且这也需要一些时间。

Yeah, and that also can take some time.

我想提出一个可能让一些人感到惊讶的主张，但我认为这是关于大多数人主观体验的一个客观真实陈述：除非你接受了相当多的训练，或者恰好是这一领域的天才（而根据定义，大多数人并不是），或者你在所谓的冥想专注训练中拥有非凡的积累，否则我相信这个说法是成立的——如果我们只是把一个秒表放在桌上，让人们盯着它看，时间的流逝会变得难以察觉。

Here's a claim I would make that some people might find surprising, but I think this is an objectively true claim about the subjectivity of most people, which is that unless you have a fair amount of training, unless you just happen to be some kind of savant in this area, which most people by definition aren't, or you have a remarkable amount of training in what's called concentration practice in meditation, I believe this is a true claim that if we just put a stopwatch on this table and people could just watch it, seconds elapse.

我给所有听众和观众布置一个任务：接下来的三十秒，专注于任何事物——你的呼吸、你的手、时钟，或任何物体，但不要迷失在思绪中，不要被你与自己进行的这场对话暂时分散注意力。

And I set all of our listeners or viewers the task, for the next thirty seconds, just pay attention to anything, your breath, you know, or the sight of your hand or the sight of the clock or any object without getting lost in thought, without getting momentarily distracted by this conversation you're having with yourself.

会有几件事情发生。

A couple of things would happen.

第一，没有人能完成这个任务。

One is no one would be able to do it.

对吧？

Right?

这不仅仅是一种表面的无力感。

And this is not just a superficial inability.

我的意思是，如果这关系到你的生死，你根本做不到。

I mean, if your life's dependent on it, you wouldn't be able to do it.

我的意思是，如果文明的存亡都取决于此，我们的所有听众都做不到这一点。

I mean, if the fate of civilization depended on it, none of our listeners would be able to do this.

然而，有一部分人太被思绪分散注意力了，以至于他们真的尝试这个实验时，还以为自己成功了。

And yet some percentage of them are so distracted by thought that they will actually try this experiment and think they succeeded.

对吧？

Right?

对于这些人来说，当你让他们参加冥想静修，每天十二小时保持沉默，只做这件事，会发生什么？

And for these people, what happens is you put them on a meditation retreat, and you have them spend twelve hours a day in silence doing nothing but this, right?

所以练习就是，坐着时专注于呼吸，然后最终，你会把声音和其他感觉都纳入其中。

So the practice is just pay attention to the breath when they're sitting, and then eventually, you know, you incorporate everything, sounds and other sensations.

接着，你会结合行禅，让他们专注于抬脚、移动和放脚时的感官体验。

And then you interleave that with walking meditation, where they're paying attention just to the sensations of lifting and moving and placing their feet.

一旦练习进入状态，就再把声音、视觉和其他一切感官体验都融入其中。

And then once the practice is going, incorporate sounds and sights and everything.

所以你可以关注一切。

So you can pay attention to everything.

但目标是，在每一刻，你都要培养这种被称为正念的心理能力，对吧？

But the goal is for every moment, you are going to cultivate this faculty of mind, which increasingly is known as mindfulness, right?

而正念不过是对此刻意识内容的极度专注。

And mindfulness is nothing other than this very careful attention to the contents of consciousness.

但关键在于，这并不是陷入思绪的时刻，对吧？

But the crucial piece is it is not a moment of being lost in thought, right?

你并不是在压抑想法。

You're not blocking thoughts.

想法本身是可以出现的。

Thoughts themselves can arise.

但在真正保持正念的时刻，你会觉察到想法只是想法。

But But in those moments of being truly mindful, you're noticing thoughts as thoughts.

无论是内心的言语还是图像，你都会觉察到它们是意识中自发出现的现象。

Whether it's language in the mind or images, you're noticing those two as spontaneous appearances in consciousness.

大多数人都认为自己能集中注意力，他们肯定能成功完成我刚刚建议的实验——在三十秒内专注于某件事而不走神。但当你把这些人在静修营中，他们会发现，在第一天，他们会感觉：哦，是的，我曾与呼吸同在，与行走时的身体感觉同在。

Most So people, certainly anyone who thinks they can pay attention, they can do the experiment successfully that I just suggested, pay attention to something for thirty seconds without being lost in thought, You put those people on a meditation retreat, what they're going to experience is, on the first day, they're going to feel like, oh yeah, was with the breath, I was with the sensations of walking.

我会持续专注五分钟，然后就走神了，接着再回来。

And I'd be there for five minutes, solid, and then I would get lost in thought, then I'd come back.

再过五分钟，我又会走神，然后再回来。

Five more minutes I'd be lost in thought and I'd get back.

但随着一天天过去，即使在静修营里待了十天，他们也会经历越来越多的分心。

But as the day has progressed, even ten days into a silent meditation retreat, they're going to experience more and more distraction.

他们会感觉：等等，不对劲。

It's going to seem like, okay, wait a minute.

现在我连五秒钟都无法专注在任何事情上了。

Now I can't pay attention to anything for more than five seconds.

这才是进步。

That is progress.

因为他们发现的正是自己有多么容易分心，对吧？

Because what they're discovering is just how distractible they are, right?

对于一些人来说，这一点会立刻很明显，而对于另一些人，则需要大量练习才能意识到自己有多容易分心。

And, you know, for some people that will be immediately obvious, for some people it'll actually take a lot of practice to realize just how distracted they are.

你刚才说的，就是我们最终能开始觉察到自己的想法。

What you just said, which was that at some point we can start noticing our thoughts.

我能觉察到我的想法，但你所指的目标状态并不是不被想法干扰，而是真正看清想法、自我与其他类型感知之间的关系。

I can notice my thoughts, but what you're talking about is, as a goal state, is not being distracted by thoughts, but actually seeing the relationship between thoughts, self, and other types of perceptions.

在这里，我认为识别和觉察想法本身就是一种感知。

And here, I think recognizing and seeing thoughts is a form of perception.

一种向内指向的感知。

Just an internally directed perception.

这引出了另一个我也非常着迷的话题，我认为神经科学可以部分解释，但依然不完整——那就是时间感知。

This raises a topic that I'm also obsessed by, which I think neuroscience can somewhat explain, but still incompletely, that the circuits and mechanics, etcetera, are not yet known, which is about time perception.

举个简单的类比：我们进行这场对话的空间里，有许多微小物体在飞舞，但它们移动得太快，我无法感知；或者它们完全静止，因此我也无法感知，原因正如我们之前在视觉系统中讨论过的那样。

And, you know, a simple analogy would be that there are a lot of small objects flying around in the space that we happen to be having this discussion, but they're moving so fast that I can't perceive them, or they're entirely stationary, so I can't perceive them because of the reasons we talked about before in the visual system.

我的眼睛与这些微小物体的运动完美同步，因此我完全察觉不到它们的存在。

My eyes are moving in perfect concert with these small object movements, and therefore I am blind to them.

对。

Right.

时间感知的轻微变化，可以把这想象成帧率的改变，对吧？

A slight shift in time perception, think of this perhaps as a change in the frame rate, right?

摄像机的帧率，帧率越高，就能捕捉到慢动作；帧率越低，就会产生更明显的闪屏效果，如果帧率足够低的话。

Camera frame rates, faster frame rate, you can capture slow motion, slower frame rate, you're going to get more of a strobe type effect if the frame rate is low enough.

对。

Right.

对吗？

Right?

我们的时序感知会不会并不是单一的？比如，对于一定距离的外部物体，我们有一个感知时间的速率，这一点我们知道是成立的。

Could it be that our time perception is not one thing, but we have one rate of perceiving time for external objects at a given distance, which we know is true.

对于近距离的物体，又有另一个帧率，这一点我们也知道是成立的，即使这些物体的移动速度完全相同，对吧？

Another frame rate for objects that are up close, we know this to be true, even if those objects are moving at the exact same speed, right?

我的意思是，就像坐在火车上，围栏的栅栏近处看起来飞速掠过，而远处的则显得缓慢移动。

I mean, this would be the sitting on a train, the rungs on the fence seem to be going by very, very fast, but the ones in the distance seem to be moving slowly.

这表明视觉系统与时间感知在某种程度上是相互关联的。

This is the way the visual system and time perception interconnect at some level.

你站在摩天大楼上，看到下面蚂蚁般的汽车和行人，你知道它们实际移动得比你感知到的要快得多，但这是一种距离效应。

You're up on a skyscraper, the little ants of cars and people down below, you know they're moving much faster than you perceive them to move, but it's a distance effect.

我的意思是，你看到一架飞机，它可能以每小时300英里的速度飞行。

I mean, you see a plane, it's could be going 300 miles an hour.

没错。

Exactly.

这并不是因为分辨率不足。

And it's not because of the lack of resolution.

分辨率不足只是附带现象。

The lack of resolution is incidental.

我们知道这一点，因为像鹰这样的动物，它们的视觉敏锐度是我们的好几倍，但据我们所知，它们同样存在与距离相关的时间感知变化。

We know this because in animals such as hawks that have twice the degree of acuity, as far as we know, they have the same distance associated shifts in time perception.

那么，是否可能我们同时运行着多条时间感知流，包含对思维的多种注意力锥体？而通过冥想，我们开始协调这些不同注意力流的帧率，使它们全部同步，就像一部电影一样——尽管这并不仅仅涉及视觉内容。

So could it be that we are running multiple streams of time perception, multiple cones of attention that include cones of attention to our thoughts, and that somehow through meditation, we start to align the frame rate for these different streams of attention so that they the same all fall movie, if you will, although it's not just a movie with visual content.

我在这里所做的，显然是在成为‘合并者’而不是‘细分者’。

What I'm doing here is clearly I'm becoming a lumper rather than a splitter.

我确信这违背了某些关于时间感知和神经回路的规则，但我也不能确定它完全错误。

I'm sure this violates certain rules of time perception and neural circuitry, but I'm not sure that it's entirely untrue either.

这是否仍然可以作为你所描述现象的一个可能模型？

And does it survive at all as a possible model for what you're describing?

如果答案是否定的，我也完全接受，好吧，

And if the answer is no, I'm perfectly comfortable with Well,

这取决于你所说的‘冥想’是什么意思。

it's dependent on what you mean by meditation.

这里的关键在于，你在冥想框架下如何具体运用你的注意力，这些细节至关重要。

This is where you sort of, the particularities of what one is doing with one's attention under the frame of meditation really matter.

因为有些冥想方式，特别是正念练习，确实会让你的感知帧率大幅提升。

Because there are ways to practice where, practice mindfulness in particular, where the frame rate really does seem to go way, way up.

对吧？

Right?

实际上，已经有一些研究在这方面展开：研究人员在人们参加为期三个月的静默冥想静修前后，给他们做一些视觉辨别任务，比如让他们检测我认为他们使用的是光闪仪。

And there's actually been some research done on this where you take people before and after a three month silent meditation retreat, and you give them some kind of visual discrimination task where they have to detect I think they used kistoscope.

那是用来呈现极快速光脉冲的工具吗？

Is that the tool for something that presents very quick pulses of light.

无论如何，在任何感官通道中，你都可以进行更精细的辨别——如果你以一种非常特定的方式练习正念，即不断进行这些精细辨别，且三个月内不做其他任何事，这本身就是一种修行方式。

And in any case, you can discriminate just in any sensory channel, would imagine, you can make finer grain discriminations if you're practicing mindfulness in a very specific way, which is to be making these fine grained discriminations more and more and do nothing else for three months, which is a way of practicing.

因此，被称为内观冥想的经典正念练习，就是以极其细致的方式关注看、听、闻、尝、触，将一切体验分解为这种微观的感官瞬间。

So the classic mindfulness practice in what's called Vipassana meditation is to pay scrupulous attention to seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching in a way that breaks everything down into this kind of microscopic sensory moment.

所以，你不是去感受双手相贴，而是用注意力去体会越来越细微的压力、温度和运动感，以至于‘双手’的整体感觉完全消失了。

So rather than feel your hands pressing together, what you're trying to feel with your attention and you're feeling more and more is all of the micro sensations of pressure and temperature and movement such that the feeling of hands completely disappears.

你会意识到，‘手’只是一个概念，你真正体验到的只是一团短暂而零散的感官信号。

You realize that a hand is a concept, and all you have is this cloud of punctate and very brief sensations.

因此，任何你认为是经验基本单元的东西，当你用注意力深入探究时，它都会分解成这种若隐若现、不断变化的感官云团。

And so anything you think you have as a datum of experience, as you bore into it with your attention, it resolves into this kind of diaphanous cloud of changing sensation.

甚至像身体中剧烈的疼痛这样极具吸引力的体验，也是如此。

And that can be even something that is as captivating as like a serious pain in your body.

我的意思是，你可能伤到了脖子，你知道的，于是脖子出现剧烈的疼痛。

Mean, you could have injured your neck, you know, and so you have some excruciating pain in your neck.

如果你愿意去关注它，全神贯注地感受它，就会发生两件事。

If you just are willing to pay attention to it, you know, and just pay 100% attention to it, a couple of things happen.

第一，你对这种疼痛的抗拒感会自然消失，因为你的目标只是去觉察它。

One is your resistance to feeling it goes away by definition, because now your goal is to just pay attention to it.

你会意识到，疼痛带来的大部分痛苦其实源于你抗拒去感受它。

And you recognize that so much of the suffering associated with the pain was born of the resistance to feeling it.

你一直在抗拒它，还在不断思考它。

You're kind of bracing against it and all of your thinking about it.

你会想，我为什么要这样对待自己？

You know, you're thinking like, why did I do this to myself?

我该不该去看骨科医生？

Should I see an orthopedist?

这种疼痛会持续多久？

How long is this going to last?

也许我椎间盘突出了一下。

And maybe I herniated a disc.

所有这些自我对话都在制造焦虑。

Like all of that self talk is producing anxiety.

我不是说那里从来没有什么值得思考的，但要么你此刻能做点什么，要么就不能。

And I'm not saying there's never anything to think about there, but either you can do something about it in the moment or you can't.

我们在疼痛面前的许多痛苦，都源于抗拒它、担心它，以及我们头脑中所做的一切，但仅仅是去感受它，对吧？

And so much of our suffering in the presence of pain is the result of resisting it, worrying about it, just everything we're doing with our minds, but just feeling it, right?

所以当你只是去感受它时，它会分解成不断变化的各种感觉集合。

So when you just feel it, again, it breaks apart into this ever shifting collection of different sensations.

它不是单一的东西，也永远不会保持不变。

And it's not one thing and it never stays the same.

因此，那里会发生两件事。

So two things happen there.

一是可能会产生极大的解脱感，即使在面对非常不愉快的身体感觉时，你也能达到一种平静的状态。

One is there can be a tremendous amount of relief that happens there where you can achieve a level of equanimity even in the presence of really unpleasant physical sensation.

这种现象同样适用于心理感受和情绪。

And this is true of mental sensation as well as true of emotions.

那些传统上被视为负面的情绪，比如愤怒、抑郁或恐惧。

The classically negative emotions like anger, depression, or fear.

一旦你愿意去感受它们所有短暂且不断变化的特质，它们就不再是刚才的那个样子了。

The moment you become willing to just feel them in all of their punctate and changeable qualities, they cease to be what they were a moment ago.

当你谈论情绪状态时，它们不再以同样的方式与你和你的自我概念产生关联。

And when you're talking about emotional states, they cease to map back onto you and your self-concept as meaningful in the same way.

突然间，你感受到的焦虑——比如在上台演讲之前——片刻之前还具有心理意义。

That suddenly, the anxiety you feel, let's say before going out on stage to give a talk, a moment ago, it had psychological meaning.

它让你觉得：好吧，我感到焦虑，我该怎么摆脱它？

It felt like, okay, I'm anxious, how do I get rid of this?

我为什么会是这样的人？

Why am I this sort of person?

我是不是该吃一片β受体阻滞剂？

Should I have taken a beta blocker?

这是你与自己进行的对话。

Is the conversation you're having with yourself.

一旦你愿意将它视为皮质醇释放时纯粹的生理能量，它就不再具有任何意义。

The moment you just become willing to feel it as the pure energy of the physiology of cortisol release, it ceases to have any meaning.

在那一刻，它不再是一个问题，因为它不再像消化不良或膝盖疼痛那样，与你是怎样的人挂钩。

It ceases to be a problem in that moment because it no more maps onto the kind of person you are than a feeling of indigestion or a pain in your knee maps onto the kind of person you are.

它只是感觉。

It's just sensation.

无论如何，回到重点：如果你以这种方式训练你的注意力，去留意感官体验和情绪体验的细节，寻找体验的‘原子’，你会越来越擅长这一点，并且会有一些变化发生。

Anyway, back to the main point here, which is that if you train your attention in this way to notice the particularities of sensory experience and emotional experience, you're looking for the atoms of experience, you get better and better at that and certain things happen.

但我确实认为会发生的一件事是，你的数据流出现了一种‘帧率’的变化，你真正能注意到更多、更多细节。

But one thing that I really do think happens is there's a kind of frame rate change in the data stream where you really are just, you're just noticing much, much more.

所有这些都是一种非常有趣的训练方式。

All of that is a very interesting way of training.

但这并不是我现在通常会推荐的做法。

It's not what I tend to recommend now.

这是一项极好的预备练习，有助于理解我所推荐的做法，因为它让你真正体会到陷入思绪与不陷入思绪之间的区别。

It's a great preliminary practice for what I do recommend because it gives you, it really teaches you the difference between being lost in thought and not.

它真正让你明白了正念是什么。

It really teaches you what mindfulness is.

但绝大多数人（99.9%）都是以二元对立的方式进行的，也就是说，你被训练成认为：我在这里，是注意力的中心，而思绪总是不断分散我的注意力。

But it tends to be done by 99.9% of people in a dualistic way, which again, you're set up to think, okay, I'm over here as the locus of attention, and I'm continually getting distracted by thought.

你的目标是不再这样，而是真正关注呼吸、声音和身体感觉。

And the project is to not do that anymore and actually pay attention to the breath and sounds and sensations.

每次我迷失在思绪中，我就重新回到这里。

And every time I get lost in thought, I'm going go back to here.

但这种‘我迷失在思绪中，现在我又策略性地引导注意力’的整个过程，似乎都在强化一种自我感——仿佛有一个主体在执行这一切。

But this whole dance of I'm lost in thought, now I'm strategically directing my attention again, all of this seems to ramify this sense of self, the sense of there's one to be doing this.

有一个主体在掌控注意力的聚光灯，并不断练习回到冥想的对象上。

There's somebody holding the spotlight of attention and getting better at coming back to the object of meditation.

毫无疑问，99.9%的人会从这里开始，并在此停留相当长的一段时间。

Again, it's inevitable that ninety nine point nine percent of people are going to start there and stay there for some considerable period of time.

但当我谈论这一切时，我最喜欢的做法是尽早打破支撑这一切的错误假设。

But the thing I like to do when I talk about all of this is undercut the false assumptions that are anchoring all of that as early as possible.

因为我认为你真正应该达到的是意识到，根本不存在一个可以瞄准注意力的立足点。

Because where I think you want to be is recognizing that there is no place from which to aim attention.

这种主客二元的结构，其实本来就不存在。

This whole dualistic setup of subject and object is the thing that is already not there.

并不是说它存在，而你通过冥想成功地把它消除了。

And it's not that it's there and you meditate it out of existence successfully.

它真的根本就不存在。

It's really not there.

如果你学会如何去寻找它，你就能看到它不存在，并感受到它不存在。

And if you learn how to look for it, you can see that it's not there and feel that it's not there.

它不再显得存在了。

And it no longer seems to be there.

对吧？

Right?

就好像它不存在一样，而这种情况又像一种双稳态知觉，当你凝视足够久后，你会觉得：好吧，我现在看到花瓶和人脸了。

It's like it's not And it becomes, again, like a bistable percept, where you looked at it long enough and you thought, Okay, now I see the vase and the face.

我再也无法视而不见了。

I can't unsee it.

每次我一看，它又出现了。

And every time I look, it's there again.

是的。

So, yeah.

所以回到你提到的斯坦福那位同事的例子，我知道我有他的那本书，但我还没读。

So to come back to the example you gave with your colleague at Stanford, whose book I know I have, I haven't read it.

他写了一本书，叫《投射》，对吧？

He wrote a book, Projections, right?

德塞罗思，对吧？

Deseroth, yeah?

所以它还堆在我要读的书堆里。

So it's on my stack to read.

恰恰相反。

It's the opposite.

我所推荐的，本质上是他所进行的那种内在练习的相反极端。

What I'm recommending is essentially the opposite end of the continuum of the sort of internal exercise he was doing.

所以，与其说他做的是非常刻意且可控的事情，刻意地用完整句子思考，并以一种我想象的方式掌控思维和注意力的机制——我的意思是，我很想和他聊聊这个，但我猜他真的觉得自己在这么做，对吧？

So rather than, so he's doing something very deliberate and controlled and he is deliberately thinking in complete sentences and kind of commandeering the machinery of thought and attention in a way that I would imagine, I mean, I'd be interested to talk to him about it, but I would imagine he really feels like he's doing that, right?

他正在

There's He's

是一名工程师。

an engineer.

按照你这样描述，让我想起，他虽然是医生，但也是一名工程师。

As you describe it in this way, it reminds me, he's a physician, but he's also an engineer.

这实际上是把思维的原始材料加工成有结构的东西。

It's really about taking the raw materials of thought and engineering something structured from it.

想想看，对。

Think Right.

我从未进入过卡尔的内心。

I haven't been in Carl's mind.

是的，但如果我们让他谈谈这个，我相信我们能感受到，是的，那种

Yeah, but if we got him talking on that, I'm sure we would get a sense Yes, of what

我们会在某个时候进行这场对话。

we'll do that conversation at some point.

与你所描述的完全相反。

The exact opposite of what

你所描述的。

you're describing.

完全相反的是，要认识到那种控制感是一种彻底的幻觉。

The exact opposite would be to recognize that the sense of control is a total illusion.

因为你根本不知道下一步会想什么。

Because you don't know what you're going to think next.

即使是他，以最费力的方式，也无论多么努力地锻炼这种控制力。

And even he, in the most laborious way, he could just get as muscular as he wants with it.