读书笔记 |《瓦尔登湖》生活方式篇
以下文章选自《Iris Huang》
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当下时兴的各种北欧、法国、日本的生活提案小书无疑是对物质发展到一定程度的某种回应,以上生活方式所蕴含的共同点包含“少即是多”(Less is More),回归简单、质朴、精神丰富的生活思想。好像还没有中国生活方式这么一说,不过,当旧有观念与生命真实需求冲突时,它一定会不断地激发人们思考——当如何生活,为何而生活。如果说,一部分旧有价值是外部社会带给我们的,新价值则是需要去思考、实践、建立。放眼历史长河,新价值并非一定是真正意义上的新价值,早有人们走过那条路,只是人迹罕至罢了。
梭罗算是近代简单生活的鼻祖之一,初看《瓦尔登湖》,这书名会给人一种沉闷与无聊感,一个人离群索居,在湖边靠自己生活两年,能有什么故事呢?读下来则会发现梭罗在这两年中积极的生命观,以及他直戳本质的犀利,时不时还来点儿暗喻和反讽。梭罗其实是个挺实际的人,直面理想生活的现实问题。书中他事无巨细地把造房、农事、衣服、燃料的清单花费列出,以佐证他心目中理想生活的可行性,颇具文学匠人的科学精神。文字以第一人称展开,一一回应今天的人们同样关心的问题,诚实,无矫揉造作,也不惧怕啰嗦。这使得《瓦尔登湖》在内容上具备了某种简练、凝聚的美感,它剥离了事物各式各样虚幻的表象,探讨必要的核心问题。一个湖,一栋房子,一个勇于实践的人,一颗沉静的心,以一种自给自足的方式在自然中生活,流淌出每一天的新知。
这个实验始于这样一个问题:“什么是人生的宗旨,什么是生活真正的必需?” 当时正值19世纪上半叶,美国正处于由农业时代向工业时代转型的初始阶段。书中描述大部分农民的生活状态是:需不停地劳作至终身才能换取房产,大部分人生活在一种被梭罗形容为“沉默的绝望"的状态中——“甚至在所谓的游戏与娱乐底下,都隐藏着一种凝固的、不知又不觉的绝望”。与此同时,旧有的观念束缚着人们的内心,好像这样的生活方式是理所当然,梭罗想要树立并践行新的价值,他相信:“人人附和或以为不妨默认的真理,很可能在明天变成虚无缥缈的氤氲,抛弃偏见永远都不迟!”因此,他迫不及待想要探索生活的绝对价值,并将其转化为自身经验。
除非保证食物、住宅、衣服和燃料,否则无法自由地面对真正的人生问题。梭罗的第一步,就是在考虑这些问题。既然考虑,也要深思熟虑一番,他做的是凝练和减法,删去社会环境在这些必需上加诸的不必要的欲望,并试图阐述和实践其背后更高的规律。
在进入这些篇幅之前,我们进一步看看梭罗的内在动机,他并没有太多在书中去直接表述他的动机,但我找到了几个很有意思的譬喻,并稍加总结,我们一起看一下原文。
时间易逝、惜时与自我改善
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too, to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment, to toe that line. (P17)
任何气候任何时辰中,我都希望及时改善我当前的状况,还要在手杖上刻下记号;过去和未来的交叉点正是现在,我就站在这个起点上。(P14)
寻找失物——美好脱俗的宝藏
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. (P18)
很久以前我丢失了一条猎犬、一匹栗色马和一只斑鸠,至今我还在追踪它们。我对许多旅客描述它们的情况、踪迹以及它们会响应怎样的召唤。我曾遇到一二人,他们曾听见犬吠声、马蹄音,甚至还看到斑鸠隐入云中。他们也急于追寻它们回来,像是他们自己遗失了它们。(P14)
深信自己文字的价值,哪怕无法出售,他也不会停笔
A strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the home of a well-known lawyer. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked, "No, we do not want any." "What?" exclaimed the Indian, "do you mean to starve us?" Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his parts. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them.
I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. (P20)
一个闲步的印第安人到以为著名律师家兜售篮子,“你们要买篮子吗?”他说。回答是“不,我们不要”“什么!”印第安人叫到,“你们想要饿死我们吗?” 他以为编织篮子就完成了他的那一份,他却不知道他必须使人感到购买他的篮子是值得的。
我也曾编织了一种精巧的篮子,我并没有编造得使人感到值得购买它。我一点也不觉得我犯不着编织它们,非但没有去研究如何编织地使人们觉得更加值得购买,我倒是研究了如何可以避免这买卖。(P16)
这三个小段落从侧面反映了他展开瓦尔登湖这一生活实验的内驱力。那么,接下来他是如何展开林中生活,在准备的期间又产生怎样了的见解呢?我们摘取必需品中的衣服、房屋,以及其他部分中的教育、慈善这几块来看看。
衣服篇
If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes, All man want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be, perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirthy the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailded in someway. that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives, the loon retires to solitarty ponds to spend its. thus also the snake casts its slough, and caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. (P25)
人之所需,并不是要做些事,而是要有所为,或者说,需有所是。也许我们是永远不必添置新衣服的,不论旧衣服已如何破敝和肮脏,除非我们已经这般生活了,或经营了,或已向着什么而航行了,在我们这古老的躯壳里已有着新的生机了,那时若还是依然故我,便有旧瓶装新酒之感了。换羽毛的季节必然是我们生命中一个大转折点,潜鸟换羽,蛇脱皮,毛虫蛹化出茧,人脱胎换骨,都是内心孜孜扩展的结果。(P20)
现今距梭罗所处的时代已有158年,这是一个更推崇个性的时代,衣服自然成为个性的重要表达的方式之一。现代时尚的内涵也愈发变得要与人内在相结合,即内外一体。梭罗着重表达的是“内”的部分,一个人当先强健他的精神,不断自我更新,遵循由内而外的顺序,因此即便是旧躯壳,若充满了新的生机,也有旧瓶装新酒之感。他建议,如果你有什么事业要去做,可以先穿上旧衣服试试看,即从内在开始耕耘。
房屋篇
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With comsummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort an d independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. And when the farmer has got his hourse, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him...Civilization has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greateer part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? (P35)
农夫们常想用比问题本身更复杂的方式,来解决生活的问题。为了需要他的鞋带,他投机在畜牧之中,他用熟练的技巧,用细弹簧布置好一个陷阱,想捉到安逸和独立性,他正要拔脚走开,不料他自己的一只脚落进陷阱里去了。等到农夫得到了他的房屋,他并没有因此就更富,倒是更穷了,因为房屋占有了他...文明造出了皇宫,可是要造出贵族和国王却没那么容易。如果文明人所追求的并不比野蛮人追求的来得更高贵些,如果他们把大部分时间都只是用来获得粗鄙的必需品和舒适的生活,那么他何必要有比野蛮人更好的住房呢?(P30)
在房屋篇,我们看看梭罗展开讨论的脉络:他先从原始人类的天性谈起,人类还在婴孩期时,进取心很强的人类爬进岩穴去找荫蔽,这爱户外的基因一直延续到今天的小孩。接着,房屋的构筑经过一系列变迁,到最后人类已变得完全室内化。可是,对比野蛮人和动物,由于价格高昂,现代文明社会只有半数家庭才有房屋。
接着,他先提出一个假设前提,如果“文明乃是人的生活条件的一种真正改进,那么,它必然证明,它不提高价钱就把更好的房屋建造起来”,而事实是——“要买一幢房子,通常需要耗费一个劳动者大半辈子生命。” 因此,他指出文明人与野蛮人之间的重要区别为:“有人给文明人设计了一套制度,无疑是为了我们的好处,这套制度为了保存种族的生活,能使种族的生活更臻完美,却大大牺牲了个人生活。” 梭罗希望去做的是指出“为了这个好处,我们目前做出什么样的牺牲,还要建议,我们可以不用做出任何牺牲就得到很多好处”。他不希望人们本末倒置,沦为工具的工具。
教育篇
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful...I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, which the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? (P53)
学生得到了他贪求的空闲与休息,他们根据制度,逃避了人类必需的任何劳动,得到的只是无益的空闲,而能使这种空闲变为丰富收获的那种经验,他们却全没学到。我主张他们不应该以生活为游戏,或仅仅以生活作研究,还要人类社会花高代价供养他们,他们应该自始至终,热忱地生活。除非青年人立刻进行生活的实践,他们怎能有更好的方法来学习生活呢?(P45)
梭罗推崇实践。真正“学会学习”,很多时候并不是在学校发生的,它源于一个主动的动机,背后包含着对世界的好奇与热爱,通过直面未知、探索、尝试、失败、反复的过程去深入事物的内部,直至经验它的全部。当有了真正“学会学习”的能力,一切事物皆充满可能性,而外在看似存在的限制或阻碍也将不复存在了。
慈善篇
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves, Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks, I want the flower and fruit of man, that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconsious this is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff greids as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy, We should impart our courage and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease.(P79)
我并不欲从慈善应得的赞美中减去什么,我只要求公平,对一切有利于人类的生命与工作应一视同仁。我不以为一个人的正直和慈善是主要的价值,它们不过是他的枝枝叶叶,那种枝叶,褪去了叶绿素,做成了药茶给病人喝,就是它有了一些卑微的用处,多数是走四方的郎中用它们。我要的是人中的花朵和果实,让他的芬芳传递给我,让他的成熟的馨香在我们交接中熏陶我。他的良善不能是局部的,短暂的行为,而是常持的富足有余,他的施与于他无损,于他自己,也无所知。这是一种将万恶隐藏起来的慈善。慈善家经常记着他要用自己散发出来的那种颓唐悲戚的气氛,来绕住人类,美其名曰同情心。我们应该传播给人类的是我们的勇气而不是我们的失望,是我们的健康与舒泰,而不是我们的病容。(P70)
这段梭罗要表达的是:真正的慈善是成为更好的自己,在潜移默化中为他人带去芬芳,且与己无所知,而绝非将自身价值观强加诸于他人身上,甚至散发出悲戚的气氛,并美其名曰“同情心”。每个人身上都有光,我们应该散发出这种光。
最后,梭罗也补充到,请不要一味的仿效他的生活方式哦,因为之后他可能还会变!他希望每个人都能走出自己的路来——“谨慎地找出并坚持他自己合适的方式,人是聪明的,我们也许不能够在一个预定的时日到达目的港,但我们总可以走在一条真正的航线上!”
好的,今天的分享就到这儿。这篇读书笔记主要源自读《瓦尔登湖》的第一、二、十一章节的大致整理。其他关于森林生活的章节,还未作梳理,期待未来对自然有更深度的体验。
— End —
参考资料:
1. 梭罗《瓦尔登湖》
2. Photos from internet
Be Original, Be Self-Made!
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Hi,终于等到你了,点击上方蓝字,关注“Iris Huang”。
Be Original, Be Self-Made!
当下时兴的各种北欧、法国、日本的生活提案小书无疑是对物质发展到一定程度的某种回应,以上生活方式所蕴含的共同点包含“少即是多”(Less is More),回归简单、质朴、精神丰富的生活思想。好像还没有中国生活方式这么一说,不过,当旧有观念与生命真实需求冲突时,它一定会不断地激发人们思考——当如何生活,为何而生活。如果说,一部分旧有价值是外部社会带给我们的,新价值则是需要去思考、实践、建立。放眼历史长河,新价值并非一定是真正意义上的新价值,早有人们走过那条路,只是人迹罕至罢了。
梭罗算是近代简单生活的鼻祖之一,初看《瓦尔登湖》,这书名会给人一种沉闷与无聊感,一个人离群索居,在湖边靠自己生活两年,能有什么故事呢?读下来则会发现梭罗在这两年中积极的生命观,以及他直戳本质的犀利,时不时还来点儿暗喻和反讽。梭罗其实是个挺实际的人,直面理想生活的现实问题。书中他事无巨细地把造房、农事、衣服、燃料的清单花费列出,以佐证他心目中理想生活的可行性,颇具文学匠人的科学精神。文字以第一人称展开,一一回应今天的人们同样关心的问题,诚实,无矫揉造作,也不惧怕啰嗦。这使得《瓦尔登湖》在内容上具备了某种简练、凝聚的美感,它剥离了事物各式各样虚幻的表象,探讨必要的核心问题。一个湖,一栋房子,一个勇于实践的人,一颗沉静的心,以一种自给自足的方式在自然中生活,流淌出每一天的新知。
这个实验始于这样一个问题:“什么是人生的宗旨,什么是生活真正的必需?” 当时正值19世纪上半叶,美国正处于由农业时代向工业时代转型的初始阶段。书中描述大部分农民的生活状态是:需不停地劳作至终身才能换取房产,大部分人生活在一种被梭罗形容为“沉默的绝望"的状态中——“甚至在所谓的游戏与娱乐底下,都隐藏着一种凝固的、不知又不觉的绝望”。与此同时,旧有的观念束缚着人们的内心,好像这样的生活方式是理所当然,梭罗想要树立并践行新的价值,他相信:“人人附和或以为不妨默认的真理,很可能在明天变成虚无缥缈的氤氲,抛弃偏见永远都不迟!”因此,他迫不及待想要探索生活的绝对价值,并将其转化为自身经验。
除非保证食物、住宅、衣服和燃料,否则无法自由地面对真正的人生问题。梭罗的第一步,就是在考虑这些问题。既然考虑,也要深思熟虑一番,他做的是凝练和减法,删去社会环境在这些必需上加诸的不必要的欲望,并试图阐述和实践其背后更高的规律。
在进入这些篇幅之前,我们进一步看看梭罗的内在动机,他并没有太多在书中去直接表述他的动机,但我找到了几个很有意思的譬喻,并稍加总结,我们一起看一下原文。
时间易逝、惜时与自我改善
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too, to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment, to toe that line. (P17)
任何气候任何时辰中,我都希望及时改善我当前的状况,还要在手杖上刻下记号;过去和未来的交叉点正是现在,我就站在这个起点上。(P14)
寻找失物——美好脱俗的宝藏
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. (P18)
很久以前我丢失了一条猎犬、一匹栗色马和一只斑鸠,至今我还在追踪它们。我对许多旅客描述它们的情况、踪迹以及它们会响应怎样的召唤。我曾遇到一二人,他们曾听见犬吠声、马蹄音,甚至还看到斑鸠隐入云中。他们也急于追寻它们回来,像是他们自己遗失了它们。(P14)
深信自己文字的价值,哪怕无法出售,他也不会停笔
A strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the home of a well-known lawyer. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked, "No, we do not want any." "What?" exclaimed the Indian, "do you mean to starve us?" Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his parts. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them.
I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. (P20)
一个闲步的印第安人到以为著名律师家兜售篮子,“你们要买篮子吗?”他说。回答是“不,我们不要”“什么!”印第安人叫到,“你们想要饿死我们吗?” 他以为编织篮子就完成了他的那一份,他却不知道他必须使人感到购买他的篮子是值得的。
我也曾编织了一种精巧的篮子,我并没有编造得使人感到值得购买它。我一点也不觉得我犯不着编织它们,非但没有去研究如何编织地使人们觉得更加值得购买,我倒是研究了如何可以避免这买卖。(P16)
这三个小段落从侧面反映了他展开瓦尔登湖这一生活实验的内驱力。那么,接下来他是如何展开林中生活,在准备的期间又产生怎样了的见解呢?我们摘取必需品中的衣服、房屋,以及其他部分中的教育、慈善这几块来看看。
衣服篇
If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes, All man want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be, perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirthy the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailded in someway. that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives, the loon retires to solitarty ponds to spend its. thus also the snake casts its slough, and caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. (P25)
人之所需,并不是要做些事,而是要有所为,或者说,需有所是。也许我们是永远不必添置新衣服的,不论旧衣服已如何破敝和肮脏,除非我们已经这般生活了,或经营了,或已向着什么而航行了,在我们这古老的躯壳里已有着新的生机了,那时若还是依然故我,便有旧瓶装新酒之感了。换羽毛的季节必然是我们生命中一个大转折点,潜鸟换羽,蛇脱皮,毛虫蛹化出茧,人脱胎换骨,都是内心孜孜扩展的结果。(P20)
现今距梭罗所处的时代已有158年,这是一个更推崇个性的时代,衣服自然成为个性的重要表达的方式之一。现代时尚的内涵也愈发变得要与人内在相结合,即内外一体。梭罗着重表达的是“内”的部分,一个人当先强健他的精神,不断自我更新,遵循由内而外的顺序,因此即便是旧躯壳,若充满了新的生机,也有旧瓶装新酒之感。他建议,如果你有什么事业要去做,可以先穿上旧衣服试试看,即从内在开始耕耘。
房屋篇
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With comsummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort an d independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. And when the farmer has got his hourse, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him...Civilization has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greateer part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? (P35)
农夫们常想用比问题本身更复杂的方式,来解决生活的问题。为了需要他的鞋带,他投机在畜牧之中,他用熟练的技巧,用细弹簧布置好一个陷阱,想捉到安逸和独立性,他正要拔脚走开,不料他自己的一只脚落进陷阱里去了。等到农夫得到了他的房屋,他并没有因此就更富,倒是更穷了,因为房屋占有了他...文明造出了皇宫,可是要造出贵族和国王却没那么容易。如果文明人所追求的并不比野蛮人追求的来得更高贵些,如果他们把大部分时间都只是用来获得粗鄙的必需品和舒适的生活,那么他何必要有比野蛮人更好的住房呢?(P30)
在房屋篇,我们看看梭罗展开讨论的脉络:他先从原始人类的天性谈起,人类还在婴孩期时,进取心很强的人类爬进岩穴去找荫蔽,这爱户外的基因一直延续到今天的小孩。接着,房屋的构筑经过一系列变迁,到最后人类已变得完全室内化。可是,对比野蛮人和动物,由于价格高昂,现代文明社会只有半数家庭才有房屋。
接着,他先提出一个假设前提,如果“文明乃是人的生活条件的一种真正改进,那么,它必然证明,它不提高价钱就把更好的房屋建造起来”,而事实是——“要买一幢房子,通常需要耗费一个劳动者大半辈子生命。” 因此,他指出文明人与野蛮人之间的重要区别为:“有人给文明人设计了一套制度,无疑是为了我们的好处,这套制度为了保存种族的生活,能使种族的生活更臻完美,却大大牺牲了个人生活。” 梭罗希望去做的是指出“为了这个好处,我们目前做出什么样的牺牲,还要建议,我们可以不用做出任何牺牲就得到很多好处”。他不希望人们本末倒置,沦为工具的工具。
教育篇
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful...I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, which the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? (P53)
学生得到了他贪求的空闲与休息,他们根据制度,逃避了人类必需的任何劳动,得到的只是无益的空闲,而能使这种空闲变为丰富收获的那种经验,他们却全没学到。我主张他们不应该以生活为游戏,或仅仅以生活作研究,还要人类社会花高代价供养他们,他们应该自始至终,热忱地生活。除非青年人立刻进行生活的实践,他们怎能有更好的方法来学习生活呢?(P45)
梭罗推崇实践。真正“学会学习”,很多时候并不是在学校发生的,它源于一个主动的动机,背后包含着对世界的好奇与热爱,通过直面未知、探索、尝试、失败、反复的过程去深入事物的内部,直至经验它的全部。当有了真正“学会学习”的能力,一切事物皆充满可能性,而外在看似存在的限制或阻碍也将不复存在了。
慈善篇
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves, Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks, I want the flower and fruit of man, that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconsious this is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff greids as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy, We should impart our courage and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease.(P79)
我并不欲从慈善应得的赞美中减去什么,我只要求公平,对一切有利于人类的生命与工作应一视同仁。我不以为一个人的正直和慈善是主要的价值,它们不过是他的枝枝叶叶,那种枝叶,褪去了叶绿素,做成了药茶给病人喝,就是它有了一些卑微的用处,多数是走四方的郎中用它们。我要的是人中的花朵和果实,让他的芬芳传递给我,让他的成熟的馨香在我们交接中熏陶我。他的良善不能是局部的,短暂的行为,而是常持的富足有余,他的施与于他无损,于他自己,也无所知。这是一种将万恶隐藏起来的慈善。慈善家经常记着他要用自己散发出来的那种颓唐悲戚的气氛,来绕住人类,美其名曰同情心。我们应该传播给人类的是我们的勇气而不是我们的失望,是我们的健康与舒泰,而不是我们的病容。(P70)
这段梭罗要表达的是:真正的慈善是成为更好的自己,在潜移默化中为他人带去芬芳,且与己无所知,而绝非将自身价值观强加诸于他人身上,甚至散发出悲戚的气氛,并美其名曰“同情心”。每个人身上都有光,我们应该散发出这种光。
最后,梭罗也补充到,请不要一味的仿效他的生活方式哦,因为之后他可能还会变!他希望每个人都能走出自己的路来——“谨慎地找出并坚持他自己合适的方式,人是聪明的,我们也许不能够在一个预定的时日到达目的港,但我们总可以走在一条真正的航线上!”
好的,今天的分享就到这儿。这篇读书笔记主要源自读《瓦尔登湖》的第一、二、十一章节的大致整理。其他关于森林生活的章节,还未作梳理,期待未来对自然有更深度的体验。
— End —
参考资料:
1. 梭罗《瓦尔登湖》
2. Photos from internet
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