神圣爱之理想的人类表现
本译文由人工智能辅助工具生成，可能存在不准确之处。如需查阅权威文本，请参考英文原文。
AI-translated. May contain errors. For accurate text, refer to the original English.
中文
第九章
神圣爱之理想的人间象征
以人类语言来表达这一至高无上、绝对圆满的爱之本质，是不可能的。即便是人类想象力的最高飞翔，也无法全面领悟其无限的完美与美丽。然而，无论是较高形式还是较低形式的爱之宗教的追随者，在世界各地，始终不得不借助不充分的人类语言来理解和界定他们自己的爱之理想。不仅如此，人类的爱本身，以其种种不同的形式，也被用来象征这种难以言说的神圣之爱。人只能以自身人性的方式来思考神圣的事物；对我们而言，绝对者只能以我们相对的语言来表达。整个宇宙对我们而言，不过是无限者以有限的语言写就的文字。因此，虔信者（Bhaktas）借助一切与人类普通之爱相关的寻常词汇，来描述对神的爱与通过爱而进行的礼敬。
一些研究上乘虔信（Para-Bhakti，梵：Parā Bhakti）的伟大著述者，曾尝试以各种不同的方式去理解和体验这种神圣之爱。其中最低层次的爱，被称为"寂静"（Shânta）。当一人礼敬神时，心中无爱的火焰，脑中无其癫狂，其爱只是平静寻常的爱——较之单纯的仪式、形式与象征略高一筹，却全无那种炽烈主动之爱的痴狂——便称为寂静。世上有些人喜欢从容缓行，也有些人来去如旋风。寂静虔信者（Shânta-Bhakta）是沉静、安详、温和的。
更高一层的爱是婢仆（Dâsya），即仆役之爱；当人视自己为主的仆人时，便产生此种爱。忠仆对主人的依附，是其理想。
再高一层的爱是友谊（Sakhya）——"祢是我们最亲爱的朋友。"正如人向朋友敞开心扉，知道朋友永远不会因其过失而责备他，只会竭力助他；正如朋友之间存在平等的观念，爱在礼敬者与其友善之神之间双向流淌。于是神成为我们的朋友——近在身旁的朋友，我们可以自由倾诉生命故事的朋友。我们内心最深处的秘密，可以在充分安全感与支持感之下向祂敞露。祂是虔信者视为平等的朋友。神在此处被视为我们的玩伴。我们可以说，我们都在这宇宙中游戏。正如孩童嬉戏，正如最荣耀的帝王君主各行其游戏，那位至爱的主本身也在与这宇宙共同游戏。祂是完美的，祂别无所求。祂为何要创造？活动对我们而言始终是为了满足某种欲求，而欲求总是以不完美为前提。神是完美的，祂无所欲求。祂为何要继续这永恒活跃的创造之工？祂胸怀何种目的？关于神为着某种目的创造这世界的种种故事，作为故事是美好的，但仅止于此。这一切实际上都是在游戏；宇宙是祂的嬉戏，永无休止地进行着。整个宇宙对祂而言，终归不过是一场令人愉悦的嬉戏。若你贫穷，便以此为乐；若你富有，便享受富有之乐；若危难来临，亦是一番好戏；若快乐降临，便有更多好戏可享。这世界不过是一片游乐场，我们在此尽情游戏，参与这场嬉戏；神与我们一同游戏，而我们也与祂一同游戏。神是我们永恒的玩伴。祂的游戏是何等美妙！当这一轮回（cycle）走到终点，游戏便告结束。或长或短地休息之后，众生再次出来游戏。唯有当你忘记这一切不过是游戏，忘记你自己也在参与这游戏，唯有那时，苦难与悲伤才会降临。那时心变得沉重，那时世界以巨大的力量压迫你。然而一旦你放弃了把这三分钟生命中变幻不定的事件视为真实的严肃观念，知道它不过是一个舞台，我们在此游戏，助祂游戏——苦难便立刻为你止息。祂在每一个原子中游戏；祂建造星球、太阳与月亮时是在游戏；祂玩弄人心、动物与植物时是在游戏。我们是祂的棋子；祂将棋子置于棋盘上加以摇动。祂将我们时而这样排列，时而那样排列，而我们有意识地或无意识地在参与祂的游戏。哦，多么幸福！我们是祂的玩伴！
下一种爱是所谓的母爱（Vâtsalya）——不是爱神为我们的父，而是爱祂为我们的孩子。这看似奇特，但它是一种修练，旨在使我们能够从神的概念中剥离一切权力的观念。权力的观念带来敬畏。爱中不应有敬畏。恭敬与服从的观念对于品格的培养是必要的；然而一旦品格已成，一旦爱者尝到了那平静安详之爱，也略尝其炽烈癫狂的滋味，他便无须再谈论伦理与纪律。将神想象为威严、雄壮、荣耀，视为宇宙的主宰，或万神之神——爱者说他不在乎这些。正是为了避免与神相关的那种制造畏惧的权力感，他才将神礼敬为自己的孩子。母亲与父亲面对孩子时，不会产生敬畏；他们对孩子无从生起恭敬之心。他们不会想到向孩子请求任何恩惠。孩子的地位始终是接受者，而出于对孩子的爱，父母愿意献出自己的身体百千次。为了那一个孩子，他们愿意牺牲千百条生命；因此，神被当作孩子来爱。将神爱为孩子的这一观念，在相信神化身（incarnation）的宗教派别中自然地产生并生长。对于穆斯林而言，将神视为孩子是不可能的；他们会以某种恐惧感从这一观念中退缩。但基督徒与印度教徒却能轻易领悟，因为他们有婴孩耶稣与婴孩克里希纳（Krishna）。印度的妇女常常将自己视为克里希纳之母；基督徒的母亲们也可以接受自己是基督之母的观念，这将为西方带来他们所亟需的神圣母性的知识。敬畏与恭敬所带来的迷信在我们内心深处根深蒂固，需要漫长岁月，才能让我们对神的恭敬、崇仰、敬畏、威严与荣耀等观念完全沉浸于爱之中。
还有一种神圣爱之理想的人间象征，称为"甘甜"（Madhura），是此类象征中最高的一种。它确实建立在这世界上爱之最高显现的基础之上，而这种爱也是人类所知最为强烈的爱。何种爱能震撼人的整个本性，流贯其存在的每一个原子——令其癫狂，令其忘却自己的本性，将其改变，令其或成神或成魔——这便是男女之间的爱。在这种神圣之爱的甘甜象征中，神是我们的丈夫。我们皆为女性；这世界上没有男性；只有一位男性，那便是祂，我们的挚爱。人给予女人、或女人给予男人的一切爱，都必须献给那位主。
我们在世界上所见的各种各样的爱，我们或多或少地只是在玩弄其中，都以神为唯一的归宿；然而不幸的是，人不知道这条爱的奔涌大河正在不断汇入的那片无限大洋，因此常常愚蠢地试图将其引向人类那些渺小的偶像。人性中对孩子的那种深沉之爱，并非为了那小小的孩童偶像而存在；若你盲目而排他地将它倾注于孩子，你将因此受苦。然而正是通过这样的苦难，觉醒会降临，你必然会发现：你内在的爱，若给予任何一个人，迟早都会带来痛苦与悲伤。因此，我们的爱必须献给那永不死亡、永不变易的至高者，献给祂——在祂爱的大洋中，既无涨潮，也无落潮。爱必须抵达其正确的目的地，必须流向那真正是无限爱之大洋的祂。所有河流都汇入大洋。即便是从山侧流下的一滴水，也无法在抵达溪流或江河——无论多么宏大——之后就停下脚步；最终，那滴水也会以某种方式找到流入大洋的道路。神是我们一切激情与情感的唯一归宿。若你想发怒，便向祂发怒。责备你的挚爱，责备你的朋友。你还能安全地责备谁？凡夫俗子不会耐心地承受你的愤怒；必会产生反应。若你对我发怒，我必然迅速反应，因为我无法忍耐你的愤怒。向挚爱说：「祢为何不来到我身边？祢为何这样将我独自留下？」除祂之外，还有什么地方有真正的享受？在那些小小的尘土泥块中，又能有什么享受？我们所要寻求的，是那无限享乐的结晶精华，而那就在神之中。让我们一切的激情与情感都上升到祂那里。它们本为祂而存在，因为若它们偏离了目标而下坠，便成为鄙俗之物；而当它们直指目标、直指主时，即便最低下的激情也得以升华。人类身心一切的能量，无论以何种方式表达，都以主为其唯一归宿，为其"一向"（Ekâyana）。人心所有的爱与激情，都必须归向神。祂是挚爱。这颗心还能爱谁？祂是最美丽的，是最崇高的，祂本身就是美丽，本身就是崇高。在这宇宙中，谁比祂更美丽？在这宇宙中，谁更适合成为丈夫？在这宇宙中，谁更值得被爱？所以，就让祂成为丈夫，让祂成为挚爱。
往往会发生这样的情况：歌唱这神圣之爱的神圣爱者，接受人类之爱的语言——连同其一切面向——作为描述它的恰当方式。愚者不理解这一点，也永远不会理解。他们只以肉眼看待。他们不理解这种灵性之爱的癫狂阵痛。他们怎能理解？"为了祢嘴唇的一个吻，哦挚爱！一个被祢亲吻过的人，对祢的渴望与日俱增，一切悲伤消散，他忘却万物，唯记得祢。"渴求那挚爱的一吻，渴求那使虔信者癫狂、令人成为神的唇之触碰。对于受到这样祝福的人，整个自然为之改变，诸世界消逝，日月熄灭，宇宙本身融化于那无限爱的大洋之中。这便是爱之癫狂的圆满。
的确，真正的灵性爱者在此处也不会止步；对他而言，即便夫妻之爱也尚不够癫狂。虔信者也接受私情之爱的观念，因为它是如此强烈；其中的不当之处，绝非他们所关注的。这种爱的本质是：越有障碍阻止其自由流淌，它便越趋炽热。夫妻之间的爱是平顺的，其间没有障碍。因此虔信者接受这样一个观念：一个少女爱上了自己的挚爱，而她的母亲、父亲或丈夫反对这种爱；任何人对其爱的阻拦越多，这爱的力量便越倾向于增长。人类语言无法描述在温达（Vrindâ）的丛林中克里希纳（Krishna）被爱得何等疯狂，无法描述当他的声音响起，那永受福佑的牧牛女（Gopis）们如何冲出去迎接他——忘却了一切，忘却了这个世界及其羁绊、义务、欢乐与悲伤。人啊，你大谈神圣之爱，却同时能够关注这个世界的一切虚妄——你是真诚的吗？"罗摩（Râma）所在之处，没有欲望的容身之地——欲望所在之处，罗摩无从立足；二者从不共存——如光明与黑暗，永不同在。"
English
CHAPTER IX
HUMAN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DIVINE IDEAL OF LOVE
It is impossible to express the nature of this supreme and absolute ideal of love in human language. Even the highest flight of human imagination is incapable of comprehending it in all its infinite perfection and beauty. Nevertheless, the followers of the religion of love, in its higher as well as its lower forms, in all countries, have all along had to use the inadequate human language to comprehend and to define their own ideal of love. Nay more, human love itself, in all its varied forms has been made to typify this inexpressible divine love. Man can think of divine things only in his own human way, to us the Absolute can be expressed only in our relative language. The whole universe is to us a writing of the Infinite in the language of the finite. Therefore Bhaktas make use of all the common terms associated with the common love of humanity in relation to God and His worship through love.
Some of the great writers on Para-Bhakti have tried to understand and experience this divine love in so many different ways. The lowest form in which this love is apprehended is what they call the peaceful — the Shânta. When a man worships God without the fire of love in him, without its madness in his brain, when his love is just the calm commonplace love, a little higher than mere forms and ceremonies and symbols, but not at all characterized by the madness of intensely active love, it is said to be Shanta. We see some people in the world who like to move on slowly, and others who come and go like the whirlwind. The Shânta-Bhakta is calm, peaceful, gentle.
The next higher type is that of Dâsya, i.e. servantship; it comes when a man thinks he is the servant of the Lord. The attachment of the faithful servant unto the master is his ideal.
The next type of love is Sakhya, friendship — "Thou art our beloved friend." Just as a man opens his heart to his friend and knows that the friend will never chide him for his faults but will always try to help him, just as there is the idea of equality between him and his friend, so equal love flows in and out between the worshipper and his friendly God. Thus God becomes our friend, the friend who is near, the friend to whom we may freely tell all the tales of our lives. The innermost secrets of our hearts we may place before Him with the great assurance of safety and support. He is the friend whom the devotee accepts as an equal. God is viewed here as our playmate. We may well say that we are all playing in this universe. Just as children play their games, just as the most glorious kings and emperors play their own games, so is the Beloved Lord Himself in sport with this universe. He is perfect; He does not want anything. Why should He create? Activity is always with us for the fulfilment of a certain want, and want always presupposes imperfection. God is perfect; He has no wants. Why should He go on with this work of an ever-active creation? What purpose has He in view? The stories about God creating this world for some end or other that we imagine are good as stories, but not otherwise. It is all really in sport; the universe is His play going on. The whole universe must after all be a big piece of pleasing fun to Him. If you are poor, enjoy that as fun; if you are rich, enjoy the fun of being rich; if dangers come, it is also good fun; if happiness comes, there is more good fun. The world is just a playground, and we are here having good fun, having a game; and God is with us playing all the while, and we are with Him playing. God is our eternal playmate. How beautifully He is playing! The play is finished when the cycle: comes to an end. There is rest for a shorter or longer time; again all come out and play. It is only when you forget that it is all play and that you are also helping in the play, it is only then that misery and sorrows come. Then the heart becomes heavy, then the world weighs upon you with tremendous power. But as soon as you give up the serious idea of reality as the characteristic of the changing incidents of the three minutes of life and know it to be but a stage on which we are playing, helping Him to play, at once misery ceases for you. He plays in every atom; He is playing when He is building up earths, and suns, and moons; He is playing with the human heart, with animals, with plants. We are His chessmen; He puts the chessmen on the board and shakes them up. He arranges us first in one way and then in another, and we are consciously or unconsciously helping in His play. And, oh, bliss! we are His playmates!
The next is what is known as Vâtsalya, loving God not as our Father but as our Child. This may look peculiar, but it is a discipline to enable us to detach all ideas of power from the concept of God. The idea of power brings with it awe. There should be no awe in love. The ideas of reverence and obedience are necessary for the formation of character; but when character is formed, when the lover has tasted the calm, peaceful love and tasted also a little of its intense madness, then he need talk no more of ethics and discipline. To conceive God as mighty, majestic, and glorious, as the Lord of the universe, or as the God of gods, the lover says he does not care. It is to avoid this association with God of the fear-creating sense of power that he worships God as his own child. The mother and the father are not moved by awe in relation to the child; they cannot have any reverence for the child. They cannot think of asking any favour from the child. The child's position is always that of the receiver, and out of love for the child the parents will give up their bodies a hundred times over. A thousand lives they will sacrifice for that one child of theirs, and, therefore, God is loved as a child. This idea of loving God as a child comes into existence and grows naturally among those religious sects which believe in the incarnation of God. For the Mohammedans it is impossible to have this idea of God as a child; they will shrink from it with a kind of horror. But the Christian and the Hindu can realise it easily, because they have the baby Jesus and the baby Krishna. The women in India often look upon themselves as Krishna's mother; Christian mothers also may take up the idea that they are Christ's mothers, and it will bring to the West the knowledge of God's Divine Motherhood which they so much need. The superstitions of awe and reverence in relation to God are deeply rooted in the bears of our hearts, and it takes long years to sink entirely in love our ideas of reverence and veneration, of awe and majesty and glory with regard to God.
There is one more human representation of the divine ideal of love. It is known as Madhura, sweet, and is the highest of all such representations. It is indeed based on the highest manifestation of love in this world, and this love is also the strongest known to man. What love shakes the whole nature of man, what love runs through every atom of his being — makes him mad, makes him forget his own nature, transforms him, makes him either a God or a demon — as the love between man and woman. In this sweet representation of divine love God is our husband. We are all women; there are no men in this world; there is but One man, and this is He, our Beloved. All that love which man gives to woman, or woman to man, has her to be given up to the Lord.
All the different kinds of love which we see in the world, and with which we are more or less playing merely, have God as the one goal; but unfortunately, man does not know the infinite ocean into which this mighty river of love is constantly flowing, and so, foolishly, he often tries to direct it to little dolls of human beings. The tremendous love for the child that is in human nature is not for the little doll of a child; if you bestow it blindly and exclusively on the child, you will suffer in consequence. But through such suffering will come the awakening by which you are sure to find out that the love which is in you, if it is given to any human being, will sooner or later bring pain and sorrow as the result. Our love must, therefore, be given to the Highest One who never dies and never changes, to Him in the ocean of whose love there is neither ebb nor flow. Love must get to its right destination, it must go unto Him who is really the infinite ocean of love. All rivers flow into the ocean. Even the drop of water coming down from the mountain side cannot stop its course after reaching a brook or a river, however big it may be; at last even that drop somehow does find its way to the ocean. God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?" Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? It is the crystallised essence of infinite enjoyment that we have to seek, and that is in God. Let all our passions and emotions go up unto Him They are meant for Him, for if they miss their mark and go lower, they become vile; and when they go straight to the mark, to the Lord, even the lowest of them becomes transfigured. All the energies of the human body and mind, howsoever they may express themselves, have the Lord as their one goal, as their Ekâyana. All loves and all passions of the human heart must go to God. He is the Beloved. Whom else can this heart love? He is the most beautiful, the most sublime, He is beauty itself, sublimity itself. Who in this universe is more beautiful than He? Who in this universe is more fit to become the husband than He? Who in this universe is fitter to be loved than He? So let Him be the husband, let Him be the Beloved.
Often it so happens that divine lovers who sing of this divine love accept the language of human love in all its aspects as adequate to describe it. Fools do not understand this; they never will. They look at it only with the physical eye. They do not understand the mad throes of this spiritual love. How can they? "For one kiss of Thy lips, O Beloved! One who has been kissed by Thee, has his thirst for Thee increasing for ever, all his sorrows vanish, and he forgets all things except Thee alone." Aspire after that kiss of the Beloved, that touch of His lips which makes the Bhakta mad, which makes of man a god. To him, who has been blessed with such a kiss, the whole of nature changes, worlds vanish, suns and moons die out, and the universe itself melts away into that one infinite ocean of love. That is the perfection of the madness of love.
Ay, the true spiritual lover does not rest even there; even the love of husband and wife is not mad enough for him. The Bhaktas take up also the idea of illegitimate love, because it is so strong; the impropriety of it is not at all the thing they have in view. The nature if this love is such that the more obstructions there are for its free play, the more passionate it becomes. The love between husband and wife is smooth, there are no obstructions there. So the Bhaktas take up the idea of a girl who is in love with her own beloved, and her mother or father or husband objects to such love; and the more anybody obstructs the course of her love, so much the more is her love tending to grow in strength. Human language cannot describe how Krishna in the groves of Vrindâ was madly loved, how at the sound of his voice the ever-blessed Gopis rushed out to meet him, forgetting everything, forgetting this world and its ties, its duties, its joys, and its sorrows. Man, O man, you speak of divine love and at the same time are able to attend to all the vanities of this world — are you sincere? "Where Râma is, there is no room for any desire — where desire is, there is no room for Rama; these never coexist — like light and darkness they are never together."
文本来自Wikisource公共领域。原版由阿德瓦伊塔修道院出版。