文：Sam Harris
翻译：千江水月（首帆）
To Know Your Mind,
Pay Close Attention To It
要了解你的心灵，请密切关注它
--by Sam Harris (Aug 07, 2017)
Certain rare and wonderful experiences are possible. But this is all we need, to take “spirituality” (the unavoidable term for this project of self-transcendence) seriously. [...]
一些罕见和美妙的经验是可能的，但认真对待“灵性”才是我们所需要的。（“灵性”，是这个自我超越计划不可避免的专有术语）。
We spend our lives lost in thought. The feeling that we call “I” — the sense of being a subject inside the body — is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking.
The moment that you truly break the spell of thought, you can notice what consciousness is like between thoughts — that is, prior to the arising of the next one. And consciousness does not feel like a self. It does not feel like “I.” In fact, the feeling of being a self is just another appearance in consciousness (how else could you feel it?). [...]
我们迷失在想法里虚掷我们的生活。我们称之为“我”的感觉——身体内的一个主体感觉——是在不知道你在想的情况下所想到的想法。
在你真正打破思想的时刻，你可以注意到思想之间的意识——就是在下一个思想出现之前。而意识感觉起来不像自我。它感觉起来不像“我”。事实上，作为自我的感觉只是意识的另一种表现。（你还能感觉到吗？）
I argue that spirituality need not rest on any faith-based assumptions about what exists outside of our own experience. And it arises from the same spirit of honest inquiry that motivates science itself.
我认为，灵性不需要依附在任何存在于我们自己的经验之外的基于信仰的假设之上。而且这是由于和促进科学本身同样纯正的调查精神所引起的。
Consciousness exists (whatever its relationship to the physical world happens to be), and it is the experiential basis of both the examined and the unexamined life.
If you turn consciousness upon itself in this moment, you will discover that your mind tends to wander into thought. If you look closely at thoughts themselves, you will notice that they continually arise and pass away.
If you look for the thinker of these thoughts, you will not find one. And the sense that you have — “What the hell is Harris talking about? I’m the thinker!”— is just another thought, arising in consciousness.
意识存在（无论与物理世界的关系如何），这是根据已核实和未经核实的生活经验得到的推论。如果你在这个时刻专注于意识本身，你就会发现你的心灵倾向于漫无目标地进入思考。
如果你仔细观察想法本身，你会注意到它们不断出现并消失。如果你寻找这些想法的思考者，你将找不到任何一个思考者。而你的感觉——Harris说的是哪门子事啊？我是思考者啊！——只是意识中升起的另一种想法。
If you repeatedly turn consciousness upon itself in this way, you will discover that the feeling of being a self disappears. There is nothing [religious or specifically] Buddhist about such inquiry, and nothing need be believed on insufficient evidence to pursue it. One need only accept the following premise: If you want to know what your mind is really like, it makes sense to pay close attention to it.
如果你反复以这种方式专注于意识本身，你会发现自我的感觉消失了。没有什么[宗教上的或具体地]佛教徒从事这样的探究，而在没有足够的证据来追求它的时候，也没有必要相信。
只需要接受以下前提：如果你想知道你的心灵是什么样子的，那么密切关注它是很有意义的。
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