The idea "happiness," to be sure, will not sit still for easy definition: the best one can do is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the middle. To think of happiness as acquisitive and competitive will do to set the materialistic extreme. To think of it as the idea one senses in, say, a holy man of India will do to set the spiritual extreme. That holy man' idea of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. In wanting nothing, he lacks nothing. He sits immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body. Or nearly free of it. If devout admirers bring him food he eats it, if not, he starves indifferently. Why be concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy within him.
当然，给“幸福”这个概念下定义绝非易事:最好的办法是尽量设定此概念的一些极端，然后将它们折中。把幸福看成获取财物和相互攀比，可以算是设定了物质享乐主义的一个极端；把幸福看成是一个人，比如一个印度的圣人，所感知的信念，则是幸福在精神上的一个极端。圣人的幸福概念是对身外之物一无所求。既无所求，亦无所匮。他静坐修行，陷于冥冥沉思，甚至超脱或者几乎超脱自己的肉体。若有虔诚的信徒奉上食物，圣人纳用；若无供奉，他忍饥挨饿，漠然置之。何必为此操心？物质的东西对他而言不过是虚幻。冥思是他的快乐所在，他 通过要求极高的修行获得快乐，这种修行的完成本身便是他内心的快乐。
Is he a happy man? Perhaps his happiness is only another sort of illusion. But who can take it from him? And who will dare say it is more illusory than happiness on the installment plan?
他是个幸福的人吗？也许他的幸福只是另一种虚幻，但谁能把幸福从他那里夺走呢？谁又敢说他的幸福比从分期付款计划中获得的幸福更虚无缥缈呢？
But, perhaps because I am Western, I doubt such catatonic happiness, as I doubt the dreams of the happiness-market. What is certain is that his way of happiness would be torture to almost any Western man. Yet these extremes will still serve to frame the areas within which all of us must find some sort of balance. Thoreau—a creature of both Eastern and Western thought—had his own firm sense of that balance. His aim was to save on the low levels in order to spend on the high.
然而，或许因为我是西方人，我对这种紧张性的幸福持怀疑态度，正如同我怀疑幸福市场的梦想一样。可以确信的是，他的这种幸福方式对于几乎任何一个西方人来说都是一种折磨。尽管如此，我们仍然可以利用这些极限来划定某些范畴，在这些范畴内我们所有人都得找到某种平衡。梭罗——一个东西方思想交融的人物——对于那种平衡有自己坚定不移的认知。他的目标是在低层次上节约以便用于高层次上的追求。
来源:可可英语 http://www.kekenet.com/daxue/201908/591391.shtml
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