『还初』We look at the various stages of death according to the yogic system, and explore the significance of shraddh, the death rituals in the Indian way of life.
本文从瑜伽的视角探讨死亡的多种阶段，以及印度中Shraddh（为死者做仪式）的重要性。
Question: I wanted to know, what is the importance of doing shraddh (rituals for the deceased)?
问：我想知道，做Shraddh（死者仪式）的重要性是什么？
Sadhguru: In India, if someone close to you dies, you are supposed to sit and watch – no one leaves a dead body alone. If you keep the body for over two to three days, the hair will grow. If it was a man and he used to shave, you can see this from the facial hair. The nails will also grow. Therefore, in countries where they preserve the dead bodies for a longer time, the undertakers clip the nails and shave the beard. This is so because of the way life manifests. For the sake of understanding – there is fundamental life and physical life. Physical life energy, which is generally referred to as prana, has five basic manifestations. These are called samana, prana, udhana, apana, and vyana.
Sadhguru（萨古鲁）：在印度，如果你亲近的人过世了，你应该坐在他身边看他离开——没人会抛下死者不管。如果你保留尸体超过两到三天，它的毛发会长长。如果是一个男人并且他生前有刮胡子，你可以从脸上的毛发看出。指甲也会长长。因此，在一些把尸体保存更久的国家，殡仪人员会帮尸体剪指甲和刮胡子。这是因为生命的显化。为了让你好理解——生命分为根本生命和物质生命。物质生命能量，一般被称作生命之气（prana），有五种基本显化。它们被叫作samana（消化之气）、prana（生命之气）、udhana（上行之气）、apana（下行气）和vyana（扩散之气）。
The Stages of Death
死亡的阶段
Within 21 to 24 minutes from the moment when a doctor would declare a person as dead, samana starts exiting. Samana is in charge of maintaining the temperature in the body. The first thing that happens after death is, the body starts cooling down. The traditional way of checking whether someone is dead or alive is to feel the nose – they would not check the eyeballs and other parameters. If the nose has gone cold, they concluded that he is dead.
在医生宣告一个人死亡的21-24分钟之内，samana开始退出。它是主管身体的温度。死亡后的发生的第一件事就是身体开始冷却下来。传统上，要检查人是活还是死的方法是触摸鼻子——而不是检查眼球或其他地方。如果鼻子发冷了，人们就推断这个人死了。
Somewhere between 48 to 64 minutes after someone is considered as dead, prana exits. Between six and twelve hours after, udhana exits. There are tantric processes through which we could revive the body before udhana exits. Once udhana has exited, it is practically impossible to revive the body. Then, somewhere between eight to eighteen hours, apana exits. Subsequently, vyana, which is the preservative nature of prana, will start exiting and may continue to do so for up to 11 to 14 days if it is a normal death – that is if someone died of old age, because life became feeble. For that period of time, certain processes will continue in the body; there will still be some element of life. If someone died in an accident, when the life within was still vibrant – unless the body is totally crushed – the reverberations of this life will continue somewhere between 48 and 90 days.
在一个人被认定死亡后的48-64分钟之间，prana退出。在6-12个小时之后，udhana退出。有一种tantra（谭崔）技术，可以在udhana退出前让身体复活。接下来，8-18小时之内，apana会退出。接着，vyana，也就是prana的保存面向，会开始退出。如果是正常死亡（即一个人死于衰老，由于生命变得虚弱而死亡），这个退出过程可能会持续11-14天。在那个期间，某种过程会继续着，身体里还会存留一些生命的元素。如果一个人是死于车祸，内在的生命仍有活力，这个生命的能量振动仍会持续48-90天（除非整个身体被完全摧毁了）。
During that time, there are things you can do for that life. Your experience of death is that someone is gone, but the experience of that being is that he or she has exited the body. Once they have exited the body, you have no business with them anymore. You cannot recognize them anymore, and if they came back, you would be terrified. If people you love died and would pop up again, there would be terror – not love, because your relationship is with their body or with their conscious mind and emotion. Once someone dies, those two aspects are left behind.
在那个期间，你可以为那个生命做一些事情。在你的体验中，死亡意味着某个人永远不在了。但对于那个生命而言，他/她只是离开了身体。一旦他们离开了身体，你就和他们不再有任何关系了。你无法认得他们，如果他们回来，你会被吓坏。如果你爱的人离开了，又突然冒出来，你会感到恐怖——而不是爱。因为你和他们的连结是在身体或者头脑和情绪层面的。当一个人死了，那两个面向就不存在了。
After death, discernment is completely absent, even more than in a child. Then, whatever quality you put into the mind, it will multiply a million fold.
死亡之后，一个人的辨识力会完全消失，甚至比不上孩子的。所以，不管你为他们的头脑注入什么情感，它都会自行放大百万倍。
The mind is just a bunch of information that has natural tendencies which find expression in a certain way. When someone dies, there is no more discernment, no more intellect. If you put one drop of pleasantness into their mind, this pleasantness will multiply a million fold. If you put one drop of unpleasantness, that unpleasantness will multiply a million fold. It is a little like with children – they go out to play until they are exhausted and cannot go on anymore, because they do not have the necessary discernment as to when it is time to stop.
头脑只是一堆信息，这些信息有一些自然的倾向，并会通过某种方式得以表达。当一个人死后，就不再有辨识力或智力。如果你在他们的脑中注入一点愉悦感，这种愉悦感会自行放大百万倍。如果你注入一滴苦涩感，那种苦涩也会自行放大百万倍。这有点像小孩子——如果他们出去玩耍，他们会玩到精疲力尽完全无法继续为止，因为他们没有必要的辨识力去知道什么时候该停止。
After death, discernment is completely absent, even more than in a child. Then, whatever quality you put into the mind, it will multiply a million fold. This is what is being referred to as heaven and hell. If you go into a pleasant state of existence, it is called heaven. If you go into an unpleasant state of existence, it is called hell. These are not geographical locations – these are experiential realities that a life which has become disembodied is going through.
死亡之后，一个人的辨识力会完全消失，甚至比不上孩子的。所以，不管你为他们的头脑注入什么情感，它都会自行放大百万倍。这就是我们所说的天堂和地狱。如果你进入很愉悦的存在状态，这就叫天堂。如果你处于不愉悦的状态，这就叫地狱。这些不是地理概念——而是一个没有身体的生命所经历的现实。
Death Rituals
死亡仪式
How well or how ridiculously it is done today is a different matter, but there is a whole science of what to do at different steps. One of the first things people traditionally do if someone dies is, they will tie the big toes of the dead body together. This is very important because it will tighten up the muladhara in such a way that the body cannot be invaded by that life once again. A life that has not lived with the awareness that “this body is not me” will try to enter through any orifice of the body, particularly through the muladhara. The muladhara is where life generates, and it is always the last point of warmth when the body is cooling down.
今天我们看到的死亡仪式，无论做得如何，那是另一回事。但是对于每个不同阶段应该做什么，这背后有一整套科学。传统上，如果有人死了，人们做的第一件事是，把双脚的大拇指绑在一起。这很重要，因为这会让海底轮收紧，这样一来那个生命就无法再次侵入这个身体了。一个没有活在“我不是这个身体”的觉知中的人，可能会试图再次通过任何打开之处进入身体，尤其是海底轮。海底轮是制造生命的地方，而且是身体冷却下来后留有最后一点余热的地方。
The reason why traditionally, we always said that if someone dies, you must burn the body within an hour-and-a-half or a maximum of four hours is because life tries to get back. This is also important for the living. If someone very dear to you died, your mind may start playing tricks, thinking that maybe a miracle will happen, maybe God will come and bring them back. It has never happened to anyone, but still the mind plays up because of the emotions that you have for that particular person. Similarly, the life that has exited the body also believes that it can still get back into the body.
传统上我们会说，如果有人死了，你必须在一个半小时或者最多四个小时之内焚烧身体。这是因为，那个生命会想要回到身体中。这一点对于活着的人也很重要。如果你很亲近的人死去了，你的头脑可能会开始自欺欺人，想着可能奇迹会发生，可能上帝会出现，让他们重生。这种事情从来没有发生过，但是头脑还是会幻想，因为你无法割舍对那个人的情感。类似的，那个退出了身体的生命也相信它还可以回到身体中。
There are many rituals to see that you can somehow put a drop of sweetness into such a non-discerning mind.
有很多仪式可以让你为一个没有辨识力的头脑中注入一丝甜蜜感。
If you want to stop the drama, the first thing is to set fire to the body within one-and-a-half hours. Or to be sure the person is dead, they have stretched it to four hours. But the body should be taken away as quickly as possible. In agriculture communities, they used to bury, because they wanted their forefathers’ bodies, which are a piece of soil, to go back to the soil that had nourished them.
如果你想要停止这种戏剧，第一件事是在一个半小时内将尸体焚烧。或者，为了确保那个人真的死了，人们把间隔延长到了4小时。但是尸体一定要尽快被拿走。在农业社群中，他们会将它们埋葬，因为他们想要祖先的身体回到曾经滋养了他们的土地之中。
Today, you buy your food from the store, and do not know where it comes from. Therefore, burial is not advisable anymore. In earlier times, when they buried in their own land, they always put salt and turmeric on the dead body so that it quickly dissipates into the soil. Cremation is good because it closes the chapter. You will see that when there is a death in the family, people will be crying and wailing, but the moment cremation happens, they will become quiet, because suddenly, the truth has sunk in that it is over. This does not only go for the living but also for the disembodied being who has just exited the body. As long as the body is there, he or she is also under the illusion that he can get back.
如今，你从商店里购买食物，忘记了食物是从哪里而来。所以，埋葬不再是最好的选择。早些时候，他们会埋到自己的田里，洒上盐和姜黄，这样尸体会很快消散于泥土之中。现在火葬比较好，因为它是个完全的了结。你会看到家里有人死去时，人们会哭泣，但一旦开始火葬，他们会变得安静，因为突然间他们会认识到这个现实：真的结束了。不仅对于活着的人是如此，对于刚离开身体的死者也是如此。只要身体还在那里，它就会幻想着还可以回来。
There are many rituals to see that you can somehow put a drop of sweetness into such a non-discerning mind so that this sweetness will multiply many fold and they will live comfortably in a kind of self-induced heaven. That is the idea behind the rituals – if they are done properly.
有很多个仪式，可以为这种没有辨识力的头脑注入一点甜蜜感。这种甜蜜感会自行放大好几倍，这样他们可以舒适地活在自己创造的天堂中。这就是仪式背后的目的——如果做得妥当的话。
I am sure most of you have heard of runanubandha, which indicates a physical relationship. Whenever you touch someone – either because of blood relationship or sexual relationships, or even if you just hold someone’s hand or exchange clothes – these two bodies will generate runanubandha, a certain commonality. When someone dies, traditionally, you are seeing how to completely obliterate the runanubandha. The idea of putting the ashes in the Ganga or in the ocean is to disperse them as widely as possible so that you do not develop runanubandha with one who has departed. For you to continue your life, you must properly break this runanubandha. Otherwise, as it happens in modern societies, it will affect your physical and mental structure. Children up to eight years of age are immune to these things – nature has given them that protection, but adolescents will suffer immensely when we do not take care of the dead properly, because the energies of disembodied beings are always there and the first ones that they go after are adolescents because they are the most vulnerable. You see in the world today how much upheaval people are going through during adolescence.One of the reasons why adolescence is more of a struggle today than it was in previous generations is that we are not properly taking care of those who have departed and these runanubandhas are all over the place. It is like loose software everywhere, and it always affects adolescent life most.
我确定你们大部分人都听说过runanubandha，它指的是一种身体关系。每当你触碰一个人——或者由于血缘关系，或者由于性关系，又或者，你只是握着一个人的手或互相交换衣服——这两个身体都会产生这种runanubandha，某种连接。传统上，如果有人死了，你会想办法完全抹掉这种关系。将骨灰撒到恒河或者海里的一个目的就是为了将它分散得尽量广，这样你就不会和逝去的人产生runanubandha。如果你想要继续好好生活，你必须舍断这个关系。否则，正如在现今社会所发生的，它会影响你的身体和心理结构。8岁以下的孩子不会受这些东西的影响——大自然给了他们保护，但青少年会因此而承受巨大的痛苦。如果我们没有安置好死者，他们的能量会一直在那里，并且他们第一个跟随的就是青少年，因为青少年是最脆弱的。你们看如今人们在青少年时期经历多少的动荡和不安。为什么相比过去几代人，如今的青少年会经历如此多的挣扎的一个原因是，我们没有妥善处理好那些逝者，这种runanubandhas遍地都是。就像是松散的软件无处不在，它们总是对青少年的影响最大。
Question: But what to do? How do you grind your emotions into powder and sprinkle it? I don’t think it is possible to cut off your emotions.
问：那要怎么办呢？你怎么能够把你的情感碾碎然后撒掉？要割断情感是不可能的。
Sadhguru: Emotions are a different, secondary aspect to life. It is the physical sameness, the runanubandha with the dead that you want to eliminate, because this can cause sickness and mental derangement, among other things. Emotion by itself is not damaging. If you had a beautiful relationship with someone and now the person is no more, it is healthy to cherish the beauty of that relationship rather than suffer. But if the runanubandha is there, it weakens your body and your mental structure in such a way that instead of cherishing all the beautiful things that happened between two people, you are suffering, and not only that – it will lead to a certain derangement of life. To avoid that, we try to destroy the physical memory alone. It is not only that you cannot forget the emotional and psychological memory, you should not forget it either. Someone who meant so much to you – why should you forget them? You must cherish that relationship forever.
Sadhguru（萨古鲁）：情感是另一回事，它是生命中的次要面向。你需要消除的是身体上与死者的runanubandha，因为这可能会造成疾病或者精神错乱，以及别的问题。情感本身并没有危害性。如果你和某个人有美好的关系，现在这个人不在了，如果你能珍惜那段关系的美好，而不是因此而受苦，这是一种健康的做法。但如果runanubandha还在，它会使你的身体和心理构架变弱，这样你不会去珍惜你们之间所发生的美好，而是会沉溺于痛苦。不仅如此，它还会造成生命的某种错乱。为了避免这个，我们会试图摧毁身体的记忆。对于情感或心理的记忆，你不能也不应该忘却。一个对你如此重要的人——你怎能忘却呢？你必须要永远珍惜那段感情。
Love&Grace
爱与恩典
未经允许不得转载：『还初』 » 萨古鲁：从瑜伽的视角谈死亡的各阶段及做亡者仪式的重要性
