提问者：人为什么基本上都是自私的？我们可能尽量在行动上做到不自私，但是当事情牵涉自己的利益时，我们就变得以自我为中心而且漠视别人的利益。
Krishnamurti: I think it is very important not to call oneself either selfish or unselfish, because words have an extraordinary influence on the mind. Call a man selfish, and he is doomed; call him a professor, and something happens in your approach to him; call him a Mahatma, and immediately there is a halo around him. Watch your own responses and you will see that words like ‘lawyer’, ‘business man’, ‘governor’, ‘servant’, ‘love’, ‘God’, have a strange effect on your nerves as well as on your mind. The word which denotes a particular function evokes the feeling of status; so the first thing is to be free of this unconscious habit of associating certain feelings with certain words, is it not? Your mind has been conditioned to think that the term ‘selfish’ represents something very wrong, unspiritual, and the moment you apply that term to anything your mind condemns it. So when you ask this question, "Why are we fundamentally selfish?", it has already a condemnatory significance.
克里希那穆提：我想我们不应该以“自私”或“不自私”来形容自己，这点非常的重要，因为用字对人心有极大的影响力，当你骂一个人自私时，他就在劫难逃了。称一个人为“教授”，你接近他时就会用不同的方式。称一个人为“圣人”，他的四周立刻就出现了光环。你观察自己的反应，你会发现以下的字眼譬如“律师”、“商人”、“州长”、“仆人”、“爱”、“上帝”等等，它们对你的心智和神经系统都有奇特的效果，某个代表特殊职务的名称会唤起某种身份感。因此，我们首先要做的事，就是去除这种字眼与感觉联想到一起的下意识习惯。你的心对“自私”这个字眼已经先入为主地认为它代表的是非常错误、非常世俗的情境，你一旦把这个词用在任何事情上面，你的心就在谴责它。所以你问我“为什么人基本上都是自私的”，这其中已经含藏着贬低的意味了。
It is very important to be aware that certain words cause in you a nervous, emotional, or intellectual response of approval or condemnation. When you call yourself a jealous person, for example, immediately you have blocked further inquiry, you have stopped penetrating into the whole problem of jealousy. Similarly, there are many people who say they are working for brotherhood, yet everything they do is against brotherhood; but they don't see this fact because the word ‘brotherhood' means something to them and they are already persuaded by it; they don't inquire any further and so they never find out what are the facts irrespective of the neurological or emotional response which that word evokes.
某些字眼会造成你神经上、情绪上或思想上的赞同或非难，觉察到这一点很重要。譬如你声称自己是个善妒的人，你很快就阻碍了进一步的探索，你已经停止去深入研究善妒的整个心理过程。同样的，有许多人说他们努力发扬兄弟爱，但是他们所做的每件事都在违背兄弟爱。但他们并没有认清这个事实，因为“兄弟爱”这个字眼使他们感觉有意义，因此，他们已经被这个字眼说服，他们不再进一步去探究，所以也就永远找不到独立于这字眼引起的情绪及神经反应而存在的真相了。
So this is the first thing: to experiment and find out if you can look at facts without the condemnatory or laudatory implications associated with certain words. If you can look at the facts without feelings of condemnation or approval, you will find that in the very process of looking there is a dissolution of all the barriers which the mind has erected between itself and the facts.
所以我们首先要做的事，就是去实验和弄清楚，到底我们能不能纯粹地看到事实，而不从字眼联想到非难或是赞赏。如果你能看到事实，没有任何非难或赞同的感觉，你就会发现在这种观察之下，你的心与事实之间的障碍就去除了。
Just observe how you approach a person whom people call a great man. The words ‘great man’ have influenced you; the newspapers, the books, the followers all say he is a great man, and your mind has accepted it. Or else you take the opposite view and say, "How stupid, he is not a great man". Whereas, if you can dissociate your mind from all influence and simply look at the facts, then you will find that your approach is entirely different. In the same way, the word ‘villager’, with its associations of poverty, dirt, squalor, or whatever it is, influences your thinking. But when the mind is free of influence, when it neither condemns nor approves but merely looks, observes, then it is not self-absorbed and there is no longer the problem of selfishness trying to be unselfish.
你观察看看自己是如何去接近人们心目中的大人物的，你会发现，“大人物”这个字眼已经影响了你，因为报章书籍以及大人物的跟随者都说他是个了不起的人 ，于是你就接受了这个看法；或者你会持完全相反的看法，然后说：“多蠢啊！他根本不是什么大人物。”然而如果你能远离所有外界的影响，只是纯粹地看着事实，你就会发现你的态度会完全不同。同样的，“乡下人”这个字眼所引起的贫穷、肮脏、污秽及其他的联想已经影响了你的想法。但是，如果你的心不受任何影响，你不非难也不赞同，只是看着、观察着，那么你就不会再以自我为中心，也不会再有“自私”以及“如何变得不自私”这类的问题了。
Think on These Things, Chapter 25
《人生中不可不想的事》，第25章
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