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The Western intellectual tradition suggests that in order to be happy, what we need to do most of all is to go out and subdue the world; secure resources, found businesses, run governments, gain fame and conquer nations.
西方的思维习惯认为，为了快乐，我们最需要做的就是走出去征服世界; 获取资源，建立企业，管理政府，获得声誉和征服国家。
By contrast, the Eastern tradition has for a long while told us something very different.
相比之下，长期以来，东方的思维习惯告诉我们一些非常不同的东西。
In both its Buddhist and Hindu strands, it has insisted that contentment requires us to learn to conquer not the world but the instrument through which we view this world, namely our minds.
无论是佛教还是印度教，都坚持认为，要求我们学会征服的满足感不是来自世界，而是我们观察这个世界的工具，也就是我们的思想。
It won’t matter, says the East, how lustrous and perfect our achievements end up being - how much money we accumulate, how many friends we acquire - so long as our minds remain open to being troubled at any point by our emotional faculties.
东方人认为，只要我们能随时坦诚接受来自情绪的困扰，无论我们的成就有多辉煌、多完美——我们积累了多少钱，我们结交了多少朋友——都不重要。
All the benefits of a palace with seven reflecting pools and gardens planted with almond and cherry trees will be wiped out by a depression.
宫殿明镜般的池塘、种植着杏树和樱桃树的花园，这些美景都会因萧条而磨灭。
Chronic anxiety will spoil the ownership of the fastest jet.
长期的焦虑会破坏最快飞机的所有权。
A fortune is of no use at all so long as one is nagged by paranoia.
只要一个人被偏执所困扰，再多的钱也没有用。
An unhappy relationship at once destroys any advantages of an esteemed name.
一段不愉快的关系会立刻毁掉一个有名望的人获得的任何好处。
Given this vulnerability of external goods to the vagaries of the mental realm,
考虑到外部利益的脆弱性之于心理领域的变幻莫测，
the Eastern tradition advises us to stop spending our time trying to rearrange the material building blocks of existence only then to fall foul of psychological ills
东方传统建议我们不要花时间试图重新安排存在的物质基础，否则就会染上心理疾病
- and to focus instead on learning how to control and manage the inherently unruly and hugely complicated instrument through which the external world reaches consciousness.
——转而专注于学习如何控制和管理内在的难以驾驭和极其复杂的工具，通过这一工具，外部世界到达意识领域。
Rather than striving to build empires, we need to spend many years examining how we think and dream;
我们不需要努力建立帝国，我们需要花很多年的时间来研究我们的想法和梦想;
we have to reflect on our families, the economic systems we were brought up under, the impact of our sexual urges and the biological and cosmological order of nature of which we are an infinitesimal part.
我们必须反思我们的家庭、我们在其中长大的经济制度、我们性冲动的影响以及我们只是其中微不足道的一部分的生物和宇宙的自然秩序。
We have to learn how to breathe in such a way as to allow maximal oxygen to reach our frontal context and to hold our bodies so that our organs are not crushed and our blood flow subtly impeded.
我们必须学会如何呼吸，让最大的氧气到达我们的正面，学会保护我们的身体，这样我们的器官就不会被压碎，我们的血液流动也不会受到阻碍。
We need to be able to sleep a regular number of hours and remove all distractions and excitements that might disturb our streams of thought.
我们需要有规律地睡眠，排除所有可能阻挠我们思路的干扰和兴奋事件。
This is by no means an easy set of priorities; it is indeed as much hard work as managing a law firm.
这绝不是一套简单的重要事情; 这确实和管理一家律师事务所一样辛苦。
But, the yogis and sages advise that it delivers us a far more secure hold on the actual ingredients of contentment than the bank account of a newly installed CEO with a yacht off Barbuda.
但是，瑜伽士和圣人们建议，比起在巴布达附近拥有一艘游艇的新上任的首席执行官的银行账户，它能让我们更安全地把握满足感的实际成分。
Some of the reason why this continues to feel unreal is that we simply can’t imagine that success, great wealth and a palace wouldn’t in the end do the trick.
这种感觉持续不真实的部分原因是，我们根本无法想象成功、巨大的财富和一座宫殿最终不会奏效。
And that in turn is because too few people who have been blessed with such accoutrements have ever given us an honest account of what it felt like to have them.
相反，这是因为，拥有这些装备的人很少向我们诚实地讲述拥有这些装备的感觉。
Intellectual history, with its dire incantations against a worldly life, has been written by a set of suspiciously poor and envious-sounding people.
思维的历史，带有反对世俗生活的可怕咒语，是由一群可疑的穷人和嫉妒熏心的人书写的。
It is therefore highly fortuitous and extremely reassuring that Buddhism should have been founded by a disgruntled former playboy,
因此，佛教的创始人应该之前是一位心怀不满的纨绔子弟，
Siddhartha Gautama, who once had a palace and a trust fund, fame and servants, but gave them up to sit under a bodhi tree and could therefore tell us,
乔达摩悉达多，曾经拥有一座宫殿和信托基金，拥有名声和若干仆人，但他放弃了这些，坐在一棵菩提树下，因此他可以告诉我们，
with the benefit of lived experience, what material goods can really do - and not do - for us.
有了生活经验，物质产品究竟能为我们做什么，不能为我们做什么。
And without false modesty, he insisted that they won’t be enough.
没有虚伪的谦虚，他坚持说，这些还不够。
The food may be tasty and the rooms elegant but such advantages cannot serve their purpose so long as one’s mind is haunted and unsteady, as it invariably will be without a long emotional education and regular spiritual practice.
食物可能很美味，房间可能很精致，但只要一个人的思想还在受困扰和难以稳定，这些优势就无法发挥作用，因为没有长期的情感教育和定期的精神实践，这种情况总是会发生。
We should take the East’s warnings seriously.
我们应该认真对待东方思维的警告。
However hard we strive, it is logical that we can only be as happy as our minds are at peace.
无论我们多么努力，我们只有在内心平静时才会感到幸福，这是合乎逻辑的。
And given how vulnerable we are to mental disturbances, and how short our lives are, we should on balance almost certainly spend a little more time on our psyches and a little less time on our plans for a second home and a New York office.
考虑到我们是多么容易受到精神困扰，我们的生命是多么短暂，总的来说，我们肯定应该多花一点时间在我们的心理上，少花一点时间在我们的第二个家和纽约办公室的计划上。
The West has produced too many unhappy playboys, and the East too many genuinely peaceful sages, for us not to shift our attention away from conquering the world towards taming our minds.
西方产生了太多郁郁寡欢的纨绔子弟，东方产生了太多真正和平的圣人，让我们不能把注意力从征服世界转移到控制我们的思想上。
