We are all given work here, and it turns out that my work assignment is to scrub the temple floors. So that's where you can find me for several hours a day now—down on my knees on the cold marble with a brush and a bucket, working away like a fairy-tale stepsister. (By the way, I'm aware of the metaphor—the scrubbing clean of the temple that is my heart, the polishing of my soul, the everyday mundane effort that must be applied to spiritual practice in order to purify the self, etc., etc.)
我们每个人都有分内的工作，我被指派的工作是刷洗寺院地板。因此，现在每天都看得到我跪在冰冷的大理石地板上，拿着刷子和水桶，好似童话故事中的养女一样卖力地工作数个小时（顺便说一声，我很清楚其中的隐喻——我刷洗干净的寺院是我的心，我擦亮的是我的灵魂，每日的平凡劳动必须应用在灵修当中，以净化自我，等等，等等。）

My fellow floor-scrubbers are mainly a bunch of Indian teenagers. They always give teenagers this job because it requires high physical energy but not enormous reserves of responsibility; there's a limit to how much damage you can do if you mess up. I like my coworkers. The girls are fluttery little butterflies who seem so much younger than American eighteen-year-old girls, and the boys are serious little autocrats who seem so much older than American eighteen-year-old boys. Nobody's supposed to talk in the temples, but these are teenagers, so there's a constant chatter going on all the time as we're working. It's not all idle gossip. One of the boys spends all day scrubbing beside me, lecturing me earnestly on how to best perform my work here: "Take seriously. Make punctual. Be cool and easy. Remember—everything you do, you do for God. And everything God does, He do for you."
和我一同刷洗地板的同伴，多半是一群印度少年。这项工作向来分派给少年，因为需要高度体力，却不须担负庞大的责任；倘若搞成一团糟，造成的损坏总有限度。我喜欢我的共事者。女孩们像飞舞的小蝴蝶，似乎比美国的十八岁女孩看起来年轻，男孩子们则是严肃的小小独裁者，似乎比美国的十八岁男孩年长。寺院内禁止说话，可是他们都是十几岁的青少年，因此我们干活儿的时候经常有人聊天聊个不停。不见得全是流言蜚语。有个男孩整天在我身旁洗刷，认真教导我如何在工作上有优良表现：“认真看待。准时完成。冷静自在。记得——你做的一切都是为神而做。神做的一切都是为你而做。”

It's tiring physical labor, but my daily hours of work are considerably easier than my daily hours of meditation. The truth is, I don't think I'm good at meditation. I know I'm out of practice with it, but honestly I was never good at it. I can't seem to get my mind to hold still. I mentioned this once to an Indian monk, and he said, "It's a pity you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem." Then the monk quoted to me from the Bhagavad Gita, the most sacred ancient text of Yoga: "Oh Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding. I consider it as difficult to subdue as the wind."
这是辛苦的体力劳动，但我每天的工作时刻都比每天的禅坐时刻容易得多。真相是，我想我不擅于禅坐。我已疏于禅坐，但事实上我也从不擅于禅坐。我似乎无法让自己的心保持不动。我曾向一位印度僧侣提及此事，他说：“很遗憾，你是有史以来唯一有这问题的人。”而后僧侣给我引了最神圣古老的瑜伽经文《薄伽梵歌》中的一段话：“喔！克里希纳，浮躁不安、刚强不屈的心，风一般难以遏制。”

Meditation is both the anchor and the wings of Yoga. Meditation is the way. There's a difference between meditation and prayer, though both practices seek communion with the divine. I've heard it said that prayer is the act of talking to God, while meditation is the act of listening. Take a wild guess as to which comes easier for me. I can prattle away to God about all my feelings and my problems all the livelong day, but when it comes time to descend into silence and listen . . . well, that's a different story. When I ask my mind to rest in stillness, it is astonishing how quickly it will turn (1) bored, (2) angry, (3) depressed, (4) anxious or (5) all of the above.
禅坐既是瑜伽的支柱亦是双翼。禅坐是“方法”。禅坐有别于祈祷，尽管两者皆寻求与神沟通。我曾听说，祈祷是跟神说话，禅坐则是聆听的动作。你猜猜看，哪个对我比较容易。我能一整天叽叽呱呱地跟神谈论我的感觉和问题，可是一旦静下来“聆听”……那可就不同了。我请求脑子安静片刻的时候，它总是马上变得（一 ）无聊，（二）愤怒，（三）沮丧，（四）焦虑，（五）以上皆是。

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the "monkey mind"—the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but—whoop!—how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
就像所有的类人动物，我为佛家所谓的“猿猴心”所苦——荡来荡去的思考，停下来的时候只为搔痒、吐口水、嚎叫。从遥远的过去到未知的未来，我的心自始至终任意摆荡 ，每分钟涉及数十个想法，有如脱缰之马，漫无目的。这本身不见得造成问题；问题在于，随着思考而来的眷恋之情。快乐的思维使我快乐，可是不一会儿，我又突然进入过分的忧虑，搞糟心情；而后又记起愤怒的时刻，于是我又重新发起怒来；而后我的心灵决定应该开始自怜，于是寂寞立即接踵而来。毕竟，你的思维是什么，你就是什么样的人。你的感情是思维的奴隶，你则是感情的奴隶。