I believe that all the world's religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you're really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal (from the village to the forest, you might say, keeping with the theme of the antevasin) and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has be a big one, this metaphor—really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the biggest boat imaginable.

我相信世界上的所有宗教，基本上都拥有一种欲望，那就是找到某种使人灵感洋溢的隐喻。你若想与神息息相通，便会尝试脱离凡俗，进入超凡之境（若继续使用“安特瓦信”的主题，或许可以说是，离开村子前往森林），你需要某种崇高的思想送你去那里。这必须是很大的隐喻——大而神奇，而且强力，因为它必须带你前往很远的地方，它必须是足以想象得到的巨大船舶。

Religious rituals often develop out of mystical experimentation. Some brave scout goes looking for a new path to the divine, has a transcendent experience and returns home a prophet. He or she brings back to the community tales of heaven and maps of how to get there. Then others repeat the words, the works, the prayers, or the acts of this prophet, in order to cross over, too. Sometimes this is successful—sometimes the same familiar combination of syllables and devotional practices repeated generation after generation might carry many people to the other side. Sometimes it doesn't work, though. Inevitably even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma or stop working for everybody.

宗教仪式往往由神秘的探索演变而来。某个勇敢的探索者寻找通往神的新路，体验超凡，成为先知，然后返回家乡。他或她给社区带来天堂的故事和路线图，而后由他人重述这位先知的文字、祷词、作为，以便和他一样跨过界。有时得以成功——有时数代相传的音节与宗教仪式将许多人带到另一边。然而，有时却未能成功。无可避免地，即使最具原创性的新思想，终究也会成为教条，或不再适合每个人。

The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit—tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God—but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panicstricken. It was a major religious crisis—how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

此地的印度人会讲述一则劝世寓言，一名伟大圣人在道场中，总有一群虔诚的信徒围着他听道。圣人及其信徒每天花数小时思索神的意义。唯一的问题是，圣人有一只恼人的小猫，在禅坐时段经常穿过寺院，喵呜呼噜叫，干扰每个人。于是明智的圣人下令每天把猫绑在外头的柱子上数个钟头，仅在禅坐时段，以防干扰任何人。这个习惯——把猫绑在柱子上，然后思索神的问题——随着岁月流逝，转化为宗教仪式。除非先把猫绑在柱子上，否则谁也无法禅坐。然后有一天猫死了。圣人的追随者惊恐万分。这是严重的宗教危机——如今少了绑在柱子上的猫，如何能够祷告？如何与神沟通？猫在他们心目中已成为手段。

Be very careful, warns this tale, not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake. Especially in this divided world, where the Taliban and the Christian Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God, it may be useful to remember that it is not the tying of the cat to the pole that has ever brought anyone to transcendence, but only the constant desire of an individual seeker to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.

这则故事告诫大家，当心别太执著于重复宗教仪式本身。尤其在这分歧的世界，塔利班与基督教联军为了谁有权说“神”这字眼、为了谁有与神沟通的恰当仪式而持续打他们的国际商标战时，或许我们更该牢记，引人通往超凡境界的，并非把猫绑在柱子上，而是个人追寻者渴望体验神的永恒慈悲之决心。神性需要修炼，也需要弹性。

Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity.

因此你的工作——你若选择接受这份工作——即是去寻找隐喻、仪式和良师，协助自己更靠近神。

The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggests: "People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate—and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean."

瑜伽经文说，神回应凡人选择敬奉的任何一种祷告与努力——只要诚心诚意祷告即可。奥义书有句话说：“人们依据自己的性情，以及自己认为最佳或最恰当的方式而走上不同的道路，无论直路或弯路——每一条路都抵达神，有如河川汇流入海。”