厭世，並非憤世。憤世是對世間極端不滿與憤怒、悲觀與絕望下想玉石俱焚的偏差心理。通常人們常會誤以為憤世就是厭世，其實是很大的誤解。
而厭世，是比較平淡的感受，當有一天發現自己對於己身與周邊的人，甚至是整個世界的所有一切波動，都像隔著玻璃櫥窗般的距離時，之後在平靜之下體驗出來的。
當一個人的經歷夠多，又懂得以各種立場角度去省思每一件事與各相關與不相關的人之間的脈動關係，直到某一天突然頓悟之後，會明白諸行無常的道理，喜怒哀樂的情緒也僅是虛幻的錯覺，自然對於許多以往執迷其間無法自拔的痛苦中脫離。
這種脫離感是很玄妙的感覺。心靈回到最單純的狀況，是非善惡對錯及一切相對之事再也沒有意義，也自然對於諸多事物不再抱存執戀與眷痴，即便是生與死更只是種狀態外相而已，只好比清醒與睡著般的差異。於是內心裡就會對許多世俗中追求的事物產生淡離之心。
因厭世與淡離本是相互的一體二面，所以合稱為『厭離』。如佛經裡提及的「厭離娑婆」，就是指此而言。
以下例舉坦尼沙羅尊者的文章來做更詳細說明。
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《印證心靈真諦》
——佛教的『厭離』與『淨信』
Affirming the Truths of the Heart
The Buddhist Teachings on Samvega & Pasada
by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu
[作者] 坦尼沙羅尊者
[中譯]良稹
We rarely think of Buddhism as an emotional religion. Early Buddhism in particular is often depicted as centered more in the upper left quadrant of the heard than in the heart. But if you look closely at the tradition, you'll find that from the very beginning it has been fueled by a deeply felt emotional core.
我們很少把佛教看成一門感性宗教，尤其早期佛教常被形容爲，其重點在腦左前部，非在於心。不過，你若仔細審視這個傳統，會發現其原動力從一開始便以深切的感性爲核心。
Think back for a moment on the story of the young Prince Siddhartha and his first encounters with aging, illness, death, and a wandering contemplative. It's one of the most accessible chapters in the Buddhist tradition, largely because of the direct, true-to-the-heart quality of the young prince's emotions. He saw aging, illness, and death as an absolute terror, and pinned all his hopes on the contemplative forest life as his only escape. As Asvaghosa, the great Buddhist poet, depicts the story, the young prince had no lack of friends and family members who tried to talk him out of those perceptions, and Asvaghosa was wise enough to show their life-affirming advice in a very appealing light. Still, the prince realized that if he were to give in to their advice, he would be betraying his heart. Only by remaining true to his honest emotions was he able to embark on the path that led away from the ordinary values of his society and toward an unsurpassed Awakening into the Deathless.
讓我們 回想一下年輕的悉達多王子初次面對老、病、死、與叢林遊方者的故事。它之成爲佛教傳統中最廣爲人知的章節之一，主要在於體現了年輕王子內心情感的直接與真 切。他視老、病、死爲怖畏之極，寄一切希望於叢林梵行這條唯一的解脫之道。據佛教大詩人馬鳴對這個故事的敘述，王子身邊試勸他放棄己見的親友不乏其衆，作 者足有智慧地把世俗人生觀描繪得引人入勝。盡管如此，王子意識到，屈服於勸解等於背叛自己的真心。惟有繼續誠實地面對這些真切情感，他才得以踏上遠離世俗 價值、超越生死的覺悟之路。
This is hardly a life-affirming story in the ordinary sense of the term, but it does affirm something more important than life: the truth of the heart when it aspires to a happiness absolutely pure. The power of this aspiration depends on two emotions, called in Pali samvega and pasada. Very few of us have heard of them, but they're the emotions most basic to the Buddhist tradition. Not only did they inspire the young prince in his quest for Awakening, but even after he became the Buddha he advised his followers to cultivate them on a daily basis. In fact, the way he handled these emotions is so distinctive that it may be one of the most important contributions his teachings have to offer to our culture today.
這個故事以一般意義而 言，很難說是對入世人生觀的肯定，然而它卻肯定了比生存更重要的一件事: 心靈渴求一種絕對純淨的幸福真諦。這股渴求之力以兩種情緒爲基礎，巴利文稱爲厭離(samvega)與淨信(pasada)。雖然我們當中鮮有聞者，它們 卻是佛教傳統中最基本的兩種情緒，不僅激勵著年輕的王子對覺醒的求索，在他證悟之後，也鼓勵弟子們常長此心。實際上，他處理這些情緒的方式如此獨特，對於 當今文化來說，是可資采納的最重要的貢獻之一。
Samvega was what the young Prince Siddhartha felt on his first exposure to aging, illness, and death. It's a hard word to translate because it covers such a complex range — at least three clusters of feelings at once: the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle. This is a cluster of feelings we've all experienced at one time or another in the process of growing up, but I don't know of a single English term that adequately covers all three. It would be useful to have such a term, and maybe that's reason enough for simply adopting the word samvega into our language.
厭離感(samvega)是 年輕的悉達多王子初次面對老、病、死之時所生的感受。這個詞很難英譯，其內涵複雜，至少並攝了三類感受: 意識到世俗生活的徒勞與空虛而生起的震驚、氣餒與疏離的壓抑感; 對自耽自滿、愚癡盲目地生活至今的自責感; 尋求脫離無謂輪回之道的急迫感。這些感受，我們在成長過程的某個時刻都曾經曆過，但我不認爲有哪個英語詞彙可以同時貼切地表達這三種含義。有這樣一個詞很 實用，也許足以把它直接吸收過來，納入我們的語彙中。
But more than providing a useful term, Buddhism also offers an effective strategy for dealing with the feelings behind it — feelings that our own culture finds threatening and handles very poorly. Ours, of course, is not the only culture threatened by feelings of samvega. In the Siddhartha story, the father's reaction to the young prince's discovery stands for the way most cultures try to deal with these feelings: He tried to convince the prince that his standards for happiness were impossibly high, at the same time trying to distract him with relationships and every sensual pleasure imaginable. Not only did he arranged an ideal marriage for the prince, but he also built him a palace for every season of the year, bought him only the best clothes and toiletries, sponsored a constant round of entertainments, and kept the servants well paid so that they could put at least a semblance of joy into their job of satisfying the prince's every whim. To put it simply, the strategy was to get the prince to lower his aims and to find satisfaction in a happiness that was less than absolute and not far from pure. If the young prince were alive today, the father would have other tools for dealing with the prince's dissatisfaction──including psychotherapy and religions counseling── but the basic strategy would be the same: to distract the prince and dull his sensitivity so that he could settle down and become a well-adjusted, productive member of society.
佛教不僅提供了這個 有用的詞彙，更提供了對治它表達的感受的有效策略——我們的本土文化覺察其威脅性，卻素無良方。當然，並非僅西方文化受厭離感的威脅。在悉達多的故事裏， 面對王子的新生情緒，父王的回應代表著多數文化的應對方式: 他試圖說服王子，他的喜樂標准高不可及，同時試以婚姻關系與各樣感官極樂轉移其注意力。父王不僅替他安排了一樁理想婚姻，還爲他蓋起宮殿，每季各居一處。 不僅爲他購置華服美飾，還使他的周圍娛樂不斷; 受到優待的仆役們極盡能事，奉承王子的一應興致。其策略簡單說，是令王子降低目標，從遠離絕對、遠非清淨的世俗生活中覓得快樂。如果年輕的王子活在今日， 那位父王對付王兒的不滿情緒則另有其招──其中會包括心理療法與宗教咨詢──不過基本策略不變: 分散注意力，麻醉敏感度，使他安定下來，成爲適應社會、有事生産的一員。
Fortunately, the prince was too eagle-eyed and lion-hearted to submit to such a strategy. And again, fortunately, he was born in a society that offered him the opportunity to find a solution to the problem of samvega that did justice to the truths of his heart.
所幸的是，王子有著鷹眼獅心，未曾屈從此計; 更有幸的是，他出生的社會爲他提供了尋找厭離感的解答與求證心靈真諦的機會。
The first step in that solution is symbolized in the Siddhartha story by the prince's reaction to the fourth person he saw on his travels outside of the palace: the wandering forest contemplative. Compared to what he called the confining, dusty path of the householder's life, the prince saw the freedom of the comtemplative's life as the open air. Such a path of freedom, he felt, would allow him the opportunity to find the answers to his life-and-death questions, and to live a life in line with his highest ideals, "as pure as a polished shell."
在 悉達多的故事裏，那個解答的初步象征，正落在王子離宮出遊時遇見的第四人──叢林遊方者時的反應上。較之被他稱爲『局限多塵』的世俗生活，王子視這位行者 的人生如天空般遼闊。他感到這條自由之道將令他有機會找尋生死問題的解答，同時過一種符合自己最高理想的生活，『如磨光的珠貝般純潔。』
The emotion he felt at this point is termed pasada. Like samvega, pasada covers another complex set of feelings usually translated as "clarity and serene confidence" ──mental states that keeps samvega from turning into despair. In the prince's case, he gained a clear sense of his predicament, together with a confidence that he had found the way out.
這個時刻他感受的情緒，便稱爲淨信(pasada)。如同厭離感，該詞也包含一組複雜的感受，通常解作『清明而安詳的信心』──這類心態使厭離感不至淪爲絕望。在王子的故事裏，他對自己的困境有了清晰的了解，同時又對找到超越老、病、死的出路升起了信心。
As the early Buddhist teachings freely admit, the predicament is that the cycle of birth, aging, and death is meaningless. They don't try to deny this fact and so don't ask us to be dishonest with ourselves or to close our eyes to reality. As one teacher has put it, the Buddhist recognition of the reality of suffering — so important that suffering is honored as the first noble truth — is a gift, in that it confirms our most sensitive and direct experience of things, an experience that many other traditions try to deny.
早 期佛教毫不諱言，困境就在於輪回於生、老、死的毫無意義。其教導並不試圖否認這個事實，因此不要求我們欺騙自己，或者裝著視而不見。如一位導師所說，佛教 對現實之苦的確認──並且鄭重其事地尊之爲第一聖諦──是一件贈禮。它印證了我們對世事最敏感、最直接的體驗，而這種體驗是許多其它宗教傳統試圖否認的。
From there, the early teachings ask us to become even more sensitive, to the point where we see that the true cause of suffering is not out there — in society or some outside being — but in here, in the craving present in each individual mind. They then confirm that there is an end to suffering, a release from the cycle. And they show the way to that release, through developing noble qualities already latent in the mind to the point where they cast craving aside and open onto Deathlessness. Thus the predicament has a practical solution, a solution within the powers of every human being.
從那裏出發，早期佛教要求我們進一步提高敏感度，直到看見，造苦的真正原因不在那裏──不在外界社會，不在他人──而在這裏，在每個人內心的渴求。接著，它確認苦是可以止息的，輪回是可以脫離的。同時它指出了解脫之道──藉由長養內心潛在的尊貴素質，直到止息渴求、趨向涅槃。因此，困境有一條人人得以實踐的解脫之道。
It's also a solution open to critical scrutiny and testing — an indication of how confident the Buddha was in the solution he found to the problem of samvega. This is one of the aspects of authentic Buddhism that most attracts people who are tired of being told that they should try to deny the insights that inspired their sense of samvega in the first place.
這條道之具有開放性，接受人們嚴格的審查與檢驗，也說明佛陀本人對於解決厭離感的難題何等有把握。對那些倦於受人勸解、拒絕否認引生厭離感的原初洞見的人來說，這也是真正的佛教最吸引他們的原因。
In fact, Buddhism is not only confident that it can handle feelings of samvega but it's also one of the few religions that actively cultivates them to a radical extent. Its solution to the problems of life demand so much dedicated effort that only strong samvega will keep the practicing Buddhist from slipping back into his or her old ways. Hence the recommendation that all Buddhists, both men and women, lay or ordained, should reflect daily on the facts of aging, illness, separation, and death — to develop feelings of samvega — and on the power of one's own actions, to take samvega one step further, to pasada.
實際上，佛教不僅對解決厭離感的問題足有把握，也是少數幾個鼓勵從根本上長養此心的宗教之一。對於人生困境的解決之道要求如此專注的修持，只有具備了強烈的厭離感，才能夠確保行者不至鬆懈退步、回複舊習。故有此番教誡，無分男女、在家出家，每日籍省思老病離死，長養厭離之感，下一步，藉由個人自身行動之力，將厭離升華爲淨信。
For people whose sense of samvega is so strong that they want to abandon any social ties that prevent them from following the path to the end of suffering, Buddhism offers both a long-proven body of wisdom for them to draw from, as well as a safety net: the monastic sangha, an institution that enables them to leave lay society without having to waste time worrying about basic survival. For those who can't leave their social ties, Buddhist teaching offers a way to live in the world without being overcome by the world, following a life of generosity, virtue, and meditation to strengthen the noble qualities of the mind that will lead to the end of suffering. The close, symbiotic relationship maintained between these two branches of the Buddhist parisa, or following, guarantees that the monastics don't turn into misfits and misanthropes, and that the laity don't lose touch with the values that will keep their practice alive.
對於厭離心 強，有志於離開世俗糾葛、減少解脫道上的障礙者，佛教既提供了一套久經考驗的智慧體系，也提供了僧伽的安全網，這個機構使他們得以離開居家社會，基本生存 條件無虞。對於離不開世俗關系者，佛教提供了一套居世而不受其染的生活方式，以布施、持戒與禪定，增強心智中趨向解脫的的尊貴品質。佛教僧俗 (parisa)這兩個分支的緊密共生關系，保證了僧侶們免於成爲邊緣人與厭世者，居士們得以繼續接觸保持其修行活力的根本價值。
個人加註：即是指出家僧尼與在家居士兩種身份而言。
So the Buddhist attitude toward life cultivates samvega — a strong sense of the meaninglessness of the cycle of birth, aging, and death — and develops it into pasada: a confident path to the Deathless. That path includes not only time-proven guidance, but also a social institution that nurtures it and keeps it alive. These are all things that our society desperately needs. In our current efforts at mainstreaming Buddhism, we should remember that one source of Buddhism's strength is its ability to keep one foot out of the mainstream, and that the traditional metaphor for the practice is that it crosses over the stream to the further shore.
因此，佛教對生命的態度令人長養厭離之 心——即對輪回於生老死之強烈的無謂感; 進而將其提升至淨信——即對涅磐之道的信心。那條道不僅包括了久經考驗的智慧指南，還包括了延續法脈的團體組織。這些都是我們個人與社會迫切需要的。在當 前使佛教主流化的努力當中，我們應當記得，佛教的力量來自於不隨波逐流，修證的傳統譬喻是跨越水流、到達彼岸。
版權聲明：
原文版權所有© 1997 坦尼沙羅比丘。免費發行。本文允許在任何媒體再版、重排、重印、印發。然而，作者希望任何再版與分發以對公衆免費與無限制的形式進行，譯文與轉載也要求表明作者原衷。
中譯版權所有© 2005 良稹，http://www.theravadacn.org ，流通條件如上。轉載時請包括本站連接，并登載本版權聲明。
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個人補充：
『厭離』與『淨信』這兩種互為表裡的思想層次觀念，鮮少在電視上的法師講經節目裡提及得很清楚。
然而，這是很根本重要的思想，並不是死讀經典幾十萬遍那種虛無飄渺的東西。
也因為佛教思想最初始源是釋迦牟尼追求超越生老病死的解脫道而來，嚴格來說這並不是尋常所以為的一定得出家往深山裡出世修行才能獲得解脫的刻板印象那般。
事實上，不管是任何人，任何身份種族性別，居住任何地區，都免不了需要面對生老病死與七情六慾。
不管出世與入世，那只是種適性的選擇，並不違背追求解脫境地的初衷。
