I think it's safe to say that all humans will be intimate with death at least once in their lives. But what if that intimacy began long before you faced your own transition from life into death? What would life be like if the dead literally lived alongside you?

我想我敢说每个人的一生中都至少会有一次与死神亲密接触。但是如果这种与死神的接触远远早于你原本面临的由生到死的转换，该怎么办？如果死亡就在你的身边，你的生活会变成什么样？

In my husband's homeland in the highlands of Sulawesi island in eastern Indonesia, there is a community of people that experience death not as a singular event but as a gradual social process. 

我丈夫的家乡，在印度尼西亚东部的苏拉威西岛高地上，有一些人，死亡对于他们来说不是一个孤立事件，而是一个逐步发生的社会进程。

In Tana Toraja, the most important social moments in people's lives, the focal points of social and cultural interaction are not weddings or births or even family dinners, but funerals. 

在塔纳·托拉雅（Tana Toraja），人们生活中最重要的社交活动，社会、文化的关注焦点不是在结婚、生孩子甚至家庭晚餐上，而是在葬礼上。

So these funerals are characterized by elaborate rituals that tie people in a system of reciprocal debt based on the amount of animals -- pigs, chickens and, most importantly, water buffalo -- that are sacrificed and distributed in the name of the deceased. 

所以这些葬礼具有复杂的仪式，在一个基于动物数量的礼尚往来的体系中，将人们紧密联系-- 例如：猪、鸡以及最重要的水牛 -- 这些动物会被宰杀，然后祭奠在死者的名下。

So this cultural complex surrounding death, the ritual enactment of the end of life, has made death the most visible and remarkable aspect of Toraja's landscape. Lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, funeral ceremonies are a raucous affair, where commemorating someone who's died is not so much a private sadness but more of a publicly shared transition. 

所以这种围绕着“死”的文化情结，这一代表生命结束的仪式，让葬礼成为托拉雅最引人注目的、最了不起的一道风景。葬礼会持续几天到几周不等，葬礼是一个热闹的事儿。在人们祭奠的时候，不会有太多的个人悲伤，而更多的是公众的情感过渡。

And it's a transition that's just as much about the identity of the living as it is about remembrance of the dead.So every year, thousands of visitors come to Tana Toraja to see, as it were, this culture of death, 

这个过渡的重要性，对生者来说，是和缅怀死者一样重要。所以每年都会有成千上万的游客去塔纳托拉雅看这种关于“死”的文化。

and for many people these grandiose ceremonies and the length of the ceremonies are somehow incommensurable with the way that we face our own mortality in the West. So even as we share death as a universal experience, it's not experienced the same way the world over. 

对于很多人来说，这些宏伟的仪式以及仪式持续的时间，是无法与我们西方面对死亡的方法而比较的。虽然全世界的人们都会经历死亡，但是世人们经历死亡的方式不尽相同。

And as an anthropologist, I see these differences in experience being rooted in the cultural and social world through which we define the phenomena around us. So where we see an unquestionable reality, death as an irrefutable biological condition, Torajans see the expired corporeal form as part of a larger social genesis. 

作为一名人类学家，我认为这些不尽相同的经历根源于不同的文化和社会，并成为我们判断周遭现象的依据。所以我们看到的是一个不容置疑的现实，即死亡是一个不逆的生命状态，而托拉雅人将这种肉体的死亡更多的看作社会起源的一部分。

So again, the physical cessation of life is not the same as death. In fact, a member of society is only truly dead when the extended family can agree upon and marshal the resources necessary to hold a funeral ceremony that is considered appropriate in terms of resources for the status of the deceased. And this ceremony has to take place in front of the eyes of the whole community with everyone's participation.

所以物理上生命的尽头并不等同于死亡。事实上，一个人真正意义上的死亡是当大家庭达成一致以及准备好一切举行葬礼所需的资源。这些资源的准备要与死者的地位相匹配。整个葬礼仪式会在全村当着所有人的面举行，每个人都是其中的一份子。

So after a person's physical death, their body is placed in a special room in the traditional residence, which is called the tongkonan. And the tongkonan is symbolic not only of the family's identity but also of the human life cycle from birth to death. 

所以在一个人肉体死亡后，他的尸体会放在他们传统居住地的一个特别房间里，这种房间叫做 tongkonan。Tongkonan 是一个象征意义，它不只代表着家族的的身份也代表了一个人的生死轮回。

So essentially, the shape of the building that you're born into is the shape of the structure which carries you to your ancestral resting place. Until the funeral ceremony, which can be held years after a person's physical death, the deceased is referred to as "to makala," a sick person, or "to mama," a person who is asleep, and they continue to be a member of the household. 

所以基本上，你出生时所居住的建筑形状就是与你被带着去先祖安息的地方的棺材形状一致。直到葬礼仪式，仪式可以在一个人肉体死亡多年以后举行，死者被称为“to makala”，一个生病的人，或"to mama"，一个睡着了的人，他们还会作为整个家庭的一份子。

They are symbolically fed and cared for, and the family at this time will begin a number of ritual injunctions, which communicates to the wider community around them that one of their members is undergoing the transition from this life into the afterlife known as Puya.

他们被象征性地喂养和照顾，然后家族会在这时候实行一些仪式上的指令，告知社区里更多的人，他们的一个成员正在经历“轮回”，从生到来世，这被叫做"Puya"。

So I know what some of you must be thinking right now. Is she really saying that these people live with the bodies of their dead relatives? And that's exactly what I'm saying.

所以我知道你们其中有人一定在想，她说的是真的吗，这些人与他们的亲人的尸体住在一起？而这正是我的意思。

But instead of giving in to the sort of visceral reaction we have to this idea of proximity to bodies, proximity to death, or how this notion just does not fit into our very biological or medical sort of definition of death, I like to think about what the Torajan way of viewing death encompasses of the human experience that the medical definition leaves out. 

但我没有屈服于这种一想到接近尸体或接近死亡就产生的五脏六腑的不适感，也没有去想这个概念根本不适用于我们生物或医学对于死亡的的定义，我总是喜欢思考托拉雅人看待死亡的方式，涵盖了哪些医学定义的死亡所忽略的人类体验。

I think that Torajans socially recognize and culturally express what many of us feel to be true despite the widespread acceptance of the biomedical definition of death, and that is that our relationships with other humans, their impact on our social reality, doesn't cease with the termination of the physical processes of the body, that there's a period of transition as the relationship between the living and the dead is transformed but not ended. 

我认为托拉雅人在社会上认同了，并在文化上表达了大多数人感知的真理，尽管生物医学所定义的死亡被普遍接受。这种真理就是我们与其他人类之间的关联，这种关系对社会现实的影响，并不会随着身体物理性的死亡而终止，活着的人和死亡的人之间的关系有一段过渡期，是被改变而不是被结束。

So Torajans express this idea of this enduring relationship by lavishing love and attention on the most visible symbol of that relationship, the human body. So my husband has fond memories of talking to and playing with and generally being around his deceased grandfather, and for him there is nothing unnatural about this. 

所以托拉雅人通过将爱和关注给予这个关系中最明显的标志，即人的身体，来表达出这种长久的关系。所以我丈夫曾经跟他已故的祖父交谈过、玩耍过，有着美好的回忆，而且在他看来是一件很自然的事情。

This is a natural part of the process as the family comes to terms with the transition in their relationship to the deceased, and this is the transition from relating to the deceased as a person who's living to relating to the deceased as a person who's an ancestor. 

这是家庭接受他们与死者之间关系过渡的自然而然的一步。这种过渡就是，从与死者生前的联系变为把死者作为祖先的一员看待。

And here you can see these wooden effigies of the ancestors, so these are people who have already been buried, already had a funeral ceremony. These are called tau tau.

在这里你可以看到这些祖先的木制肖像，所以这些人已经被埋葬，已经有过葬礼仪式。这些叫做tau tau。

So the funeral ceremony itself embodies this relational perspective on death. It ritualizes the impact of death on families and communities. And it's also a moment of self-awareness. It's a moment when people think about who they are, their place in society, and their role in the life cycle in accordance with Torajan cosmology.

葬礼仪式本身体现了从社会关系的角度看待死亡。它使死亡对于家庭和社区的影响仪式化。它也是一个自我意识的时刻。根据托拉雅人的宇宙哲学，在这个时刻，人们思考他们的身份，他们在社会中的地位，以及他们在生命周期中的角色。

There's a saying in Toraja that all people will become grandparents, and what this means is that after death, we all become part of the ancestral line that anchors us between the past and the present and will define who our loved ones are into the future. So essentially, we all become grandparents to the generations of human children that come after us.

在托拉雅有一句谚语那就是“所有人都将成为祖父母”，这意味着在死后，我们都成为祖先的一部分，将我们定位在过去和现在之间，也将我们的挚爱是谁定义到未来。所以从根本上说，对于我们的下一代，我们都会成为祖父母。

And this metaphor of membership in the greater human family is the way that children also describe the money that they invest in these sacrificial buffaloes that are thought to carry people's soul from here to the afterlife, and children will explain that they will invest the money in this because they want to repay their parents the debt for all of the years their parents spent investing and caring for them.

相当于说，我们都是更大的人类大家庭中的成员。这种比喻通常也被儿女们用来形容他们在这些祭祀水牛上投资的钱。这些水牛被认为携带着人的灵魂，从这里到来世。子女会解释说，他们将这些钱投资在这，因为他们想要报答他们的父母，这是孩子们在其父母投资、养育他们时所欠下的债。

But the sacrifice of buffalo and the ritual display of wealth also exhibits the status of the deceased, and, by extension, the deceased's family. So at funerals, relationships are reconfirmed but also transformed in a ritual drama that highlights the most salient feature about death in this place: its impact on life and the relationships of the living.

但祭祀的水牛和展示财富的仪式同样代表着死者的社会地位，也同样引申至死者家庭的社会地位。所以在葬礼上，关系再次被确认，也同样被改变。在一种仪式的戏剧中强调了这个地方关于死亡最突出的特点：死亡对生命、对生者之间关系的影响。

So all of this focus on death doesn't mean that Torajans don't aspire to the ideal of a long life. They engage in many practices thought to confer good health and survival to an advanced age. 

因此，所有对死亡的关注并不意味着托拉雅人不渴望长寿。他们进行各种锻炼，认为这些有利于健康和长寿。

But they don't put much stock in efforts to prolong life in the face of debilitating illness or in old age. It's said in Toraja that everybody has sort of a predetermined amount of life. It's called the sunga'. And like a thread, it should be allowed to unspool to its natural end.

但他们并不相信在面对疾病和衰老的时候能有办法延年益寿。听说在托拉雅，每人都有预定的生命时间。它叫做sunga。就像一根线，它从一头拉到另一头，直到自然终止。

So by having death as a part of the cultural and social fabric of life, people's everyday decisions about their health and healthcare are affected. The patriarch of my husband's maternal clan, Nenet Katcha, is now approaching the age of 100, as far as we can tell. 

所以，死亡作为文化和社会生活结构的一部分，使得人们对于他们健康和医疗服务的日常抉择也被影响。我丈夫母系氏族的族长他叫Nenet Katcha, 据我们所知，已接近 100 岁的高龄。

And there are increasing signs that he is about to depart on his own journey for Puya. And his death will be greatly mourned. But I know that my husband's family looks forward to the moment when they can ritually display what his remarkable presence has meant to their lives, when they can ritually recount his life's narrative, weaving his story into the history of their community. 

有越来越多的迹象表明，他正在向迈向死亡的路途中。他的死亡会引发强烈的哀悼。但我知道我丈夫的家族期待着这个时刻，因为那时他们就可以用仪式展示他卓越的成就，对他们生活的意义，他们可以用仪式来记录他的生活故事，使他的故事编入他们社区的历史。

His story is their story. His funeral songs will sing them a song about themselves. And it's a story that has no discernible beginning, no foreseeable end. It's a story that goes on long after his body no longer does.

他的故事就是他们的故事。他的葬礼之歌也是他们的颂扬之歌。这个故事没有明显开端也没有可预见的结束。这是一个在他的身体腐朽之后，一直延续的故事。

People ask me if I'm frightened or repulsed by participating in a culture where the physical manifestations of death greet us at every turn. But I see something profoundly transformative in experiencing death as a social process and not just a biological one.

人们问我，参与到这种文化中是否害怕或不情愿，因为这其中处处都感到逝者就在你周围。但我看到一些深刻变革是将经历死亡作为一个社会进程，而不是一种生物进程。

In reality, the relationship between the living and the dead has its own drama in the U.S. healthcare system, where decisions about how long to stretch the thread of life are made based on our emotional and social ties with the people around us, not just on medicine's ability to prolong life. We, like the Torajans, base our decisions about life on the meanings and the definitions that we ascribe to death.

在实际中，活人和死人之间的关系在美国医疗保健系统中有它自己的戏剧性，在决定到底将生命这根线拉多长时，是根据我们的情感和与我们周围人的社会纽带，不只是基于医学延长生命的能力。我们如托拉雅人一样，将生命中的决定基于我们赋予死亡的意义和定义。

So I'm not suggesting that anyone in this audience should run out and adopt the traditions of the Torajans. It might be a little bit difficult to put into play in the United States. But I want to ask what we can gain from seeing physical death not only as a biological process but as part of the greater human story. 

所以我不是建议在座的所有人放弃美国的医疗保健，而采取托拉雅人的传统。要将托拉雅模式在美国应用可能会有点困难。但我想问，当我们将死亡不仅看做一个生物的过程，而看做更广阔的人类历史的一部分，能收获什么？

What would it be like to look on the expired human form with love because it's so intimately a part of who we all are? If we could expand our definition of death to encompass life, we could experience death as part of life and perhaps face death with something other than fear. 

当我们真情地看着死者的身体，而那曾是我们生命中不可或缺的一部分，会是一种什么感觉？如果我们可以扩展我们对死亡的定义以涵盖生活，我们可能会体会到将死亡作为生活的一部分，面对死亡时绝非恐惧，而是其他的感觉。

Perhaps one of the answers to the challenges that are facing the U.S. healthcare system, particularly in the end-of-life care, is as simple as a shift in perspective, and the shift in perspective in this case would be to look at the social life of every death. 

美国医疗保健系统正面临挑战，特别是对于老年医保。一个可能的解决方法就是转变看它的角度。而在这个例子中的转变就是去看看逝者的社会生活。

It might help us recognize that the way we limit our conversation about death to something that's medical or biological is reflective of a larger culture that we all share of avoiding death, being afraid of talking about it. 

它可以帮助我们认识到，我们讨论死亡时总是局限于医学性、生物性，这反映了我们都是如何避免死亡，害怕谈论它。

If we could entertain and value other kinds of knowledge about life, including other definitions of death, it has the potential to change the discussions that we have about the end of life. It could change the way that we die, but more importantly, it could transform the way that we live.

如果我们能够接纳和重视关于生命的其他知识，包括对死亡的其他定义，它才有可能改变我们关于生命终结的讨论。它可以改变我们死亡的方式，但更重要的是，它可以改变我们生活的方式。

376篇双语阅读美文整理（含音频），学英语的好资料！

203个英文视频合集：明星专访，名人演讲，励志视频……