经典英语散文：咏诵

时间：2021-07-02 13:45:21

学习英语贵在坚持，找到适合自己的方法，多运用多温故。今天小编大家带来经典英语散文阅读,希望能够帮助到大家，下面小编就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。

经典英语散文：咏诵

The biggest obstacle in my Ashram experience is not meditation, actually. That's difficult, of course, but not murderous. There's something even harder for me here. The murderous thing is what we do every morning after meditation and before breakfast (my God, but these mornings are long)—a chant called the Gurugita. Richard calls it "The Geet." I have so much trouble with The Geet. I do not like it at all, never have, not since the first time I heard it sung at the Ashram in upstate New York. I love all the other chants and hymns of this Yogic tradition, but the Gurugita feels long, tedious, sonorous and insufferable. That's just my opinion, of course; other people claim to love it, though I can't fathom why.

事实上，我的道场经验之障碍并非禅坐。禅坐自然不容易，却不是深重的灾难。有件事对我而言更为困难。最要命的是，每天清晨禅坐之后、早饭之前的事(天啊，这些早晨可真长)——一种叫“古鲁梵歌”(Gurugita)的咏诵。理查称之为“声乐”(TheGeet)。“声乐”给了我不少麻烦。我一点也不喜欢，也不曾喜欢，打从我在纽约上州的道场头一次听见它的曲调就不喜欢。我喜爱这个瑜伽传统的其他吟唱，然而古鲁梵歌给人的感觉却是冗长、累赘、铿锵、难受。这当然只是我的看法，有些人宣称喜爱它，尽管我不明白为什么。

The Gurugita is 182 verses long, for crying out loud (and sometimes I do), and each verse is a paragraph of impenetrable Sanskrit. Together with the preamble chant and the wrap-up chorus, the entire ritual takes about an hour and half to perform. This is before breakfast, re-member, and after we have already had an hour of meditation and a twenty-minute chanting of the first morning hymn. The Gurugita is basically the reason you have to get up at 3:00 AM around here.

古鲁梵歌有一百八十二节之长，必须大声吟唱(有时我真这么做)，而每一节都是不容探知的梵语篇章。加上序曲的吟诵和总结的合唱，整个仪式的进行大约会花费一个半小时。别忘了，这可是在早餐之前，在我们已花了一小时禅坐、二十分钟咏唱第一段晨祷之后。古鲁梵歌基本上是待在这儿的你必须清晨三点起床的原因。

I don't like the tune, and I don't like the words. Whenever I tell anyone around the Ashram this, they say, "Oh, but it's so sacred!" Yes, but so is the Book of Job, and I don't choose to sing the thing aloud every morning before breakfast.

我不喜欢其曲调，我不喜欢歌词。每回跟道场哪个人这么说，他们总说“喔，可是它非常神圣哪!”没错，但《约伯记》也很神圣，我可没选择每天早餐前大声吟唱。

The Gurugita does have an impressive spiritual lineage; it's an excerpt from a holy ancient scripture of Yoga called the Skanda Purana, most of which has been lost, and little of which has been translated out of Sanskrit. Like much of Yogic scripture, it's written in the form of a conversation, an almost Socratic dialogue. The conversation is between the goddess Parvati and the almighty, all-encompassing god Shiva. Parvati and Shiva are the divine embodiment of creativity (the feminine) and consciousness (the masculine). She is the generative energy of the universe; he is its formless wisdom. Whatever Shiva imagines, Parvati brings to life. He dreams it; she materializes it. Their dance, their union (their Yoga), is both the cause of the universe and its manifestation.

古鲁梵歌的确有个令人敬畏的神圣血统;它节自瑜伽经典《塞犍陀往世书》(SkandaPurana)，此经典大半已流失，从梵语译成其他语言的部分寥寥无几。如同多数瑜伽经典，是以对话形式书写而成，一种类似苏格拉底的对答模式。对话者是女神巴瓦娣(Parvati)和全能全容的湿婆神。巴瓦娣女神与湿婆神是创造(女性)与知觉(男性)的化身。她是宇宙的生殖能力;他则是无形的智慧。不论湿婆想什么，巴瓦娣都能赋之予生命。他想象;她则予以实现。他们的舞蹈，他们的结合(他们的瑜伽)，是宇宙的起因及其表现。

In the Gurugita, the goddess is asking the god for the secrets of worldly fulfillment, and he is telling her. It bugs me, this hymn. I had hoped my feelings about the Gurugita would change during my stay at the Ashram. I'd hoped that putting it in an Indian context would cause me to learn how to love the thing. In fact, the opposite has happened. Over the few weeks that I've been here, my feelings about the Gurugita have shifted from simple dislike to solid dread. I've started skipping it and doing other things with my morning that I think are much better for my spiritual growth, like writing in my journal, or taking a shower, or calling my sister back in Pennsylvania and seeing how her kids are doing.

在古鲁梵歌当中，巴瓦娣女神请湿婆神告诉她世俗成就的秘密，于是他告诉她。这首赞诗教我讨厌。我原以为自己对古鲁梵歌的感觉在入住道场期间能有所改变。我原本希望在印度的背景下，能让自己学会如何喜爱它。事实上却适得其反。我在此地的这几个礼拜，对古鲁梵歌的观感从单纯的嫌恶转变成心惊胆颤。我开始逃开它，把早晨用来做自己认为更有益心灵成长的事情，比方说写日记，或淋浴，或打电话给宾州的姐姐，问她的孩子们好不好。

Richard from Texas always busts me for skipping out. "I noticed you were absent from The Geet this morning," he'll say, and I'll say, "I am communicating with God in other ways," and he'll say, "By sleeping in, you mean?"

德州理查老是逮到我逃课“我发现你今天没去吟诵‘声乐’。”他说。我答：“我用其他方式和神沟通。”他说：“你是说，睡懒觉的方式?”

英语散文欣赏：父爱无边

My father was a self-taught mandolin player. He was one of the best string instrument players in our town. He could not read music, but if he heard a tune a few times, he could play it. When he was younger, he was a member of a small country music band. They would play at local dances and on a few occasions would play for the local radio station. He often told us how he had auditioned and earned a position in a band that featured Patsy Cline as their lead singer. He told the family that after he was hired he never went back. Dad was a very religious man. He stated that there was a lot of drinking and cursing the day of his audition and he did not want to be around that type of environment.

Occasionally, Dad would get out his mandolin and play for the family. We three children: Trisha, Monte and I, George Jr., would often sing along. Songs such as the Tennessee Waltz, Harbor Lights and around Christmas time, the well-known rendition of Silver Bells. "Silver Bells, Silver Bells, its Christmas time in the city" would ring throughout the house. One of Dad's favorite hymns was "The Old Rugged Cross". We learned the words to the hymn when we were very young, and would sing it with Dad when he would play and sing. Another song that was often shared in our house was a song that accompanied the Walt Disney series: Davey Crockett. Dad only had to hear the song twice before he learned it well enough to play it. "Davey, Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" was a favorite song for the family. He knew we enjoyed the song and the program and would often get out the mandolin after the program was over. I could never get over how he could play the songs so well after only hearing them a few times. I loved to sing, but I never learned how to play the mandolin. This is something I regret to this day.

Dad loved to play the mandolin for his family he knew we enjoyed singing, and hearing him play. He was like that. If he could give pleasure to others, he would, especially his family. He was always there, sacrificing his time and efforts to see that his family had enough in their life. I had to mature into a man and have children of my own before I realized how much he had sacrificed.

I joined the United States Air Force in January of 1962. Whenever I would come home on leave, I would ask Dad to play the mandolin. Nobody played the mandolin like my father. He could touch your soul with the tones that came out of that old mandolin. He seemed to shine when he was playing. You could see his pride in his ability to play so well for his family.

When Dad was younger, he worked for his father on the farm. His father was a farmer and sharecropped a farm for the man who owned the property. In 1950, our family moved from the farm. Dad had gained employment at the local limestone quarry. When the quarry closed in August of 1957, he had to seek other employment. He worked for Owens Yacht Company in Dundalk, Maryland and for Todd Steel in Point of Rocks, Maryland. While working at Todd Steel, he was involved in an accident. His job was to roll angle iron onto a conveyor so that the welders farther up the production line would have it to complete their job. On this particular day Dad got the third index finger of his left hand mashed between two pieces of steel. The doctor who operated on the finger could not save it, and Dad ended up having the tip of the finger amputated. He didn't lose enough of the finger where it would stop him picking up anything, but it did impact his ability to play the mandolin.

After the accident, Dad was reluctant to play the mandolin. He felt that he could not play as well as he had before the accident. When I came home on leave and asked him to play he would make excuses for why he couldn't play. Eventually, we would wear him down and he would say "Okay, but remember, I can't hold down on the strings the way I used to" or "Since the accident to this finger I can't play as good". For the family it didn't make any difference that Dad couldn't play as well. We were just glad that he would play. When he played the old mandolin it would carry us back to a cheerful, happier time in our lives. "Davey, Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier", would again be heard in the little town of Bakerton, West Virginia.

In August of 1993 my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He chose not to receive chemotherapy treatments so that he could live out the rest of his life in dignity. About a week before his death, we asked Dad if he would play the mandolin for us. He made excuses but said "okay". He knew it would probably be the last time he would play for us. He tuned up the old mandolin and played a few notes. When I looked around, there was not a dry eye in the family. We saw before us a quiet humble man with an inner strength that comes from knowing God, and living with him in one's life. Dad would never play the mandolin for us again. We felt at the time that he wouldn't have enough strength to play, and that makes the memory of that day even stronger. Dad was doing something he had done all his life, giving. As sick as he was, he was still pleasing others. Dad sure could play that Mandolin!

英文散文阅读：坚持不懈，直到成功

I will persist until I succeed. 　　坚持不懈。直到成功。

In the Orient young bulls are tested for the fight arena in a certain manner. Each is brought to the ring and allowed to attack a picador who pricks them with a lance. The bravery of each bull is then rated with care according to the number of times he demonstrates his willingness to charge in spite of the sting of the blade. Henceforth will I recognize that each day I am tested by life in like manner. If I persist, if I continue to try, if I continue to charge forward, I will succeed.

在古老的东方，挑选小公牛列竞技场格斗有一定的程序、它们被带进场地，向手持长矛的斗牛士攻击，裁判以它受激后再向斗牛士进攻的次数多寡来评定这只公牛的勇敢程度。从今往后。我须承认，我的生命每天都在接受类似的考验。如果我坚韧不拔，勇往直前，迎接挑战。那么我一定会成功。

I will persist until I succeed. 　　坚持不懈。直到成功。

I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.

我不是为了失败才来到这个世界上的，我的血管里也没有失败的血液在流动。我不是任人鞭打的羔羊，我是猛狮，不与羊群为伍。我不想听失意者的哭泣，抱怨者的牢骚，这是羊群中的瘟疫，我不能被它传染。失败者的屠宰场不是我命运的归宿。