三生谷柯布生态书院 柯布院长开学致辞
小约翰 B 柯布
恭喜大家开始了一个伟大的教育项目！
现在世界上有很多种教育在进行，但其中实在有许多并不是真正的教育。现代大部分人似乎认为教育只是要记住尽可能多的知识，因此，我们从小被教导要通过学习知识来进行学习，知识、知识、知识。
曾经有一段时间，如果你知道很多知识，这会有不小的帮助，因为那样可以避免你花费大量时间去图书馆查找所需要的信息。但是现在你可以随身携带一个“图书馆”，并非常方便地随时查找需要的任何东西，所以知道很多知识的人的优势已经变得越来越小了。
对于不同于任何学校教育的教育而言，真正重要的是你如何应用自己所了解的知识。你的确需要很多技能，能够在需要时迅速地应用，但除此之外，更重要的是我们如何对待这些知识，这就是今天整个地球面临的问题。知识是我们所拥有的知识，但我们常常只是为了个人利益而不是他人的福祉而使用它们，有时候是为了制造可能会成为双刃剑的某些机器，有时候是为了让自己变得非常富有。
实际上，如此多的知识对我们来说太容易得到，可能弊更大于利。 真正的教育是启人智慧与富有同情心的教育，它将教会我们如何在现实生活中明智而富有同情心地待人接物。当然，我们也需要合理运用现有信息。
我相信在座的大家是会沉浸在我们这种真正的教育中的。真正教育的一个特点是，它不在于个人竞争，而是要学习如何与他人一起合作。我们现行的学校教育大多强调竞争性，如果有很多其他的年轻人比你学习更努力，你就没法进入必须通过严格考试的那些好学校，而因为某些期待，使这种竞争有时不可避免。但是，如果我们学会如何一起合作，我们可以取得更多的成就。实际上，那些非常难以解决的问题，那些真正能够改变地球未来的问题，不太可能被单个人所解决，他们更有可能由通过共同努力实现这一目标的一些群体来解决。在任何情况下，学习如何成为社区的一部分，这样每当有人取得突破与进步时你也将获益匪浅，你们做事将常有新意及创造性，你们将知道更多只因你的同伴知道更多，因为他们帮助你，你也帮助他们。学习如何团队合作，这才是真正的教育，这与任何的旧式教育都不同。我相信你们将会在书院课程中学到这一点，我向你们表示祝贺，因为世上没有多少地方能做到这一点。这种真正的教育也会让你知道我们人类究竟是什么，能看到我们是这个复杂的自然世界的一部分，一个美丽的世界，一个生命形式多种多样的世界。
我们生活的世界具有非常巨大的多样性，在对人类服务与改善方面也具有巨大潜力。 但它也是一个脆弱的，我们正在破坏的世界。要真正了解这个世界，真正意识到它是什么样的，我们需要与它连接，我们需要生活在它里面，我们需要服务它。 你们此刻拥有巨大的优势，因为接受教育的地方在大自然中，你们可以将双手插入充满生命力的土壤，这土壤与我们平常所接触的用毒药污染的土地截然不同，我们在这里的所有行为也与其他敌对及对地球生命不友好的行为不同。
当你们能深刻理解到这些时，你们就会明白我们都是地球上的亲人， 我们的个人利益是由所有事物的共同福祉构成的。 你们拥有在一个与自然世界无法分割的环境中接受教育的巨大优势，你们将学习如何与自然世界合作，使其成为它可以成为的，来自智慧诉求的一个富饶的世界。
现在，尽管你们可以在彼此和自然世界的关系中体验到所有这些和所有的善良，但在一生中，你们也会遇到那些反对你和你知道必须要做的事的人。你们的同情心和智慧会遇到那些根本不关心整个人类或自然世界会发生什么事的人，他们只对自己的事情感兴趣。或者纯然相信我们认知的人太有限，无法赢得他们全部的信仰或忠诚。在这个意义上，我们无法避免要允许反对者们去寻求与我们所寻求不同的东西，而这正是考验我们同理心的一点。如果我们把那些视我们为敌人的人视为敌人，那么仇恨就会增长。我们的大部分努力和精力将不可避免地用于试图击败这个或那个对手。如果我们富有同情心，这意味着我们会去寻求了解另一方，当你真正理解一个人为什么会是那样的时候，你就会对他们产生慈悲。
有时候，当我们以富有同情心的方式行事时，那种敌意会感觉到你的这份慈悲心，那么仇恨本身就可以被消除，每一个人都可以成为这个消融仇恨共同努力过程的一部分。它不一定总会发生，但如果我们坚持自己的道路并努力与所有跟我们持不同立场的人建立积极的关系，通常我们就能学到如何与那些对立和平相处，而如果我们接受并反对那些对立，我们只会在战斗中耗尽自己。 我认为，真正的教育是一种慈悲心的教育，即能够理解所有与我们交往的人，以及所有与我们生活在一起的人。那么某些慈悲也将会发生在你们自己身上。
真正的教育是要甄别认清真理，不仅仅使其能区别于错误，还要认出真相与其他事实的不同。 很多人都知道这个世界发生了什么，有太多信息，有太多真相，但是人们对其本质却毫不了解。人们在没有更深层理解的情况下试图使其所发现的意义合理化。好的教育使人们能够区分出哪些实际是冷酷的现实，哪些是能使我们感受到慈悲心的真实，哪些是能够拯救世界的真理以及哪些是大部分人已先入为主沉迷其中的事实，哪些是众多可以通过记住来通过考试的知识。
所以我祝贺你们，你们正在一起开启一个项目，开启一场导向我们这个世界真理的探险。 你们也非常幸运，你们的国家已经开始致力于开展一个对所有人类及生态文明而言必不可少的课程。因为你们获得了这种支持，我真的希望你们接受的这种教育形式能引起全国人民的兴趣，因为他们知道现在的教育制度不是为满足实现生态文明所需要的，它太过分关注知识，太个人主义，太缺乏与自然界的联系。如果你们能树立起一个教育模式的榜样，那么人们可以看到这种教育对你们个人以及集体的影响，我相信这很可能就是中国改变的开始，而结果将最终促使中国真正地来引领世界。
再次祝贺你们！
2019.03.16
英 文 原 稿
Congratulations on beginning a great program in education!
There is lots of education that goes on, but there is also a lot of schooling that isn’t real education. Lots of people seem to think that education is simply an amount of memorizing more and more and more. And so human beings are taught to learn by just learning facts, facts, facts, facts.
Now there was a time when it helped a lot if you knew a lot of facts because then that could avoid spending a lot of time going to a library to dig up the information that you needed. But now you can carry a library around with you in your hand and look up facts so simply that the advantage of the person who knows them all already has become less and less.
What is really important for education in distinction from just any kind of schooling is what you do with the facts. You do need a lot of skill and get it to them quickly when you need them. But beyond that, the important matter is what do you do with facts. And that’s the question that faces the whole planet today. Facts facts facts we have, but we are using them so often simply for the purpose of individual advantage over other people, sometimes for creating machines that can do both good and evil, sometimes for the purpose of becoming very very rich.
The fact that so many facts are so accessible to us may in fact today be doing us more harm than good. Real education is education that is wise and compassionate and that teaches us how to be wise and compassionate in dealing with the world that we are living in. And of course we will need to use the information that is available.
I believe that you are going to be immersed in real education. One characteristic of real education is that it is not a matter of individual competition but of learning how to work together with other people. So much of our schooling is competitive. If a lot of other young people study harder than you do, you won’t get into the good schools that require that you pass the examinations. And that kind of competition may be unavoidable as some expects. But we can accomplish a great deal more if we learn how to work together. Very difficult questions, ones that really make a difference about the future of the planet, are not likely to be solved by individuals. They are much more likely to be solved by groups of people who work together to do that. In any case, learning how to be a part of a community, such that you really are advantaged every time somebody else breakthrough it, does something new and creative. That you know more just because some other people know more, because they help you and you help them. Learning how to work as a team, that’s real education, that’s not just any old schooling. And I believe you are going to be learning that in your programs and I congratulate you because there are not many places that that happens. It’s also the case that real education makes you know what we human beings really are, that is, part of our complex natural world, a world of great beauty, a world in which there are so many forms of life.
The world that we live in is one of very great diversity, of great potential in the service and improvement of human kind. But also one that is fragile, one that we are damaging. Really to know that world, really to be aware of what it’s like, we need to encounter it, we need to live in it, we need to serve it. You are going to have the great advantage that your education is in the mist of the natural world. You will have your hands in soil that is full of living things, so different from the dirt that we often create by all of our poisons and all of our actions that are in enmity and opposition to the life of the planet.
When you understand deeply, you will understand that we are kin to the whole. That our personal advantage is constituted by the wellbeing of all things. You will have the great advantage of having your education in a context which you cannot avoid the natural world, you will be learning how to work with the natural world, to enable it to be the productive world that it can be and that wisdom pleads it to be.
Now in spite of all that and all the goodness that you can experience in relationship to one another and to the natural world, you are also, throughout your lives, going to be encountering people who object to what you know needs to be done. Your compassion and your wisdom will encounter people who simply do not care what happens to the whole of humanity or to the natural world. They are just interested in making it themselves. Or people who are genuinely convinced of things that we know are too limited to be worthy of their belief or of their loyalty. We cannot avoid in this sense, having opponents who are seeking something different from what we are seeking, and it is that point at which our test is one of compassion. If we treat those who treat us as enemies as if they were our enemies, enmity will grow. And much of our effort and energy will inevitably be spent in trying to defeat this or that opponent. If we have compassion, that means that we seek to understand the other, when you really understand why a person is the way they are, you will feel compassion for them.
Sometimes when we act compassionately, the enmity there sense that you are, then the enmity can itself be overcome, and one can become part of a joint effort to accomplish something. That doesn’t always happen, but if we continue on our path and work to build positive relations with all those, with whom we come into opposition, we can learn how to, often we can learn how to work around our opposition whereas if we take their opposition and oppose it, we will not, we will simply exhaust ourselves in combat. I believe that a real education is an education in compassion that is in understanding all those with whom we deal, all those with whom we live. And some of that is going to happen to you.
Real education is distinguishing between truth, not only and error, but between truth and the many truth. So many people know a great deal about what has happened, have a lot of information, a lot of truth but do not understand any of it. They try to make sense of it without understanding the deeper level when meaning is found. Good education will enable one to distinguish between the truth that actually freezes, the truth that enables us to feel compassion, the truth that can save the world and the many many truths that so many people are preoccupied with, the many many truths that is possible to memorize and pass exams with.
So I congratulate you that you are beginning a program together, an adventure together that is directed to our truth. You are also very fortunate that your country has committed itself to work for a course that is essential for all human beings, and for ecological civilization. And because that you have that support, I truly hope that whatever education you model will be of interest to people all over the country who know that the present educational system is not the one that is needed in order to bring about an ecological civilization. It is far too much focused on truth. It is far too individualist. It is far too lacking in a connection to the natural world. If you can model an education, people can see what it does to you and for you, individually and as a group. I believe this may be the beginning of a change in China that may enable China to truly lead the world.
Again, Congratulations!
2019.03.16