"Follow your bliss ."By Joseph John Campbell

我認識梁永安先生時，他已經為立緒出版社翻譯了 Joseph John Campbell 的書，所以，Campbell的傳記和書 (英文版很早就買，可是只讀些插圖)， 是最近幾年的事。

19世紀末和20世紀上半葉的美國知識份子，還多/常到歐洲留學。然而，他們多可以掌握主要歐洲語言 (法文、德語等)，這點很重要。

三十年前，名記者/主持人Bill Moyers訪談詩人等的書，今日世界出版社就有翻譯。現在，他更慷慨地將昔日訪問Campbell 的逐字稿與讀者分享。






Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, who worked in comparative mythologyand comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's magnum opus is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. Since the book's publication, Campbell's theory has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss."^[1]

"Follow your bliss"[edit]

One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to "follow your bliss". He derived this idea from the Upanishads:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.^[59]

He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life:

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.^[60]

Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time that The Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public—both religious and secular.^[61]

During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.'"^[62]

【父親過世 兄長自殺 安德森‧庫柏：我向前走】

我10歲時，父親在接受心臟動脈繞道手術時過世，我21歲時，大我兩歲的哥哥跳樓自殺身亡，他從我們家的頂樓露臺跳下，即使母親在旁苦苦哀求，希望他冷靜，也沒能挽回他。

快畢業時，我非常徬徨，我問母親自己該做什麼工作，她引用神話學大師坎伯的話：「循著你的至喜（follow your bliss）」，但我的「至喜」到底是什麼？

安德森‧庫柏：向前走，因為人生沒有B計畫｜天下雜誌

安德森‧庫柏：「如果年輕時沒有經歷過喪親的痛苦，我可能不會對這份工作懷抱這麼大的使命感與衝勁。父親過世時，世界突然變成一個可怕的地方，我不覺得自己能依靠任何人，而且開始害怕會再有別的壞事發生。哥哥的自...

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