Mountain view, California – Step onto Google’s campus here – with its indoor treehouse, volleyball court and heated toilet seats – and you might think you’ve just sailed over the rainbow. But all the toys and perks belie the frenetic pace here, and many employees acknowledge that life at Google can be hard on fragile egos.
步入加州山景市的谷歌園區，室內樹屋、排球場，加上加溫馬桶座，你會覺得有如人間樂土。然而隱藏在這種種玩物與酬賞之下的，卻是快到近乎瘋狂的工作步調，許多員工承認在谷歌工作會讓脆弱的自我備感艱辛。

Employees coming from fast-paced fields, already accustomed to demanding bosses and long hours, say Google pushes them to produce at a pace even faster than they could have imagined.
曾經在快步調領域歷練過，對老闆需索無度及超時工作已習以為常的一些員工表示，谷歌對他們生產速度的要求甚至超乎想像。

Google’s co-founder and chief executive, Larry Page, recently promised on the company Web site to maintain “a healthy disregard for the impossible.”
谷歌共同創辦人兼執行長佩吉最近在公司網站上承諾「對不可能的任務予以健康的忽視」。

Little wonder, then, that among the hundreds of free classes that Google offers to employees, one of the most popular is called S.I.Y., for “Search Inside Yourself.” It is the brainchild of Chade-Meng Tan, 41, an engineer who arrived at Google in 2000 as employee No. 107 and now works in human resources.
無怪乎公司提供的數百種免費課程中，「搜尋內在自我 (SIY)」會是最受歡迎者之一。這是工程師陳一鳴的腦力結晶；他現年41歲，2000年進入谷歌，服務證107號，目前任職於人力資源部門。

Think of S.I.Y. as the Zen of Google. Mr. Tan dreamed up the course and refined it with the help of nine experts in the use of mindfulness at work. And in a time when Google has come under scrutiny from European and United States regulators over privacy and other issues, a class in mindfulness might be a good thing. The class has three steps: attention training, self-knowledge and self-mastery, and the creation of useful mental habits. More than 1,000 Google employees have taken the class, and there’s a waiting list of 30 when it’s offered, four times a year. The class accepts 60 people and runs seven weeks.
SIY可視為谷歌的禪學。由陳一鳴發想，在9位專家協助下精益求精，能在工作之際進行靈修。當谷歌在隱私權等問題上遭歐美當局嚴格監督之際，靈修課程或許會有幫助。課程分三階段：專注訓練、認識自我並掌控自我，並發展出管用的心靈慣性。已有千餘員工上過課，一年開課四次，每次60人，上課7星期，目前還有30人在排隊。

Richard Fernandez, director of executive development and a psychologist by training, says he sees a significant difference in his work behavior since taking the class. “I’m definitely much more resilient as a leader,” he says. “I listen more carefully and with less reactivity in high-stakes meetings. I work with a lot of senior executives who can be very demanding, but that doesn’t faze me anymore. It’s almost an emotional and mental bank account. I’ve now got much more of a buffer there.”
具心理學家身分的行政發展部門主管費南德茲說，他覺得上過課後處理公事大不相同。他說：「擔任領導，我確已更有韌性。重要會議上更能仔細聆聽，不輕率回應。我與許多要求甚多的高階主管共事，但不再以此為憂。就像擁有一個情緒及心靈的帳戶，我現在緩衝空間大多了。」

Mr. Tan says the course has received good reviews. “In anonymous surveys, on average, participants rated it around 4.75 out of 5,” he says. “Awareness is spread almost entirely by word-of-mouth by alumni, and that alone already created more demand than we can currently serve.”
陳一鳴表示課程反應甚佳。他說：「匿名調查顯示，參與者給予的平均分數是4.75分，滿分為5分。全靠結業者口碑相傳，就讓這課程供不應求了。」

Mr. Tan’s first book, “Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)” is to be published in 17 markets worldwide, from South Korea to Brazil to Slovenia.
陳一鳴的第一本書「搜尋內在自我：獲得成功、喜樂（乃至世界和平）的意外途徑」，將在全球17個市場出版，包括南韓、巴西與斯洛維尼亞。

A Buddhist for many years, Mr. Tan, born and raised in Singapore, taught himself how to write software code at the age of 12. And by 15, he had won his first national academic award. At 17, he was one of four members of the national software championship team. “In Singapore, the way to distinguish yourself is to win competitions,” he says. “I wasn’t any happier. There was a compulsion to be the best.”
陳一鳴是多年的佛教徒，生長在新加坡，12歲自學撰寫程式，15歲獲得第一項學術獎；17歲成為全國軟體冠軍隊的4名成員之一。他說：「在新加坡要出頭就得在比賽中獲勝。這並沒有讓我更快樂。有種非第一不可的壓力。」

Mr. Tan says that he wants to create world peace. “I don’t want to sound megalomaniac, but my whole life is about doing something for the world, from as far back as I can remember.”
陳一鳴表示，他希望能締造世界和平。他說：「我不敢大言不慚，但我這一生只想為世界奉獻；打從記事起便始終如一。」

Mr. Tan studied computer engineering in Singapore and attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was offered a job by Google, he says, within five minutes of e-mailing his resume after graduation.
陳一鳴在新加坡主修電腦工程，後赴聖塔巴巴拉加州大學讀研究所。畢業後寫了封電郵把履歷傳給谷歌，5分鐘之內便獲錄取。

Recently, about 50 people filed into an amphitheater at Google. Mr. Tan was at the podium with a fellow teacher, Marc Lesser, a former Zen monk who is the author of two books. For two hours, employees worked with partners to perform exercises in identifying and sharing emotions. The class offers students a place to question why and how they behave. Here, wielding superior technical skills or intelligence won’t suffice.
最近約有50人在公司的劇場內上課。陳一鳴與已還俗的禪僧雷塞（已有兩本著作）共同主講。兩小時內員工與伙伴一起演練如何辨別及分享情緒。學員並能詢問行為的原因及如何行事。制式的高超技巧或知識在此完全無用。

Like Mr. Tan, many S.I.Y. students are highly educated immigrants from Asia. This course challenges them to examine how their choices affect their work and relationships. “We need an expert,” Mr. Tan says as the class begins. “That expert is you. This class is to help you discover what you already know.”
許多學員與陳一鳴一樣，是高學歷的亞洲移民。課程要求他們檢視自己的抉擇如何影響本身的工作與關係。陳一鳴開宗明義地宣示：「我們需要一位專家，那就是你。這項課程將協助你發現自己已經知道的事。」

At one point, he shows a slide of a pile of four smooth polished stones, balanced atop one another. “We’re looking for alignment, finding our deepest values, envisioning how they’ll take us to our destination and the resilience we need to achieve that,” he says.
課堂上他用幻燈片展示4個光面石頭如何平衡地疊成一落。他說：「我們尋找一種組合，發現我們最深層的價值，想像這些價值如何帶領我們到達目的地，及達成目標所需的韌性。」

One exercise asks everyone to name, and share with a partner, three core values. “It centers you,” one man says afterward. “You can go through life forgetting what they are.”
演練項目之一是要求每名學員說出三項核心價值，並與一位伙伴分享。一名學員課後說：「完全針對自己。你可能活了一輩子都沒有顧念它們。」

In one seven-minute exercise, participants are asked to write, nonstop, how they envision their lives in five years. Mr. Tan ends it by tapping a Tibetan brass singing bowl. They discuss what it means to succeed, and to fail.
另一項耗時7分鐘的演練，參與者須一氣呵成寫出自己如何預想未來五年的生活。陳一鳴在結束時會輕叩一只銅製西藏頌缽。大家相互討論成功與失敗的意義。

“Success and failure are emotional and physiological experiences,” Mr. Tan says. “We need to deal with them in a way that is present and calm.”
陳一鳴說：「成敗皆屬情緒與心理上的經驗。我們必須以當下且平靜的方式來因應。」

Then Mr. Lesser asks the entire room to shout in unison: “I failed!”
隨後由雷塞要求全員一致高喊「我失敗了！」。

“We need to see failure in a kind, gentle and generous way,” he says. “Let’s see if we can explore these emotions without grasping.”
他說：「我們必須以一種仁慈、溫和且寬大的態度來看待失敗。讓我們檢視是否能了無執著地探索這些情緒。」

Blaise Pabon, an enterprise sales engineer, took the class in 2009. “The notion of S.I.Y. is more radical or countercultural here at Google than anywhere else,” he says. “The pressure here is really quite intense. It’s a place filled with high achievers trained to find validation through external factors.”
企業銷售工程師帕本2009年上過課。他說：「在谷歌，SIY這個概念比在其他任何地方更激進，更與企業文化牴觸。此地壓力沉重，優秀人才比比皆是，且一向從外在因素尋求認可。」

One tool the course teaches is S.B.N.R.R. – Stop, Breathe, Notice, Reflect and Respond. “Business is a machine made out of people,” says Bill Duane, a Google engineer. “If you have people, you have problems. You can have friction between them or smoothness.”
課程中還傳授SBNRR心法 ─ 靜止、吐納、體察、反思及迴向。工程師杜安說：「企業是人組成的機器。有人，就有問題。彼此間會有摩擦，也可以很平順。」

Can S.I.Y. translate to other companies and corporate cultures?
SIY能否用在其他公司及企業文化？

As Mr. Pabon says: “The reason I think it will be broadly applicable is that everyone struggles. ‘Am I the smartest person in the room? What if I’m not?' They’re worried about losing their job. Everyone’s got some fear of not being able to survive.”
一如帕本所說：「我認為這可以廣泛應用，因為眾生皆苦。『辦公室裡是否我最優？若不然又將如何？』。大家都怕丟飯碗。都怕混不下去。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/technology/google-course-asks-employees-to-take-a-deep-breath.html

Slideshow: At Google, a Moment to Pause
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/04/29/technology/Google.html

Video: Business Day Live – Chade-Meng Tan
http://nyti.ms/IjKTvx

2012-05-22聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 任中原譯 原文參見紐時週報一版下轉二版左