Siddhartha

Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart. (p.498)

Siddhartha: This water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time? Vasudeva: It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future? Siddahartha: And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present. (p.1106-1177) Siddhartha listened. He was now nothing but a listener, completely concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now finished learning to listen. Often before, he had heard all this, these many voices in the river, today it sounded new. Already, he could no longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones, everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled a thousand times. And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world. All of it together was the flow of events, was the music of life. And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection. (p.1485-1493)

Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. (p.1550-1553)

The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception. (p.1555-1562)

The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha—and now see: these 'times to come' are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.—These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind. (p.1563-1578)

Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years simply believed in the river, nothing else. He had noticed that the river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him, the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river. But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he had believed in the river. (p.1600-1604)

It was true that he had never fully lost himself in another person to such an extent as to forget himself; he had never undergone the follies of love for another person. He had never been able to do this, and it had then seemed to him that this was the biggest difference between him and the ordinary people. But now, since his son was there, he, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. He was madly in love, a fool because of love. Now also experienced belatedly, for once in his life, the strongest and strangest passion; he suffered tremendously through it and yet was uplifted, in some way renewed and richer.

"When someone seeks," Siddhartha said, "it is all too easy for his eyes to see nothing but the thing he seeks, so that he is unable to find anything or absorb anything because he is always thinking exclusively about what he seeks, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by that goal. Seeking means having a goal. But finding means being free, remaining accessible, having no goal. You, venerable one, are perhaps really one who seeks, because, pressing after your goal, you fail to see many a thing that is right before your eyes."

It tells you the difference between seeking and finding.

In profound meditation there is the possibility of abolishing time, of seeing all past, present, and future life as being simultaneous; and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is like life to me, sin like sanctity, cleverness like folly; everything must be as it is; everything needs only my consent, my willingness, my loving comprehension, and then it is good in my eyes, and can never harm me.

This is the power of subjectivity and the power to reconcile the opposite.

Govinda made a low bow; tears, of which he knew nothing, ran down his aged face; the sensation of the warmest love, of the most humble veneration, burned like a fire in his heart. He made a low bow, down to the ground, before the man sitting motionless there, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, everything that had ever been valuable and sacred to him in his life.

Siddhartha became the sage, touching Govinda and touching the reader.

==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 43 | Loc. 646-49 | Added on Saturday, January 18, 2014, 07:23 AMAnd, he decided, It was the Self whose meaning and nature I wished to learn. It was the Self I wished to escape from, wished to overcome. But I was unable to overcome it, I could only trick it, could only run away from it and hide. Truly, not a single thing in all the world has so occupied my thoughts as this Self of mine, this riddle: that I am alive and that I am One, am different and separate from all others, that I am Siddhartha!==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 43 | Loc. 651-55 | Added on Saturday, January 18, 2014, 07:26 AMThat I know nothing of myself, that Siddhartha has remained such a stranger to me, such an unknown, comes from one cause, from a single cause: I was afraid of myself, was running away from myself! I was searching for Atman, searching for Brahman; I was prepared to chop my ego into little pieces and peel off its layers so as to find, in its unknown innermost core, the kernel that lies at the heart of every husk: Atman, Life, the Divine, that final utmost thing. But I myself got lost in the process.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 43 | Loc. 660 | Added on Saturday, January 18, 2014, 07:27 AMI’ll be my own teacher, my own pupil. I’ll study myself, learn the secret that is Siddhartha.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 44 | Loc. 666-68 | Added on Saturday, January 18, 2014, 07:30 AMBlue was blue, river was river, and even if the One, the Divine, lay hidden in the blue and the river within Siddhartha, it was still the nature and intention of the Divine to be yellow here, blue here, sky over there, forest there, and here Siddhartha. Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 722-24 | Added on Monday, January 20, 2014, 07:07 AMThought and senses were both fine things. Ultimate meaning lay hidden behind them; both should be listened to, played with, neither scorned nor overvalued, for in each of them the secret voice of the innermost core might be discerned.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 54 | Loc. 815-16 | Added on Monday, January 20, 2014, 07:26 AMYou are a willing pupil, Siddhartha, so learn this as well: Love can be begged, bought, or received as a gift, one can find it in the street, but one cannot steal it.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 58 | Loc. 875-78 | Added on Thursday, January 23, 2014, 08:45 PMYou see, Kamala, when you throw a stone into the water, it hurries by the swiftest possible path to the bottom. It is like this when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolve. Siddhartha does nothing—he waits, he thinks, he fasts—but he passes through the things of this world like a stone through water, without doing anything, without moving; he is drawn and lets himself fall.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 58 | Loc. 878 | Added on Thursday, January 23, 2014, 08:46 PMHis goal draws him to it, for he allows nothing into his soul that might conflict with this goal.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 64 | Loc. 981-82 | Added on Monday, February 03, 2014, 04:14 AMAt once he would become conscious for an hour that he was living a strange life, that all the things he was doing here were but a game, and that, while he was in good spirits and at times felt joy, life itself was nonetheless rushing by without touching him.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 66 | Loc. 1005-6 | Added on Monday, February 03, 2014, 04:22 AMAnd yet all this time, beloved, you have remained a Samana. Even now you do not love me; you love no one. Is it not so?”==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 66 | Loc. 1007-8 | Added on Monday, February 03, 2014, 04:22 AMPerhaps people of our sort are incapable of love. The child people can love; that is their secret.”==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 1036-37 | Added on Monday, February 03, 2014, 04:29 AMHe envied them the one thing they possessed that he was lacking: the importance they were capable of attaching to their lives, their passionate joys and fears, the happiness, uneasy but sweet, of their eternal infatuations.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 1059-61 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 04:58 AMAgain and again he sought to renew it, to increase it, to goad it to a higher level of intensity, for only in the grasp of this fear did he still feel something like happiness, something like intoxication, something like exalted life in the midst of his jaded, dull, insipid existence.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 82 | Loc. 1246-47 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 09:18 PMI have had to pass through so much foolishness, so much vice, so much error, so much nausea and disillusionment and wretchedness, merely in order to become a child again and be able to start over.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 82 | Loc. 1247-49 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 09:19 PMBut all of this was just and proper; my heart is saying yes, and my eyes are laughing. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the most foolish of all thoughts, the thought of suicide, to be able to experience grace, to hear Om again, to be able to sleep well and awaken well.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 82 | Loc. 1250-51 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 09:20 PMHow stupid it is, this path of mine; it goes in loops. For all I know it’s going in a circle. Let it lead where it will, I shall follow it.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 90 | Loc. 1367-68 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 10:19 PMthat the river is in all places at once, at its source and where it flows into the sea, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the ocean, in the mountains, everywhere at once, so for the river there is only the present moment and not the shadow of a future?”==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 92 | Loc. 1408-9 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 10:45 PMNo, a true seeker could not accept doctrine, not a seeker who truly wished to find. But the one who had found what he was seeking could give his approval to any teaching, any discipline at all, to any path, any==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 97 | Loc. 1473-74 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 11:03 PMPallid, he sat for days beside the dead woman’s hillock, refused to eat, shut his eyes, and shut his heart, struggling against Fate, resisting it.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 99 | Loc. 1517-18 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 11:10 PMWere his father’s piety, his teachers’ admonitions, his own knowledge, and his own searching able to protect him? What father, what teacher, was able to protect him from living life himself, soiling himself with life, accumulating guilt, drinking the bitter drink, finding his own path?==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 101 | Loc. 1536-38 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 11:16 PMHe could sense quite distinctly that this blind love for his son was a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a muddy spring, dark water. Yet at the same time he felt that it was not without value—it was necessary, it came out of his own being. This too was pleasure that had to be atoned for; this too, pain to be experienced; these too, follies to be committed.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 103 | Loc. 1571-72 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 11:23 PMNonetheless, he continued to run without stopping, no longer because he wished to rescue the boy but merely out of desire, in the hope of perhaps seeing him once more.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 105 | Loc. 1609-14 | Added on Sunday, February 09, 2014, 11:33 PMA mother’s blind love for her child, a self-satisfied father’s blind pride in his one little son, a vain young woman’s blind, furious urge to bedeck herself with jewels and attract men’s admiring glances—all these drives, all these childish matters, all these simple, foolish, but enormously strong, strongly alive, strongly asserted drives and desires were no longer mere child’s play to Siddhartha; he saw people living for their sake, saw them performing endless feats for their sake—making journeys, waging wars, suffering endless sufferings, enduring endless burdens—and he was able to love them for this; he saw life, the living, the indestructible, the Brahman in each of their passions, each of their deeds.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 112 | Loc. 1710-12 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:03 AM“When a person seeks,” Siddhartha said, “it can easily happen that his eye sees only the thing he is seeking; he is incapable of finding anything, of allowing anything to enter into him, because he is always thinking only of what he is looking for, because he has a goal, because he is possessed by his goal.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 112 | Loc. 1712 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:03 AMSeeking means having a goal. Finding means being free, being open, having no goal.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 114 | Loc. 1742-43 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:08 AMEverything is one-sided that can be thought in thoughts and said with words, everything one-sided, everything half, everything is lacking wholeness, roundness, oneness.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 114 | Loc. 1746-47 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:09 AMIt only seems so because we are subject to the illusion that time exists as something real.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 115 | Loc. 1760-63 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:16 AMI experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting, to learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it.==========Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)- Highlight on Page 118 | Loc. 1795-96 | Added on Monday, February 10, 2014, 04:23 AMBut what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it and hate myself, but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.”==========