Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

“Listen well, my friend; listen well! The sinner—like I am and you are—is a sinner, but in time he will come to be Brahman again. In time, he will reach Nirvana and will be Buddha, and these ‘times to come’ are only a deception and a parable! The sinner is not on his way to becoming a Buddha and is not in the process of developing, even though our capacity for thought does not know how else to envision these things. No, the future Buddha is within the sinner now; his future is already completely there today. One has to worship within themselves, in you, and in everyone else the Buddha which is coming into being, that is possible: the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect or on a slow path towards perfection; no, it is perfect every moment. All sin already carried divine forgiveness within itself, all small children already have the old person within themselves, all infants have death, all the dying have eternal life. It isn’t possible for any one person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path, because the Buddha is waiting inside the robber and the gambler, and the robber is waiting within the Brahmin. It is also possible through deep meditation to put time out of existence and to see all the life that was and is and ever will be as if they were all simultaneous; in that simultaneity is everything that is good, perfect, and Brahman. I therefore see whatever exists as good. Death is like life to me, sin is like holiness, wisdom ...