Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

“Your soul is the whole world”,

“What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body? What is fasting? What is holding one’s breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life.

you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects.

He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings.

Truly, nothing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive,

And there is nothing in this world I know less about than about me,

I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins.

I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself,

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world!

The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.

I have learned from the river: everything is coming back!

Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life.”

“Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better.”

pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure,

more than in anything else giving and taking becomes one,

Once, he said to her: “You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it.”

Perhaps, people of our kind can’t love.

the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love.

And in the moment when the sound of “Om” touched Siddhartha’s ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up

when the Om entered his consciousness: he became aware of himself in his misery and in his error.

Non-eternal things change quickly,

and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feel sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world.

I had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vices, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over. But it was right so, my heart says “Yes” to it, my eyes smile to it.

Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

“did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?”

Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.”