Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

The ancient spring must be found in one’s own self; one must own it! Everything else was just a search, a detour; it was to go astray.

Let me warn you, however, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. Opinions are insubstantial: they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish; everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings you’ve heard from me are not my opinions, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal: their goal is salvation from suffering. This is that which Gotama teaches, and nothing else.”

What Gotama teaches

The Buddha’s eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling.

it was divinity’s way and purpose for there to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things; they were in them, in everything.

love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, or finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen.

Siddhartha does nothing: he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring. He is drawn; he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him because he doesn’t let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal.

“Writing is good, thinking is better. Intelligence is good, but patience is better.”

“You are the best lover,” she said thoughtfully, “I ever saw. You’re stronger than others, more supple, more willing. You’ve learned my art well, Siddhartha. At some time, when I’m older, I want to bear your child. And even so, dear one, you’ve remained a Samana. You still don’t love me; you love nobody. Isn’t that so?”

Best lover

Above all, he learned to listen from it. He learned to pay attention closely with a quiet heart, with patience, and with an open soul devoid of passion, wishes, judgment, and opinions.

From the river

There was nothing they lacked, and there was nothing that the wise one or thinker possessed that put him above the rest of them except for one single, small, tiny thing: the awareness and conscious thought of the unity of all life. At many times, Siddhartha even doubted whether this knowledge should be so highly valued, or whether it was also perhaps some childishness of the intellectual people, the childlike people who practiced thinking. In every other regard, worldly people were of equal rank to the wise men, and were often far superior to them in the same way that animals can, in some moments, seem superior to humans because of the tough, unrelenting pursuit of necessities.

wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”

love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. Great thinkers may try to thoroughly understand the world, explain it, and despise it. But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not despise it. I don’t want to hate it and have it hate me; I want to be able to look upon it and myself and upon all beings with love, admiration, and great respect.”