Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
Main Take-Aways
- Nothing can be learned. There is, my friend, only knowing, and this is everywhere.
- How beautiful the world was when one looked without searching, just looked, simply and innocently.
- He passes through the things of the world like a stone through water, without doing anything, without moving; he is drawn and lets himself fall.
- Anyone can reach his goals if he can think, if he can wait, if he can fast.
- But is not every life, every work, lovely?
- This wound had not been given to him that he might wallow in it. This wound was to be a radiant blossom.
- Harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling. Oneness.
- All of your seeking is making you unable to find.
- But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it, but to look at it and myself and all human beings with love and admiration and reverence.
Introduction (Tom Robins)
- Mankind’s “nervous proud little ego” is no longer despised as our worst enemy but rather accepted as just another piece of foolishness to be smiled at affectionately and calmly observed.
- The road to enlightenment is an unpaved road, closed to public transportation.
Part One
- Always I have thirsted for knowledge, always been filled with questions. Year after year I questioned the Brahmins, year after year questioned the holy Vedas. Perhaps, oh Govinda, i would have been just as well, just as clever and just as salutary, had I put my questions to the rhinoceros bird or the chimpanzee. It has taken me long to learn this, Govinda, and I am still not quite done learning it: that nothing can be learned. There is, my friend, only knowing, and this is everywhere.
- Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything.
- I have awoken, have truly awoken, and this day is the day of my birth.
Part Two
- How beautiful the world was when one looked without searching, just looked, simply and innocently.
- How beautiful, how lovely it was to walk through the world like this, like a child, so awake, so open to what was near at hand, so free of distrust.
- Simple is the life one leads here in the world. I need clothing and I need money, that is all. These goals are small and within reach; they will not trouble my sleep.
- Siddhartha does nothing-he waits, he thinks, he fasts-but he passes through the things of the world like a stone through water, without doing anything, without moving; he is drawn and lets himself fall.
- Anyone can reach his goals if he can think, if he can wait, if he can fast.
- Siddhartha saw it all as a game whose rules he was striving to learn but whose substance did not touch his heart.
- He saw that this water flowed and flowed. it was constantly flowing, and yet it was always there; it was always eternally the same and new at every moment.
- But is not every life, every work, lovely?
- This wound had not been given to him that he might wallow in it. This wound was to be a radiant blossom.
- What wisdom and the goal of his long search really was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, a capacity, the secret art of being able at every moment, without ceasing to live, to think of Oneness, to feel Oneness, and to breathe it in.
- Harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling. Oneness.
- Was not this repetition a comedy, a strange and foolish thing, this constant circulation in a preordained course?
- Locked in battle with himself, feeling inclined to plunge into despair but equally inclined to join in this laughter at himself and the world.
- And all of this together–all the voices, all the goals, all the longing, all the suffering, all the pleasure, everything good and everything bad–all of it together was the world. All of it together was the river of occurrences, the music of life. And when Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this thousand-voiced song, when he listened neither for the sorrow nor the laughter, when he did not attach his soul to any one voice and enter into it with his ego but rather heard all of them, heard the whole, the oneness–then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of only a single word: Om, perfection.
- All of your seeking is making you unable to find.
- One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom.
- The opposite of every truth is just as true.
- But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it, but to look at it and myself and all human beings with love and admiration and reverence.
- It is not in his speaking or in his thinking that I see his greatness, only in his actions, his life.