“Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. “Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.�
“the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.�
“Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?�
Never thought I would have a soft spot for him....more
“And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, “And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did.�
“…And otherwise let life take its course. Believe me: life is right, whatever happens.�
**spoiler alert** This isn’t a retelling of Gautam Buddha’s life story as I initially thought. But this is even more than a profound little book on se**spoiler alert** This isn’t a retelling of Gautam Buddha’s life story as I initially thought. But this is even more than a profound little book on self-discovery. A young man’s self journey to salvation but in an really unconventional way. But will he, in the end, find out what he’s really searching for?
He rejects his family to live the life of a Samana but he, in turn rejects that life to experience worldly pleasures again. When he found out it only brings him misery and worry, he became a pilgrim again to search for the meaning of life. In the end, he did learn that the journey to self discovery is his own that you should be your own teacher and he walks in his own path to that end.
“Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.�
“what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person.�
“A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.�
“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�
“When someone is searching then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.�
Needless to say, I am in awe of Herman Hesse’s writing, the way he has woven Buddhist philosophy into an extraordinary story without actually enforcing a divine and a spiritual ideology....more
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