Siddharta

A working sudoku solver finally and i'm free. Free to write and free to express. Its been a really long time since i posted anything new but here it goes. So recently i read this book 'Siddhartha' by Sir Hermann Hesse. 

This guy won the nobel prize for literature in 1946 primarily for his work 'The Glass Bead Game'.Couldn't get my hands on that book yet but after reading Siddhartha i got a faint idea of why he must have got that prize. Now i'm not going to narrate the plot of the book but what i will do is i'll just put down some dialogues from the book which i thought were both insightful and beautiful.But before that i'll let you hover your mind over these lines by paulo coelho from his book 'Like the flowing river' (another book worth reading atleast once) 

Be like the flowing river,
Silent in the night.
Be not afriad of the dark.
If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back.
If there are clouds in the sky,
Remember, clouds, like the river, are water,
So, gladly reflect them too,
In you own tranquil depths.

And here you go. Some dialogues listed below. Read them kindly, adore them, admire them, praise them and most importantly enjoy them :

• Siddharth Gotama to the Hero : " You've heard the teachings O son of a bitch ( sorry thats Brahmin ), and its good that you have thought about them deeply. You've found a gap in it,a mistake. You should think about this further. Let me warn you however,oh seeker of knowledge,of the thikcket 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, anfd 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 what Gotama teaches, and nothing else."                                                                                                                                        
• Hero to Siddhartha Gotama: "I have not doubted in you for a single moment. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realization, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And so are my thoughts, oh exalted one-nobody will partake in salvation teachings! You will not be able to convey and share with anyone, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! There is one thing that the teachings of the do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one among hundreds of thousands has experienced for himself. This is what i have thought and realizes. This is why i am continung my travels- not to seek other, better teachings, for i know there aren't any, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and either to reach my goal on my own or to die. But i'll often think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a saint."                                                                                        
• "Daily, at the very hour appointed by her, he visited beautiful Kamala, wearing pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon he brought her gifts as well. Much he learned from her red, shrewd mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. He was, regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit; she taught him, starting with the basics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleasure cannot be be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every area of the body, however small it was, had its secret, which would bring happiness to those who know about it and unleash it. She taught him, that lovers must not part from one another after celebrating love, without admiring one other, without being just as defeated as they are victorious, so that neither one started feeling fed up or bored and get that wicked feeling of having abused or having been abused. He spent wonderful hours with the beautiful and intelligent artist, became her student, her lover, her friend."                                                          
• Ferryman to Hero: "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?"                                                       
• Hero to Ferryman : "And when I learned it, I looked at my life, and found that it was also a river, and that the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and the old man Siddhartha by only a shadow, and not by something real.  Siddhartha's previous births were also no past, and his death and subsequent return to Brahmin was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, and everything is present and has existence.                                                                                                                                               
• "When someone is searching" said the Hero, "then it can easily happen that the only thing his eyes see is that for which he is searching. He is then unable to find anyhting or let any thought enter his mind because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search. He is obsessed ny a gial; searching means having a goal. But finding means: being free, open, and having no goal. You oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, because in striving for your goal, there are many things that you don't see, even though they are right in front of you."                                                                                                                           
• "Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness. Knowledge can be transferred, but not wisdom. It can be found and lived, and it is possible to be carried by it. Miracles can be performed with it, but it can't be expressed in thoughts with words. This is what has driven me away from teachers. Another thought is that the opposite of every truth is just as true! That is to say, any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one sided. Everything that can be thought with the mind and said with words is one sided, its all just the half of it, lacking completeness, roundness or unity."                                                                               
• " 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."                

 These are only few of lines i found truly amazing. I know it may appear out of context to you guys but as long as you are able to get the gist of it doesn't really matter. Read the book completely and the meanings grow only more profound, only more subtle only more enjoyable and only more awe inspiring.

 Hats off to the great artist and his amazing work. I'll keep putting up new posts regularly. Thanks for your time tata :)