Herman Hesse

Siddharta

Josephina Lucke

Vojtech

He had star­ted to sus­pect that his ven­er­able fath­er and his oth­er teach­ers, that the wise Brah­mins had already re­vealed to him the most and best of their wis­dom, that they had already filled his ex­pect­ing ves­sel with their rich­ness, and the ves­sel was not full, the spir­it was not con­tent, the soul was not calm, the heart was not sat­is­fied.

With half of a smile, with an un­waver­ing open­ness and kind­ness, Got­ama looked in­to the stranger’s eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly no­tice­able ges­ture.

“You are wise, O Samana,” the ven­er­able one spoke. “You know how to talk wisely, my friend. Be aware of too much wis­dom!”

The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile re­mained forever etched in Siddhartha’s memory.

loisesya

“AIl the waves and water hastened, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean, and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapour and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.”

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else . Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate it and teach it.”

Siddharta quotes

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