“The true profession of man is to find his way to himself.”

I just recently read this, and found it to contain such eloquent truths. Some highlights:

“As a child I learned that pleasures of the world and riches were not good. I have known it for a long time, but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart with my stomach.”

I was able to connect so deeply with this idea of experience as a path to knowing. I think it’s easy to take the path for granted, but to be aware as you choose it is so important.

Siddhartha’s relationship with a river provides the insight that will eventually lead him to peace. Hesse’s words are beautiful:

“He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new…They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, of perpetual Becoming.”

Siddhartha learns from the river, and from a ferryman with whom he lives. They work silently in the fields and by the river, and eventually become attuned to all the voices and songs that the river sings.

The ferryman is an excellent listener, and when Siddhartha discloses his “troubles, his anxieties, and his secret hopes”, they flow across the ferryman and return to Siddhartha. It’s in this flowing, that Siddhartha is able to wash his wounds. He finds holiness in the ferryman’s ability to absorb “his confession as a tree absorbs the rain…this motionless man was the river itself”. I found this to be particularly inspiring. To be still enough, and silent enough in one’s own thoughts and reflections to allow the speaker’s words to flow back to them is truly the goal of listening. You not only remain at peace, but allow for others to find peace within you.

Once Siddhartha learns to listen to the river, he’s able to decipher that all voices ebb and flow and run together within it. The voices and songs grow into an ever increasing chorus until finally, Siddhartha hears it as one voice, pronouncing the holy Om. All of his experiences up to this point lead him to his discovery, or rather rediscovery of Om, which he internalized as a child but had to find again for himself as an adult. Om brings Siddhartha peace. His good friend asks Siddhartha to share some of his wisdom so that he too can achieve peace. However Siddhartha replies that “wisdom is not communicable”; it’s something to be attained on one’s own path, through one’s own experience of the world. Only then will it be true wisdom. He goes on to explain his experience:

“It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”

At the end of the book, Siddhartha’s smile invokes “everything that he had ever loved in his life…everything that had ever been of value and holy in his life”. All encompassing, and full of truth.