This
year I'm reading the Dover Thrift Editions translated by Stanley
Appelbaum, but most of my quotes are copied and pasted from the Standard Ebook, click here to read it free online.
Talking
Talking was a crucial role in Siddhartha's recovery. He talked and Vasudeva listened. When does Siddhartha listen to Govinda? Instead Siddhartha talks to Govinda. Govinda is seeking, asking, and practically begging Siddhartha for help. Why does Siddhartha listen? Like he learned from Vasudeva and the river. Instead Siddhartha knowingly passes on what he knows will sound like foolishness.
Foolishness
"Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”
I don't recall this chapter ever sounding so foolish!
I really like the idea that wisdom can't be transferred. I was discussing it in the comments within the last couple days. But really, it's a foolish idea. People learn information that makes them wiser all the time. We don't trial and error everything, luckily. In fact, humans are so successful because we excel at transmitting knowledge and culture.
The unity of opposites is more foolishness. Words are often defined or understood by their opposite meanings. There are factual statements. The Earth orbits the Sun. What's the opposing truth of that? The Sun orbits the Earth? Objects with mass have a force of attraction. What's the opposite there? Second law of thermodynamics or law of conservation. There are three humans in my house. I could keep going. The unity of opposites is a limited philosophical. Things are interconnections. Breaking the world or reality into binary thinking can be useful, but misleading.
All We Need Is Love, Love. Love Is All We Need
"Love, O Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect.”
Love is an idea that almost every religion converges on.
Siddhartha's mindset is worth striving for. Dare I say, a good goal! All else equal, loving and respecting the world and all beings seems to be a very healthy approach. Is it possible? Would humans reproduce, survive, or take over the Earth if we could attain a love for all?
Govinda
Was wisdom transferred to Govinda? How and why did Govinda see all the faces?
Does this prove Siddhartha right or wrong? "Wisdom cannot be passed." But the opposite is just as true. So wisdom can be passed? It appears to pass to Govinda. Readers appear to attain something. Siddhartha is right and wrong, and wrong and right.
Part I
Day 1, 20 Dec- Chapter 1: "The Son of the Brahmin"
Day 2, 21 Dec- Chapter 2: "With the Samanas"
Day 3, 22 Dec- Chapter 3: "Gotama"
Day 4, 23 Dec- Chapter 4: "Awakening"
Part II
Day 5, 24 Dec- Chapter 5: "Kamala"
Day 6, 25 Dec- Chapter 6: "With the Childlike People"
Day 7, 26 Dec- Chapter 7: "Sansara"
Day 8, 27 Dec- Chapter 8: "By the River"
Day 9, 28 Dec- Chapter 9: "The Ferryman"
Day 10, 29 Dec- Chapter 10: "The Son"
Day 11, 30 Dec- Chapter 11: "Om"
Day 12, 31 Dec- Chapter 12: "Govinda"
Siddhartha, while featuring Gotama as a character and an example of an enlightened being, spirals away, returns, spirals away, and returns. Like Alan Watts, Hinduism's love of Atman, Brahman, connection to all, acceptance of extremes that are necessary, infuses this book. Siddhartha doesn't want to get off the Wheel of Life. He says the Wheel of Life as all, like Hindu doctrine. He admires, appreciates, seeing saintliness in Buddhism, but doesn't want it to end. He wants to play the game, the ongoing, eternal game.
ReplyDeleteSo, the last vision we get is all beings together, all masks, taken on and off, for the All to manifest as. We get a last call that language isn't enough, that every word creates its own opposite. Siddhartha says that's a new insight, or a different insight, than Gotama, but the Theravadan Buddhists I listen to regularly always say language is limiting. Words are just phenomenon, another condition, another bit of something arising and ceasing.
What is real is observing, so Siddhartha tells Gotama that seeking implies a goal, and if there's a goal, you're blind to many other things around you. But maybe you NEED to be blind sometimes. Siddhartha has been. Govinda has been. In this last chapter, Siddhartha says that the Ferryman was blind to everything but the river, but then once he wandered off into the forest, he was seeing those things, too. And he owed that awareness, that wandering off, to his devotion to, and love for, the river.
There is some peace nestled here, but it's puzzling and strange, which every religion eventually becomes if looked at very closely and for a very long time. We grasp, and then we learn and study and set goals. And then we let go, and then we become simple and dumb, and stop reading, and stop trying to get somewhere. And maybe those are like heartbeats, the heart takes in, the heart pushes out, we seek, we stop seeking.
Not even a vision of Siddhartha at the end will "save" Govinda, because Govinda is a seeker, and he will go on trying to find new goals.
But that can feel like an empty pursuit after a while.
Goals.
I remembered very little of this book from my first read. I forget its essence. Maybe I was a different person then, taking in different things. Well, now I am a different person now, noticing other things.
People can learn things. But things about reality and "how it is"? That, maybe, can't be learned. It needs to be experienced. Siddhartha and Govinda both put themselves through the ringer to experience reality ... and Siddhartha feels he's learned something, but Govinda still hasn't. Govinda is still asking for others to teach him. People can teach you stuff, but people can't teach you Stuff, y'know?
ReplyDeleteSiddhartha to Govinda:
Delete“What should I possibly have to tell you, O venerable one? Perhaps that you’re searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don’t find the time for finding?”
Do you think this may apply to you?
The love Siddhartha is talking about is a love that transcends goals like Peace on Earth ... and Security for Your Family ... and things like that. This love encompasses evil, error, selfishness, stupidity, etc. It's a love that climbs about what the Buddhists call the conditional world and accepts how things are, not how things were or how we want them to be. It's not an intense joy, but equanimity ... equally kind and open to all things. Whether that's reality ... or whether we should strive for that love ... that's up to people to decide for themselves.
ReplyDelete