I can love a stone, Govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. This are things,
and things can be loved. But I cannot love words. Therefore, teachings are no good for me,
they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell, no taste,
they have nothing but words. Perhaps it are these which keep you from finding peace, perhaps it are the many words. Because salvation and virtue as well, Sansara and Nirvana as well, are mere words, Govinda. There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is just the word Nirvana.
A very sound thought that wisdom can not be taught. It has to be acquired and for that very sake, Siddhartha did not even stayed at the grove of Buddha. He wanted to experience life and hence gain wisdom. Hesse is a master at conveying thoughts simplistically. You almost feel for yourself the sense of veneration towards Sidhhartha. About meditation and prevailing techniques of self healing:
And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda."
Till my next read bye....
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