Finden aber… / But finding…

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Buddha, Hermann Hesse

„Wenn jemand sucht”, sagte Siddhartha, „dann geschieht es leicht, dass sein Auge nur noch das Ding sieht, das er sucht, dass er nichts zu finden, nichts in sich einzulassen vermag, weil er nur immer an das Gesuchte denkt, weil er ein Ziel hat, weil er vom Ziel besessen ist. Suchen heisst: ein Ziel haben. Finden aber heisst: frei sein, offen stehen, kein Ziel haben. Du, Ehrwürdiger, bist vielleicht in der Tat ein Sucher, denn, deinem Ziel nachstrebend, siehst du manches nicht, was nah vor deinen Augen steht.”

“When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “it happens quite easily that his eye recognizes only but the thing that he is seeking, that he is unable to find anything, unable to admit anything into his consciousness, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal. But finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are up close in front of your eyes.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Quote translation by Leon Hieros

I have experienced this many times over

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Buddha, Hermann Hesse

“I’m not joking; I’m telling you what I’ve found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed and taught with words. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you’ll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: 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 is one-sided which can be thought with the mind and said with words, it’s all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, unity. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for the person who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, of course, because we are subject to the deception that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda; I have experienced this many times over. And if time is not real, then the divide which seems to separate the world from eternity, suffering from blissfulness, evil from good, is also a deception.”

“How come?” asked Govinda timidly.

“Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha —and now see: these ‘times to come’ are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in yourself, in everyone, the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished and imagined, to some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it instead as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it. —These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind.”

From Siddharta, by Hermann Hesse