SIDDHARTHA

“I'm not kidding. 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 in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the 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's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. 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 him 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, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.”

 

In the passage, Siddhartha was trying to explain how knowledge is acquired and what a person can use the knowledge acquired for things that are miraculously important. Siddhartha believed that knowledge can be conveyed from one form to the other. When a person is educated they get so enlightened in their thoughts, behavior and way of life. Siddhartha as well did not understand why knowledge could not be expressed in words. This created a very big doubt in his mind to the extent of him having his own suspicions as a young man growing up. He therefore compared knowledge to wisdom, to Siddhartha, as knowledge can be conveyed wisdom cannot. Wisdom to Siddhartha was like a gift that a person gets.  

I chose this passage because I believe in education and the gaining of knowledge. Siddhartha gives a clear sense as to what education can do for an individual when it is acquired. Knowledge they always say is power, it helps to shape an individual in a very positive way, because when knowledge is acquired it can be transferred to do other things. I therefore attest to the fact that knowledge can take you go places and do things you never dreamed of, that is why Siddhartha wanted to understand the mystery behind it.