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The teaching which you have heard, however, is not my opinion, and
its goal is not to explain the world to those who are thirsty for
knowledge. Its goal is quite different; its goal is salvation from
suffering. That is what Gotama teaches, nothing else.
I have never seen a man look and smile, sit and walk like that, he
thought. I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that,
so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and
mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered
his self. I also will conquer my self.
—Siddhartha (novel) p. 35 by Hermann Hesse
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What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find. … When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, 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 under your nose.
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How strange it is! Now, when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray, when strength begins to diminish, now I am beginning again like a child.
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If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
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Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 270.
“It is man’s intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly
than the beasts. … Man is impelled to invent theories to account for
what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent
enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he
acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no
animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the
rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its
transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd
and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for
example would kill one of its foals to make the wind change direction.
Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the
same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies.
Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the
feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous
folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as
yet, intelligent enough.”—Aldous Huxley
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