#21 ·
analogpuma10 said:Personally, I think this book carries a much deeper message than just some starry-eyed, romanticized dream.
Can a person really just stumble upon internal harmony and unify all their conflicting forces if they haven't actually lived through the grit and glory of the real world?
Both those sides—the light and the dark—exist right inside us. Running off into some remote forest is just running away from ourselves. It’s even a form of denial, honestly. It’s refusing to believe our Spirit is capable of squaring up against life as it actually is and defeating Samsara right where we stand, rather than just kneeling under some tree in the middle of nowhere.
We are built from a multitude of different energies, and you can't just deny any of them. Life teaches us the true nature of these forces through various struggles; they can only be transformed into something higher, never ignored or escaped.
Just because someone hides away in a monastery doesn't mean they’ve achieved purity; it might just mean they haven't been tested by a situation that forces their true nature to surface.
Meditation should be everyday life. Any kind of work that requires our total, undivided concentration is, in its own way, meditation.
You have to experience things to realize they are illusions. Now, that doesn't mean you have to go out and make every stupid mistake imaginable, but once you make that first error and taste the bitter consequences, those are the signs that you've started drifting downstream.
A lot of people hiding out in temples aren't there because they've transcended the world; they're just hiding from it.
That is exactly the core of my question.
You put it beautifully, which is what I was getting at.
I think despite all the spiritual flaws in Quincy's Siddhartha, the book still offers some fundamental guidance.
You can't deny that, Fazlija.