Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
What we think, we become.
I love the last two quotes here. The mind IS the most powerful thing in our lives. Let's face it, no matter what you believe, what code of ethics you follow, or what morals you have, they are all the result of what YOU have DECIDED to follow. That is entirely a decision of the mind. It is as the above quote states, "What we think, we become."
ReplyDeleteFrom what we have been reading it seems like Siddhartha is beginning to lose himself he keeps on trying to destroy his "Self". Thus this opposes some of the transcendentalist belief, since when you give up everything else it is to "find" yourself not runaway from it. Also I believe he will finally realize what he is looking for, the secret is, who he is.
ReplyDeleteone more thought:
Bob Dylan has a song that reminds me of the first quote,Subterranean Homesick Blues, in which he states "Don't follow leaders watch your parking meters". Meaning don't let what, leaders teachers, preachers say, influence you or follow it blindly but take care of yourself by thinking and coming up with answers for yourself.
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Lizeth, I understand where you are getting at. Yet, I completely disagree with your conclusion that, "Siddhartha is beginning to lose himself [as] he keeps on trying to destroy his "Self"."
ReplyDeleteSiddhartha is not trying to "destroy" himself, on the contrary, he covets a togetherness with nature- he wants his self to essentially BE the rocks and birds he momentarily becomes. It is not an attempt at destruction, rather a longing for a supplement to his "Self"
His journey for the "eternal thirst" is the epitome of Transcendentalist values and beliefs. Yet, (as we discussed in class) his true sense of individualism, his confidence and lack of admiration or submissiveness towards another person, is the force that drives him to pursue those values further. He is asking: what else to life is there? What else can I learn?
I already love this book because it talks on the issue that Clark and other have told us about, of outgrowing our parents and the people we grew up around. To a very similar degree, I believe this is a challenge and issue we have all talked about in English with Miss Hill for a while now, we did so with Frankenstein when Victor spoke about the bright man's burden, and in other occasions. I believe that we all come to a point where our nest can nurture and strengthen us no longer, where we must go out and start gathering the knowledge and skills that will later become the twigs and rocks that will build the nest of the next generation.
This is a struggle! & may very well be one of the most nebulous and unsure epochs in our young lives, Siddhartha is just as confused and uncertain as we are, but we do share one thing in common, the notion that we MUST push forward, that we must be better, and that we must try and make sense of this all.
He is not destroying himself, only building up his arsenal of knowledge, experience, and strength!
I do like that quote from Bob D. I believe I have read a similar quote, also by a 1960s-70s artist, which would make sense.
(:
To further clarify the idea of escaping from the Self and finding the Self--both of which Siddhartha pointed out to Govinda they were doing just like "the drunkard," I can see where Lizeth believes that this is a departure from Transcendentalism if we do not know what it is Siddhartha is actually trying to escape from. If it was his Self, then Lizeth would be correct. But he is trying these different paths in order to find himself. Perhaps Lizeth means that the way of the transcendentalist is to live from the inside out, and Siddhartha is trying to conform to these other ways, which would be living from the outside in?
ReplyDeleteOr Siddhartha could be trying to escape from everything he has previously been taught--trying to see everything from a new perspective. He is trying to decloak all the garments that have been laid upon him, stripping himself from all the previous expectations that his family and community has had for him. I like to think that this is what he is doing, so his "escape" is not away from himself, but in order to find out who he truly is.
Does this make sense?
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
ReplyDeleteWhat we think, we become.
I absolutely love those quotes! That is so humanistic, to believe that we humans have the power to "make the world!" And that our thoughts are so powerful that they ultimately mold us. That is very empowering, especially at this moment in our lives when we are getting ready to go off to college, getting ready to go on our glorious expedition. Siddhartha is parallel to us because he is taking the glorious expedition that we will be taking soon! Very eager to finish this story and see what incidents Siddhartha stumbles upon and how he displays his fortitude and courage....
p.s Siddhartha is such a cool name! What does it mean? If I have kids I want to name one Siddhartha and another Heathcliff and yet another Sydney Carton :p
"Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas; he learned many ways of losing the Self. He traveled along the path of self-denial through pain, through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger, thirst and fatigue. He traveled the way of self-denial through meditation, through the emptying of the mind through all images. Along these and other paths did he learn to travel. He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it."
ReplyDeletethis is one of the passages that led me to think that Siddhartha was trying to destroy his "self", but it is really a cycle he is going through to find himself, I just had to read it over.
I love these quotes because in a way, if you think about it, it is like saying you need to be opened minded to the world. The quote says "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." To see the world and to not accept anything that it has to be a certain way is a sense of enlightment. A person who is opened to the world will understand that they don't know everything and that their path isn't necessarily the right way. With that in mind, also they shouldn't judge other people for the reason that they don't know who that person is because of their cultural or the traditions that they practice and/or even how, who or where they were brought up.
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