Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.
Interpretation
Despair arises from the challenges of living a virtuous life, while a deeper understanding brings awareness beyond despair.
Hermann Hesse's quote reflects on the duality of life experiences, emphasizing that the quest for virtue, justice, and understanding often leads individuals to confront despair. However, it also suggests that those who achieve a higher level of consciousness can transcend despair, marking a distinction between the innocence of children and the enlightenment of awakened individuals who navigate life's complexities with insight.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming life's challenges.
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.
That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
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.
You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation.
I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer's slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue.
The ability to make judgments lies at the heart of Christian living. Unless we are able to judge doctrine, lifestyles, and entertainment, unless we are able to distinguish between outer appearance and inner character, we just might miss the purpose for which God placed us on this earth. We might end up accepting a stone for bread and a snake for a fish.
It isn't those who are taken by force, put in chains, and sold as slaves who are the real slaves; it is those who will accept it, morally and physically.
When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.
After the fighting is done, and even when it's still happening, apologies are often needed for the recounting of bare facts. Sometimes bare facts feel unpatriotic.
Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable.
Men do not mirror themselves in running water - they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.
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