Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.
Interpretation
Cultural gestures reflect our ethical values and shape human behavior.
Hermann Hesse's quote emphasizes that significant cultural gestures are rooted in moral principles that guide human actions. Such gestures, whether artistic, social, or ritualistic, encapsulate a society's understanding of right and wrong, serving as a model for individual behavior and communal values.
In practice
In a discussion about cultural practices during a lecture.
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 β 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.
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.
In beautiful things St. Francis saw Beauty itself, and through His vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable.
Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease
In whatever country you live, however young or inadequate you feel, or however aged or limited you see yourself as being, I testify you are individually loved of God, you are central to the meaning of His work, and you are cherished and prayed for by the presiding officers of His Church. The personal value, the sacred splendor of every one of you, is the very reason there is a plan for salvation and exaltation.
Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.
The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.
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