It is good to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it.
Interpretation
Personal experience is essential for true understanding, especially about worldly pleasures and wealth.
In this quote, Hermann Hesse reflects on the importance of personal experience in gaining knowledge. While he acknowledges having learned about the futility of worldly pleasures and wealth as a child, it took him a longer time to fully comprehend and internalize these lessons through lived experiences, suggesting that true wisdom often comes from personal insights rather than just intellectual understanding.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth at a seminar.
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.
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.
My entire life consisted of musings, calculations, practical works, and trials. Many questions remain unanswered; many works are incomplete or unpublished. The most important things still lie ahead.
Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.
I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.
Do not die in the history of your past hurts and past experiences, but live in the now and future of your destiny.
Of two evils we must always choose the least.
If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.
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