Siddhartha

During his visit to Chicago, my brother gave me two books to imbibe and ponder over- The Stranger by Albert Camus and Siddhartha by Herrman Hesse. Both were absolutely profound and the best part (or worst depending on how you take it) is the scope of these works. The Stranger talks about absurdity of life, and facing death. I was more enamored by Siddhartha. I hear Siddhartha is text book material for high school kids in the US. Which is very surprising because in my mind, the content is difficult to grasp for teenagers. Maybe 25-30 is a good age for a first time reading. Im sure I will need to keep revisiting the book as I age. Here are a couple favorite passages from the book. I wish I could fully understand the essence. But understanding is not enough if one is unable to realize from within or act on it....
1. Indeed his soul was not with trade. The business was good enough to provide him with the money for Kamala, and it earned him much more than he needed. Besides from this, Siddhartha's interest and curiosity was only concernd with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to him as the moon. However easily he succeeded in talking to all of them, in learning from all of them, he was still aware that there was something which separated him from them and this separating factor was him being a Samana. He saw mankind going through life in a childlike manner, which he loved and also despised at the same time. He saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to be entirely unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being slightly honoured, he saw them scolding and insulting each other, he saw them complaining about pain at which a Samana would only smile, and suffering because of deprivations which a Samana would not feel.

2. Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it in his hand. "This here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything— and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.—But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly—yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person."

Here is a link to a free online copy http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2500/2500-h/2500-h.htm#2H_4_0014