Monday, January 17, 2011

Siddhartha: Govinda (Fri 1/21)

 How is Siddhartha's advice to Govinda reminiscent of Gotama Buddha's advice to Siddhartha?  What is the significance of these similarities?

4 comments:

  1. When Govinda asks Siddhartha for advice he tells him with a smile that he is searching too hard and that he is possessed by his goal. He also warns Govinda that his wisdom can’t be taught, and that no one can teach the wisdom because verbal explanations are limited and can never communicate the entirety of enlightenment. Knowledge can be passed along, but individuals must earn their own wisdom. The significance of between Siddhartha's and Gotama's advice is that they are alike.

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  2. Siddhartha's advice to Govinda was simple; "Perhaps that you are doing too much seeking? That your seeking prevents you from finding?" He instilled his knowledge unto Govinda by implying on the basis that "it is all too easy for his eyes to see nothing but the thing he seeks," defining that because Govinda seeks to find somehting, he is doing too much to find, an in turn, going to take muh longer to realize what he's searching for. He was reminiscent to Gotama's advice to him on the belief that you have to think simple, and and not think so much, or you'll find it hard to find nirvana or oneself. "He was a very simple man, was Vasudeva; he was no thinker, but he knew what was necessary as well as Gotama did; he was a perfected man, a saint!" Siddhartha was showing Govinda the way that he's trying to seek will have him on a journey long after his life would be over. He instills in him the power to be simple and not to thoroughly examine the situations and teachings among others, but just be simple. Siddhartha let him know that no one is perfect, and that he need to learn to love, by imagination through examination within one's mind; "in order to learn how to love the world, in ordeer to cease comparing it with some world of my wishes or my imagination,..........These, O Govinda, are a few of the ideas that have come into my mind." He gave Govinda an example of true understanding of love to the creative mind, instead of just seeing things as it is, and just letting it past through with out first fully understanding it. The significance of these similarities is that it first showed that Siddhartha has finally become one with himself and found nirvana. Secondly, it provides Govinda, as well as the reader, with the sense of thinking a situation or object through for the background meaning of thus, and not just an object or reference. This gave Govinda a thought process of what it would take to understand true senses and the world, and to use Siddhartha as a guide to find that nirvana within oneself, which is what ultimately happened, after Govinda finally learned through the teachings of Siddhartha, of what the Bhuddist perspective of things were.

    -Govinda

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  3. Oops, The last post is from Andrew Pryor!

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