4

'3-D' View of History: Significant Details, Sense of Storyline, and Healthy Spirit of Study ('Detalye, Daloy at Diwa');

 Critique of memorization-oriented and fragmented presentations in current teaching of history.

Constructive and liberative view of time continuum and collective journey

Holistic Collective conscious- ness on Holistic collective experience

Concept and challenge of consensus-building and synergy-building for a collective sense of mission as humankind and as a nation; and on this basis, the consolidation of synergies in nationhood and in humanity.

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

.

"The River" of Siddhartha*

By Hermann Hesse

A German novelist (i1877-1962)

These are short excerpts from Hesse's novel Siddhartha (1922), published by Shambala Publications Inc. in Boston, Massachuettes, USA and in London, UK, in 2005.

"THESE (ORDINARY) PEOPLE were worthy of love and admiration in their blind loyalty, in their blind strength and tenacity. There was nothing they lacked. The wise man and thinker had nothing over them except one trifle, one little tiny thing: the awareness, the conscious idea, of the unity of all life.

*  *  *

A bright smile came over Vasueda's face. "Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "This is probably what you mean: that the river is everywhere at once -- at its source, at its mouth, by the waterfall, by the ferry crossing, in the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains -- everywhere at the same time. And that for it there is only the present, not the shadow called the future."

"That's it,"said Siddhartha. "And when I learned that, I looked at my life, and it too was a river; and the boy Siddhartha and the man Siddhartha and the old man Siddhartha were only separated by shadows, not by anything real. Siddhartha's previous births were also not past, and his death and return to Brahma were not a future. Nothing was; nothing will be; everything is, everything has its being and is present."

*  *  *

And another time, in the rainy season when the river was swollen and rushing headlong, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, friend, that the river has many voices,"  very many voices?  Does it not have the voice of a king, of a warrior, of a bull, of a night bird, of a woman giving birth, of a man sighing, and a thousand other voices too?"

"That is true, nodded Vasueda, " all creatures' voices are in its voice."

*  *  *

They listened. Softly came the many-voiced song of the river. Siddhartha looked into it, and in the moving water, images appeared to him. His father appeared, alone, mourning for his son. He himself appeared, alone, also tied with bonds of longing to his faraway son. His son appeared, alone too, lustily storming along the burning pathway of his youthful desires.  Each was bent on his object, each possessed by his object; each suffered. The river sang with a voice of suffering; passionately it sang. Passionately it flowed toward its goal, its voice lamenting.

"Do you hear?" asked Vasueda's mute glance. Siddhrtha nodded.

"Listen closer," Vasueda whispered.

Siddhartha made the effort to listen closer. The image of his father, his own image, and the image of his son flowed into one another. Kamala's image appeared and dissolved. Govinda's image and other images appeared and fused with one another, and all became the river, all moved as the river toward their objects, their goals, passionate, hungering, suffering, and the river's voice was full of longing, ardent with sorrow, full of unquenchable longing. The river strove toward its goal; Siddhartha saw it hurrying on., this river composed of himself and those near him and of all the people he had ever seen.  All the waves and currents hurried onward, suffering, toward objects, many goals. The waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all the goals were reached; and each was followed by a new one by a new one, and the water became vapor and climbed into the sky, became rain and crashed down from the sky, became springs, brooks, became a river, strove onward again, flowed anew. But the passionate voice had changed. It still had the sound of suffering, questing, but other voices were added -- voices of joy and suffering, good and evil evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, a hundred, a thousand voices.

Siddhartha listened. He was now all listener, completely one with the listening, completely empty, completely receptive. He felt now that he had completed his learning of how to listen. He had often heard all these things before, these many voices in the river, but today he heard it in a new way.  Now he no longer distinguished the many voices, the happy from the grieving, the childlike from the manly.  They were all part of each other-- longing laments, the laughter of the wise, cries of anger, and the moans of the dying -- all were one, all were interwoven and linked, intertwined in a thousand ways.  And everything together, all the voices, all the voices, all the goals, all the striving, all the suffering, all the pleasure -- everything together was the river of what is, the music of life."

back to top                      post a comment