Siddartha, enlightenment, and riding buses

My search for wisdom needs a look in new directions.  I feel that reading, finding new mentors, and taking courses toward my own enlightenment are all beneficial, but the concept of someone else muttering a golden sentence to me and it bringing me to where I want to be is far-fetched.  I will have to spend the time searching within myself for that which will bring me enlightenment.

Siddartha, By Hermann Hesse, has described it well in saying “Wisdom is not communicable.”  It is a personal journey, and can be helped along with knowledge that others lend you (through speaking, books, and such).  Knowledge cannot give the magic ticket to where I want to go though.  It will always be a long walk.  

My journey is a trek, and I can’t treat it like a bus ride.  I can’t wait at some station at a stagnant point without making my own strides (however small or large) forward.  If a bus comes along and I jump on, hoping the knowledge the driver (or mentor) has for me will bring me far along the journey, I am expecting these people to do the work for me.  The reality is that they have only a single path.

I can ride it, hoping to go down the correct way.  No matter where it brings me though, it won’t be along my original path.  And this is not a bad thing!  I should happily ride these buses, enjoying and learning as I go.  But I must do this with reality in mind; the reality that my path is no shorter after riding than it was before.  The reality that I do not skip the journey by moving quickly on someone else’s knowledge. I will come from a new perspective, but I won’t be enlightened just by listening.

The buses of other people’s teachings bring me parallel to my enlightenment, not closer.  If my enlightenment is a perfect point that I am always striving for, than the teachings bring me in a radius around that point, altering my viewpoint, but not my distance.  My own walking will have to take place whether I take buses or not.  If I accept waiting, stagnant, for another person to come along and give me a ride I will be making no progress toward the center of this maze. I can take buses around in a never ending circle, but to move further inward, I must walk on my own.  Otherwise it is a constant hopping on and off of these buses, learning lessons of similar insights, and never pushing myself closer to enlightenment.  

It is easy to ride buses, to take information from other people and accept it.  The trials of walking, of being on my own, are much more difficult.  But it is the hardship of walking, and of developing my own path that allows me to grow.  If wisdom is not communicable then I have to learn wisdom on my own.  Nobody finds wisdom in the same way, and that enlightened spirit does not come from a gps dot everyone can visit. Instead it is the journey itself, the hardships and struggles and difficulties of the way that give enlightenment. To look within myself, to move toward the hardship and away from the easy route, is what I must do.  

Walking closer, I am sure there are less buses; less teachers and mentors to aid me in my journey.  But the ones I do find will have that much deeper of an understanding of my progress.  The key, in my mind, is to continue walking toward the center.  I will watch plenty of buses pass by, not at a point where I can jump on and learn.  Some days I will approach a stop just as a bus is rolling up, and I can choose to ride along for a while and speedily grow my education (if not my enlightenment).  

Not sitting and waiting for a new bus to come when I am on my own, but keep progressing toward my center.  Not stagnant, not un-moving, not expecting others to do the work for me;  appreciating the difficulty in walking and learning my own lessons from it.