SIDDHARTHA : Book by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha : a spiritual cult that I was longing to read since ages. A story that starts with a wandering boy who leaves his father in serach of true knowledge and ends with wandering father trying to calm his urge to find his son. A journey that teaches the practical spirituality, tried and tested by touching each facade of life with the essence of oneness.

The book teaches three important things a man needs to have as strong skills : To Wait, To Fast and To Think.

These three skills help you to wait, wait for the situations to unfold itself, wait for the right time and right thing, wait to grab the best. Patience is the most underrated skill these days where world is moving fast and every task has a sense of urgency lingering around it building stress on mental health.

Next skill is "to fast", because hunger is cause of so many evils. Man looses his sleep, his peace of mind and his true self only to fill his stomach. "Papi Peth Ka Sawal" as they call it. The urge to fulfill all your desires, demands, luxuries and comforts are never ending. The goals set by man leads no where but a constant discomfort to fulfill it asap and in return man looses the opportunity to find himself, his true self. A trade off that he decides to take up while chasing his dreams. 

"There is always enough for everyone's need, but never enough for everyone's greed"

The third skill is To Think , think and harness the power of mind for betterment of everyone around you. Thinking is a hidden power each one possess but often takes for granted and ends up acting impulsively. It is the power of thinking that gives solution to most of our issues which we usually consider as most improbable ones to solve.

Siddhartha in his journey tastes different flavours of life and discovers oneness with the nature, with the one driving force of this world. 

He discovers that each one is combination of heaven and hell, it depends on us what we choose. There is good and bad in each one, decision lies on us on what we focus on. The binding force is the oneness that can only be felt and it is this oneness that will help to calm the wavering mind.

A super simple read, the book still forces you to re-read each line to understand it better. There is so much that this book offers which cannot be penned down. The most enlightening part is the way nature responds to your questions if only you sit and listen. The last chapter of the book although ends in vague manner but surely defines the wisdom earned in the complete story. 

VISION QUEST

The story is of a happy-go-lucky girl, who loves to explore new concepts and think of implementing it. Although, not successful always, but that doesn't deter her from taking any new tasks by her stride.

For one-and-a half year in her project, she gave her 100% The work was challenging at times, while pretty much hectic most of the times. Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience.

Then came one fine time, when her team was pretty much dismantled, budget issues they said. Her friends moved out and she too was loaned to a different team. Suddenly, chaos and uncertainty creeped in. The people who closely worked with her left the organization too. The responsibility doubled up

This was a biggest turning point I guess, where at one side she felt she has been given big responsibility and other point, she lost vision of what next? She was now part of a new team, working on old assignments. It became difficult to fathom the challenges and even the opportunities ahead.

Months passed by, Covid and Ransomware added fuel to the fire of madness around. The quest for a clarity of vision had began. 

With lot of discussion and guidance from her leads, she has started seeing a light of hope in upcoming months. Hope her quest ends soon....