hannaH GUNTHORPE > Recent Status Updates

"The teachings of the enlightened Buddha embrace much, they teach much--how to live righteously, how to avoid evil. But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the [Buddha] himself experienced...That is why I am going on my own way--not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave and reach my goal alone--or die."

“There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is my friend, only a knowledge—that is everywhere, that is Atman [the true soul which transcends reality], that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy that the man of knowledge, than learning.”

“He lived a good life, his words were wise; fine and noble thoughts dwelt in his head—but even he who knew so much…was he at peace? Was he not also a seeker, insatiable? Did he not go to the holy springs with an insatiable thirst…One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking—a detour, error.

These were Siddhartha’s thoughts; his thirst, his sorrow.”

In the Penal Colony is an interesting story, like all of Kafka’s stories I have read so far. Humanness and death and indifference to it all.

If I were Gregor I would have metamorphosed into a curl grub. Like Gregor I am a burdening presence on my family, and I hope that when I finally lay still they will be contented too.

He’s literally a cockroach and he loves to crawl on the walls and the ceiling.

I like some of these short stories, some short enough to be read as poems. My favourites so far are: Resolutions, The Way Home, The Passenger, and The Window on to the Street. Bleak humanness. I want to learn German so that I can read them with the original nuance and wring the meaning from the words.